Green Dot Week returns to Sinclair Feb. 19 through Feb. 22. The week and its events strive to build awareness of personal power based violence.
Personal power based violence can be defined as types of violence that use the assertion of power. That covers bullying, sexual assault, domestic violence, abuse and other related types of violence.
Kates Brommeland, Coordinator of Student and Community Engagement, as well as Matt Massie, Manager of Student and Community Engagement, coordinate the presence of Green Dot at Sinclair and host the events during the week.
Feb.19 at the Tartan Marketplace from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., is “Green Dot Plinko” to raise awareness and get students interested in the program.
Feb. 20 will be “What is a Green Dot?.” The event will be an overview of all the information including the Green Dot 3 D’s. It will be held in the building 8 stage area from 11:00 a.m to 12:00 p.m.
The week’s festivities will conclude on Feb. 22 with the event “Share a Green Dot” in the second floor lobby of building 14.
At “Share a Green Dot” participants will write down a Green Dot moment on a little piece of paper. This could many things including a time you intervened. The green dots will then be collected and used for a bulletin board campaign.
The week as a whole focuses on building as much awareness as possible. While the Green Dot program focuses more on training and prevention.
Green Dot is a nationally recognized bystander intervention training program, that works to reduce and eventually end power based violence, not only on college campus but in K-12 schools as well.
“The Air Force has even adopted Green Dot as their prevention program,” said Brommeland.
The program teaches the Green Dot three D’s; direct, distract and delegate. It also teaches actions that the program calls proactive green dots.
“Green Dot’s motto is ‘no one has to do everything but everyone has to do something,’” said Brommeland.
The Green Dot three D’s are for when you see something happening. To directly intervene, to distract or to call someone else to help, which would be delegate.
Proactive green dots are what Green Dot week primarily focuses on. They build awareness and get people involved. Something as simple as wearing a Green Dot button on your backpack and answering questions people may ask, or putting a Green Dot magnet on you locker would be a proactive Green Dot.
The program equips students and faculty with tools and knowledge to say or do something if they see something happening.
Student and community engagement run a 4 hour intervention training session for Green Dot. The training goes over everything about Green Dot and goes through scenarios for intervening.
Interested students can contact the Student and Community Engagement office, and after the training can be invited to help with the next Green Dot week events.
“It [the training] is for someone who really really wants to be involved,” said Brommeland. “It’s a way for them to get involved as bystander trainer.”
Brommeland encourages students to get involved, and come to the weeks events. Primarily the “What is a Green Dot?” event on Feb. 20 which covers what a Green Dot is and how to use the three D’s.
“Students walk away with tools,” Brommeland said.
While last Fall was the first launching of a full year for Green Dot at Sinclair, the program had a soft launch back in Spring of 2017. Brommeland and Student and Community Engagement hope to raise awareness and get more people involved with the program as it grows.
And with the increase of advertising for the offices’ events this semester, Brommeland hopes the turnout for Green Dot week will be even greater than previous weeks of the program.
Cerridwyn Kuykendall
Associate Editor