In its effort to end sexual violence on Grounds, the University is partnering with Green Dot etc., a national organization dedicated to ending all forms of power-based violence by creating cultural shifts within communities.
Green Dot visualizes the current culture of violence as a metaphorical map blotted with multiple red dots, where every red dot is a moment in which a violent act occurs, or a moment in which someone witnesses a violent act or a potential violent act, but does nothing to stop it. In a college community, where one in four college women are victims of sexual violence, the map is filled with and overcome by these red dots. But every moment in which someone intervenes to prevent an act of violence, or tells someone to change one’s language so as not to perpetuate a culture of violence — every one of those moments is a green dot.
The objective of the Green Dot training program is to encourage people in the community to plant more of those green dots, so the red will soon be overcome by the green, and the number of victims of violence in the community will decrease.
A study done on the implementation of Green Dot training in Kentucky high schools found a 50 percent reduction in self-reported incidents of sexual violence perpetrated by students at those schools which received the training. At high schools which did not receive the training, by comparison, the self-reported incidents of sexual violence slightly increased.
Bringing in professional trainers from Green Dot will be an effective way to start a cultural shift here at the University. Though a university is responsible for its students’ safety, it primarily specializes in education, so enlisting a third party which specializes in violence prevention would be an effective partnership. University students also put strong emphasis on the interconnected nature of our community, so once good practices are instilled within the community members who attend these training sessions, those practices will proliferate.
The exact type of green dot you plant is not strictly defined. Planting a green dot could be an act of bystander intervention; it could be sharing information about sexual violence with peers; or it could be telling friends not to make jokes which condone violence. Green Dot training aims to identify the reasons people are not doing these things, assuming we all already know the difference between what is morally right and what is wrong. The majority of people in a community do not commit acts of violence, but merely being non-violent is not enough to counteract all of the acts of violence — all the red dots. We must be active to achieve our goal of a completely non-violent community.
Barriers inhibiting our own action could include peer pressure and psychological factors like the bystander effect. The goal of Green Dot is to identify and overcome these obstacles so each of us increases the number of green dots we plant.
Green Dot training is a significant time commitment, but hopefully students and faculty will recognize that the time is worth the change they will produce in the community. The faculty training sessions are scheduled over four days while student training is scheduled over two days. The extended training for faculty is important as faculty will be at the University for longer periods of time, and can sustain the cultural change this partnership is meant to start. The partnership with Green Dot etc. is another significant step forward to ending sexual violence at our University.
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