Entire student body needs to do Bystander Intervention Training

Bystander Intervention Training (BIT) trains students to better recognize and react to situations of gender violence and sexual assault on campus. The ultimate goal of BIT is to educate students in a host of preventative measures to end gender violence at Homewood. Currently, the training is mandatory for all varsity athletic teams and might eventually become accessible to all Hopkins students.

Adviser Alyse Campbell, who also is the adviser for the Hopkins’ Sexual Assault Resource Unit (SARU) as well as the Sexual Violence Prevention, Education and Response Coordinator for the Center of Health and Wellness, supervises the sessions. Students who have gone through BIT lead the sessions with the hopes of making the presentations more relatable and honest.

BIT consists of two sessions, each two hours long, that individual athletic teams attend separately. Students are first told that they are free to leave the training at any time if they feel uncomfortable, as the sessions tackle sensitive issues and may provoke upsetting memories. Each student then proceeds to complete an online survey, gauging his or her knowledge and experiences of gender violence on the Hopkins campus.

The student facilitators use interactive and engaging presentations to teach students about gender violence, both in general and specifically at Hopkins, making sure to approach the sensitive subject in a delicate yet realistic manner. The first session tackles issues like sexual consent, sexual assault, gender violence, abusive relationships (physically, mentally, emotionally, academically, socio-economically, etc.), assault resources, microaggressions (rape jokes, stigmas, etc.) and how to support a friend who's experienced sexual assault. The session also aims to teach potential bystanders to recognize situations of gender violence and to end inaccurate stigmas surrounding the topic.

The second session of BIT opens up conversation about sexual assault and rape. The session gives astonishing information about rape on college campuses and challenges the stigmas that are normally associated with situations of sexual assault, such as assuming that the victim was drunk.

This session, like the first, aims to end instances of gender violence and sexual assault at Hopkins by teaching bystanders how to either directly or indirectly intervene in situations that they now know how to recognize. The training offers tips on protecting friends and strangers from situations of assault and advises the safest way to intervene in different situations. The session concludes with another online survey to gauge how the perception of gender violence has changed after the two sessions.

As the first official year of BIT at Hopkins, the program chose to start with athletic groups because they are easier to train. Teams generally consist of a controlled number of students who are already comfortable with one another — making the sessions more intimate, open and personal. BIT also hopes that athletes will use their campus influence to spread their newly acquired knowledge of gender violence throughout the student body. BIT's next goal is to train Greek affiliates, before ultimately reaching out to all students in small group settings.

BIT needs to be brought to as many students on campus as possible in order to help end the atrocities of gender violence at Hopkins and on all college campuses. In May, the U.S. Department of Education released a list of 55 instutions of higher education under investigation for violating federal law regarding sexual assault and harassment. Though not on the list, during the spring of 2014 it was argued by some that Hopkins breached Title IX laws when students weren’t immediately informed about a pending investigation on campus. Unfortunately, sexual assault exists on most college campuses — it is up to both the University and the students to support survivors of sexual assault however they need to be.

Incorporating BIT training is getting closer to the elimination of gender violence. While only the perpetrator is the responsible party in a case of sexual assault, we students have a responsibility to protect one another from dangerous and harmful situations. If BIT were available to all students, as it is intended to be, Hopkins would be one step closer to ending situations of gender violence and sexual assault. It is empowering to be able to intervene in situations and possibly prevent something from occurring, and as a Hopkins community, it is important that we all are able to protect one another in that way. Hopefully, the expansion of the BIT program will inform more students on the harsh realties of gender violence and help diminish cases of sexual assault on our campus.