This past January nine students participated in the Bystander Intervention Independent Study Project (ISP) sponsored by Professor Amy Reid and facilitated by thesis student and former New College Student Alliance (NCSA) president Cassandra Corrado. Students were tasked to develop and implement a bystander intervention program for sexual assault prevention that met the specific needs of the New College community. Because of the enormity and importance of this undertaking, the ISP has been expanded into a tutorial running through this fall semester.

“We wanted to have our own bystander intervention program that caters to the very specific New College population,” second-year and NCSA Co-President Shelby Statham, who helped with the ISP, said. “A lot of programs are geared toward frats and sports culture so we needed one that was more LGBTQIA friendly.”

In order to do this, students split into three subgroups focused on logistics, curriculum development and content design. The groups have created a website and drafted preliminary posters and pamphlets to be used in the Sexual Health and Relationship Education (SHARE) room, as well as preliminary trainings, such as the upcoming workshop on April 16 – for which they are currently looking for facilitators. All of this is gearing up to fully implement the designed programming next fall beginning with freshman orientation.

ISP and tutorial members were required to complete the Florida Coalition Against Sexual Violence’s (FCASV’s) core competency training for sexual assault victim advocates, as well as basic training in inclusive language and course readings provided for free by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC).

“I’m really excited about what we were able to do with this ISP because we’ve really created something that caters to the New College community in an important way,” second-year Sarah Scully said.