By: Ian Brehaut, Contributing Writer
What’s the difference between a green dot and a red dot? How can we recognize these on campus? How does green dot reflect the core values of Saint Leo University?
At Saint Leo University, the green dot program has made an impact in the Saint Leo community since they had begun back in 2016. Back in 2016, “Sunrise of Pasco” County’s local domestic and sexual violence facility had offered to grow its partnership with Saint Leo University.
During this expansion, these services had become possible thanks to a grant from the Florida Department of Health. Today, green dot continues to teach us how spreading and promoting positive actions against violence can help the Saint Leo community altogether.
When we are on campus, we can pay attention to the social situations that are around us and look for anyone who seems out of the current norm.
Bystander Training sessions provide students with the opportunity to learn more about green dot. During these sessions, you will be able to get community service.
If you believe somebody appears out of the norm, you should not be afraid, and you should go up to them and step in.
What is Green Dot? A green dot is a kind of proactive prevention which promotes the elimination of power-based personal violence. This is not limited to and also includes domestic violence, dating, stalking, and sexual assault.
What is a Red Dot? A red dot is the type of violent actions that are geared towards another person. Typically, a red dot would have happened when someone was assaulted and or hit.
This can primarily occur when somebody had overdosed, or somebody had too much to drink that night. The difference between both of them is that a red dot happens when violence occurs, and a green dot is when intervention had happened to prevent the abuse from occurring.
Within the Saint Leo community, the Green Dot program continues to reduce violence within a community. The Green Dot Coordinator, Aubrey Hall, had stated that “When we educate students and faculty on how to be diligent active bystanders, they are not only implementing it on campus but in their daily lives outside of campus as well…”. Reducing these behaviors within the Saint Leo community allows us to create a culture that everybody is expected to maintain a safe campus.
Students can get involved by continuing to provide support to the Green Dot team on campus. Aubrey had also mentioned, “Saint Leo has been so helpful in integrating the Green Dot program over the last four years…” proving that as a community we are living the core values of Saint Leo University. The Green Dot’s approach on campus is to meet “What do you need?” and be able first to serve the University too.
For two hours on August 27th, the Saint Leo University’s Green Dot Program had held an Ice-Cream Social on campus to help represent the “Green Dot” team on campus by Saint Jude Chapel and CAB building. During the event, Green Dot had a Push Cake Pop stand, Coffee stand, Ice-Cream social, Candy stand, and Prizes available. At the event, the CAB staff was helping during this event as well as the Green Dot staff.
When you arrived at the first stand, you were able to choose what kind of coffee you wanted. At the coffee stand, you had options from a cappuccino to a caramel latte, for example. At the next table you were able to get more familiar with “Green Dot” and their new program that they are starting this year called the “Green Dot Lion’s.” This will be held on campus on Friday’s at 10 AM in the SAB Leadership Cage. It was also mentioned that students could be becoming more involved by attending a Bystander training by emailing Green Dot at greendot@saintleo.edu or DeChantel Hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1-4 pm.
The Bystander Training sessions provide students with the opportunity to learn more about green dot. During these sessions, you will be able to get community service hours, leadership skills, and community engagement by participating in these sessions of leading initiative of non-violence.
Following the previous table, you were able to find a board where you can answer a “Green Dot” question scenario and be able to place a “Green Dot” example on the board.
After you answered the scenario question, you were then able to choose your prize by picking up a stick.
The point of this exercise was to “provide participants an opportunity to apply an intervention strategy (direct, delegate, and distract) to a red dot scenario…”.
A few of the prizes included battery packs, phone chargers, highlighters, wrist bands, and more. After the scenario table, you were able to move to the spinning wheel, where you can spin and land on a “Wild Card” or a Saint Leo Core Value and describe how “Green Dot” shows this on campus.
Next, the candy stand had allowed you to talk with the Counseling Services and obtain more help about what they do, and at the same time, you can get some candy.
At the Last Stand, you were able to make Push Cake Pops and choose your toppings, cake, and frosting to be ready to be eaten right away or take home.
The goal of the Ice-Cream social was to provide awareness to the Saint Leo community how the Green Dot program’s goal is to promote to reduce violence within the Saint Leo community.
