The Anti-Violence Alliance has plans for the next few weeks as they spread their message about prevention in their upcoming events.
The AVA helps create a safer campus environment for students by raising awareness to prepare students on how to deal with these problems and how to prevent them. They are hosting their curriculum “Bringing in the Bystander” throughout March to teach students that being a bystander is not standing on the sidelines and doing nothing.
Office on Violence Against Women Project Director and Violence Response Coordinator Sydney Mingori states how the curriculum can help people learn about and know what to do when a potentially harmful situation comes.
“Bystanders get a really bad rep of just not doing anything or the people often think that they’re harmful to a situation,” Mingori said. ” It absolutely can be, but if you aren’t given the right tools and skills to learn how to intervene, then you can make that role as a bystander be a positive thing and you can look out for those harmful things and intervene.”
The AVA provides the necessary information and resources needed to help students on campus identify a situation and learn how to handle it, as well as prevent it in the future.
“Our goal and mission are to educate people on our campus whether that be faculty, staff or students by educating people on the world of interpersonal violence that includes stalking, intimate partner violence, domestic violence and sexual violence,” Mingori said. “If we educate people on this, what to look out for those green and red flags of a relationship, we can create this space here on campus. [A space] where survivors feel safe and heard because people can call out and recognize those harmful behaviors.”
“Bringing in the Bystander” takes place on March 21 in the David L. Eisler Center Founder’s Room and on March 25 in the DEC 213 from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
The AVA is also hosting its “Recognize and Response” tables on March 21 in the DEC and March 26 in the Interdisciplinary Resource Center from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. These tabling events provide information on working with how to support someone who has survived or been harmed by domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking.
Music and entertainment business senior Olivia Lentner believes that the AVA is a great organization to provide safety for everyone on campus.
“The most helpful is the resources for others is how you can help and what you can do even if this isn’t directly impacting you, you can help somebody else,” Lentner said.
For more information, visit the AVA’s Instagram page @fsuantiviolence.
CE – RS, AM (Revisiting later)
CULTURE EDITOR GD