Step Up! trains for bystander intervention

After attending a Step Up! IU training session, freshman Dayanna Arichavala wanted to share her new knowledge with everyone.

This drove her to be host to Step Up! at La Casa Latino Cultural Center Thursday, where she has a work-study position.

“After I heard the talk, I found myself being more vigilant,” Arichavala said. “I felt like it helped me a lot in assessing what goes on every day as I walk around campus.”

Step Up! IU is the action piece of Culture of Care, meaning they go to student groups and give trainings on bystander intervention, Step Up! Coordinator Thea
Cola said.

Student groups can ask Step Up! to come to their meetings or events to give
either a bystander intervention presentation or a sexual assault prevention presentation.

The group teaches students how to create a safe environment.

“We want to increase confidence levels in students intervening,” Cola said. “In 2011 we surveyed IU students, and 66 percent thought that a problematic situation could’ve been avoided if someone intervened.”

Culture of Care began collecting data and developing the Step Up! program, originally developed by the University of Arizona, for IU in 2011 and implemented it in 2012.

The need for the group came after incidents on campus like Lauren Spierer’s disappearance, Cola said, as well as a national address in which President Barack Obama said sexual assault was an issue he’d like to address.

This school year, the initiative has served 1,167 students at IU, Cola said.

“Incidents like sexual assault and hazing still occur even this year,” he said.
“Culture of Care put this in for a reason. People don’t believe they have control of the environment, but they can create that culture of care and that’s what Step Up! is for. For encouraging students to take control of their environment.”

Arichavala said she sees intervention as an area that could be improved on campus and in the world.

“Everybody has this idea that we’re such a big campus that anybody will help,” Arichavala said. “But in reality everybody has that mindset, so no one actually ends up helping, not only on this campus, but everywhere.”

Step Up! is important to IU students as they transition into college life, Cola said.

“College is a transitional period that can be tough,” Cola said. “Having someone smile at you or ask you if you’re OK can really go a long way. Intervening can really help people in the long run. It’ll make for an easier transition for students and help them have a better college experience.”

Cola said she wanted to stress how Step Up! is not a group that promotes only sobriety or abstinence, but rather tries to encourage safer practices.

“It’s not trying to crush fun,” Cola said. “It’s just trying to make fun safe.”

As Little 500 approaches, Step Up! gets flooded with requests to speak and do intervention training. Between now and the end of the academic year they have 10 planned sessions, Cola said.

Recently, Culture of Care commissioned the Student Media Bureau to make a video about bystander intervention.

The video is called “Bystanders,” and it staged events to see how IU students would react and if any would intervene.

Some examples of the staged events included public harassment of a gay couple, a man harassing a woman and students crying alone.

“The beauty of it was no matter what, if people intervened or not, we could still use it,” video producer Carlos Guiterrez said. “If they didn’t react we could say, ‘Look at this problem,’ and if they do that’s great.”

Students did end up intervening in the video, but at first Guiterrez said he was concerned people wouldn’t do so.

“In the beginning I was worried on the state of the human condition because for a while no one stopped,” Guiterrez said. “I had to listen to this girl cry and watch it on camera.
It was discouraging, but after people stepped up I felt more confident.”
Guiterrez said he wished they would’ve staged more uncommon events to see what bystanders would do, such as a gay couple harassing a straight couple or a woman harassing a man. He said he’s also afraid the video was too “feel good.”

“I’m afraid people will see it and think, ‘Everything’s good, people stood up, I don’t need to do anything,’” he said. “But then again people still walked by and the stage guy who was crying wasn’t helped at all.”

However, Guiterrez said he is happy with how it created a community.

“From the responses I’ve gotten, a lot of people really expressed their pride about IU are proud of the students for stepping up,” Guiterrez said. “People were for at least one reason bound together and agreed on something.”