BYSTANDER PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
"The health and well-being of students across the UT System is of the utmost
importance to me," UT System Chancellor William H. McRaven said. "The
Bystander Intervention Initiative is a comprehensive approach to empower our
students with the knowledge to improve their campus environment and make a
difference in someone else's life."
Through social media and text messages, as well as face-to-face interaction in
personal, classroom and social settings, UT System students are in a unique
position to observe the red flags of developing crises. The Bystander Intervention
Initiative seeks to provide students with the tools and motivation to intervene,
helping make UT System campuses safer.
"Oftentimes, a situation turns into a crisis because there was no intervention,"
said Wanda Mercer, Ed.D., UT System's associate vice chancellor for student
affairs. "We are teaching college students civility, how to respect and care for
each other."
Each participating campus -- UT Arlington, UT Austin, UT Dallas, UT El Paso, UT
Permian Basin, UT San Antonio, UT Tyler, and UT Rio Grande Valley -- is
creating its own individual initiatives using core Bystander Intervention Initiative
action steps to recognize a problem, choose to respond and take action.
For example, UT Austin has developed an initiative called "BeVocal", which
partners with units across campus to empower Longhorns with the skills to
collectively prevent and reduce harm. BeVocal's message is being delivered
through social media, poster campaigns, postcards, student plays at orientation,
presentations and other avenues.
"While different types of harm exist in college -- the three steps of recognizing the
harm, choosing to respond and taking action -- will be consistently applied to
multiple student issues throughout our university's campaign," said Chris
Brownson, Ph.D., UT Austin's associate vice president for student affairs and the
System-wide Bystander Intervention Initiative project leader. "Each System
campus has the autonomy to craft its own initiatives to meet the unique needs of
its student body. We hope to create a culture of care, and we have developed a
solid evaluation process to measure the effectiveness of every campus'
initiative."
At UT Austin, the BeVocal initiative seeks to educate students about the specific
details of intervention phases in the following manner:
First, students need to determine what harm looks like. It includes, but is not
limited to: academic dishonesty, high-risk drinking, interpersonal violence such
as sexual assault and stalking, mental health issues, suicide, hazing,
harassment, racism, sexism or homophobia.
Next, students can choose to respond with strategies that reduce barriers and
empower individuals to assume personal and collective responsibility. Some
personal barriers include: assuming someone else will respond; deciding the
situation is someone else's responsibility; assuming the problem is not a big deal;
being afraid of retaliation; and seeing the situation as personally embarrassing if
action is taken.
Motivations to respond include: caring about the person impacted; realizing the
consequences of inaction; feeling better about oneself for taking action; knowing
that their friends are there for backup; understanding that a situation is wrong
and should not be tolerated; and wanting help if the situation happened to them
or someone they care about.
The last step is to take action, which can be direct or indirect. Examples of direct
action include: asking questions and seeking clarity; creating a distraction;
interrupting harm from occurring in the moment; and talking to the person
affected to address the situation. Indirect actions could be getting other people
involved or calling campus police, campus crisis response teams or other
campus intervention units.
"We want people to asses each situation, taking into consideration their own
safety and choose appropriate action," Brownson said.
Mercer added that changing campus culture is not an easy task, but it's one
that's critical to making college a safer and more enriching experience for
students.
When the initiative is completed, Brownson said his team will share the UT
System's results with other state university systems and universities around the
country to help them develop their own bystander initiatives.
The Bystander Intervention Initiative is part of a series of UT System initiatives
recently launched to help create safer campuses. Last month, the System began
a comprehensive sexual assault study on 13 of its campuses to determine the
prevalence of sexual violence and provide data to impact existing policies and
practices.
"Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou
shalt not be a bystander."
--Yehuda Bauer, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum