Bystander Intervention Training Held for RBC Student Athletes
SOUTH PRINCE GEORGE, VA – Bystander Intervention education is based on the premise that if everyone does their small part to endorse norms that are incompatible with violence then the outcome is a safer campus culture that is intolerant of violence. On July 31, 2023, the Counseling Services Office at Richard Bland College launched a series of Bystander Intervention Campus Training sessions for students. The trainings were held with over 100 student-athletes who were empowered to play a key role in reducing and eliminating power-based personal violence on campus through the disruption of potentially high-risk situations. In alignment with the Alteristic-Green Dot Violence Prevention Curriculum, students were trained to speak up and step in when witnessing others in potentially vulnerable situations. They also learned effective ways to use active, proactive, and prosocial behaviors to support their ability to identify unsafe situations that involve their peers who may rely on them to know how and when to intervene in potentially high-risk situations.
When moving into active intervention, the role of the empowered bystander is to shift the community norms by:
- Learning the warning signs of unhealthy and abusive relationships
- Identifying language that supports power-based violence
- Focus on actions that reduce violence on campus
- Supporting survivors of sexual assault
- Speaking up when they hear a victim-blaming statement
- Referring friends to campus and off-campus resources when they need help
- Calling the Campus Safety & Police Department when seeing a potentially threatening situation
The Benefits of Becoming an Empowered Bystander –
Sexual Violence Prevention trainings place students in reactive and proactive positions to become powerful agents of cultural and social change in environments in which power-based personal violence has become the norm. According to Dr. Evanda Watts-Martinez, Director of Counseling Services & Assistant Professor of Education, Richard Bland College continues to demonstrate its commitment to reducing and eliminating sexual violence through the offering of preemptive programs such as the Bystander Intervention Trainings. For years, RBC has worked diligently to ensure that its campus members acquire the skills needed to respond to power and gender-based violence. Training student athletes is an opportunity to share educational virtues that prompt them to reflect on their own values. Indeed, conversations around personal and community safety make sense in the athletic context as student-athletes are challenged to use their natural leadership and collaborative skills, innate self-confidence, motivation, strength, and influence as mechanisms for campus security. During each training session, the athletes discussed how their ability to strategically think in high-pressure situations on the courts, the fields, and the track can be used to promote an environmental transformation that would lead to the reduction and elimination of all forms of sexual violence.
Dr. Watts-Martinez has worked closely with Mr. Andrew Lacey, Head Men's Basketball Coach & Assistant Athletics Director, to coordinate the Bystander Intervention Trainings with student-athletes. Currently, Coach Lacey and Dr. Watts-Martinez serve on the Department of Justice - Office on Violence Against Women's Coordinated Community Response Team (CCRT) which provides oversight of the College's domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking programming efforts. The CCRT will hold additional Bystander Intervention and other prevention and victim support trainings for the campus community during the 2023-2024 academic year.
