The Green Dot coordinator position opened up the beginning of January. Applications are currently being reviewed while the program continues training students and faculty.
“Green Dot is a bystander intervention program. It gives real life skills for people to intervene with high risk situations. When the pandemic hit in March I thought this was too important to not move forward with the program,” Libby Thorson said, the assistant dean of students.
The Green Dot coordinator creates workshops and other prevention efforts on campus and collaborates with wellness ambassadors about healthy relationships.
“ASUW as a body identified Green Dot as an important initiative to support this year,” Courtney Titus said, a secondary English education major and the ASUW vice president. “The data speaks to this urgency, particularly in the 2018 Campus Climate Survey which found that 50% of gender nonconforming students had experienced sexual assault and 27% of the respondent overall had experienced sexual assault.”
Green Dot runs on a system based on identifying red dots and green dots.
“A red dot could be two people in prexy’s pasture and starting a fight and then one person grabs their arm. A green dot is a bystander walking in and asking directions for the engineering building so they distract the situation,” Thorson said.
By the program’s definition, a green dot is when somebody stops or prevents a red dot from happening or getting worse. A red dot is when someone uses their words or actions to harm.
The program avoids identifying blame on either the perpetrator or victim by including bystanders as responsible.
“There is far more emphasis on personal safety and preference with a larger understanding of working towards a cultural shift where interpersonal violence no longer exists,” Titus said.
Green Dot started at UW in 2020 and has continued working despite COVID-19.
There are currently 37 volunteer instructors with Green Dot as well as over 400 faculty and staff who have been trained with the intervention program.
“This is helping shift the culture with our older students as well as bring in new students with this,” Thorson said. “Violence is not our way and students are also responsible.”
Thorson said select students with social capital are invited to training. This is to maximize the influence Green Dot has on campus. After the initial students are trained, Green Dot will be a part of incoming freshman’s orientation.
“The National Green Dot started with training for employees. We did a little bit of promo-ing with student adopters,” Thorson said.
Trainings have been shortened during the pandemic to be two hours over Zoom.
“Typically, they would be a half-day ordeal with food served. However, mine was 90 minutes on Zoom. Generally, the training includes an overview of the program, an introduction to the philosophy and methodology of it, practice scenarios to run through as a group, and discussion with peers and the facilitators,” Titus said.
Current students who have been invited are primarily sophomores and juniors.
“We have a broad cross section of campus that have been invited: fraternity and sorority, athletics, ambassadors, people from RSO’s and Student Advisory Committee, we’ve invited specific sports teams,” Taylor Stuemky said, the assistant athletic director for internal operations.
Stuemky is the chair of the early adopter subcommittee and a part of the leadership team for Green Dot as well.
