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Everyone has a duty and a responsibility to intervene if they see harm occurring or about to occur. Bystanders are anyone in the community that sees or hears about a behavior that could lead to something harmful. Through their action, bystanders have the ability to prevent harm from occurring. All bystanders have a choice to make, to intervene or to move forward without trying to stop the situation. There are 5 steps to bystander intervention. First, a person must notice the event. Second, they must interpret it as a situation that needs intervention. Third, they must assume responsibility to intervene. Fourth, they must decide how to intervene. And last, they must act. A person may experience barriers at any of these steps that make it so that a person does not intervene should they witness an instance of harm.

Bystanders can act to prevent harm in a number of ways. Rhodes College has adopted the Green Dot program as a way to teach about violence prevention. Green Dot empowers every community member to take small actions in order to foster a culture where violence and harm towards members of our community are not tolerated. Red dots are actions that people choose to do that can result in harm to other individuals. While, green dots are actions that people take to prevent harm from occurring.

Proactive Bystander Intervention

• Small, daily choices we make to communicate two new norms to the people in our spheres of influence. These are things you do before harm ever happens. They help to establish the norms that:
  • Violence is not okay and will not be tolerated.
  • Everyone needs to do their part to help.
• Examples include having Green Dot stickers on your laptop or water bottle, sharing bystander intervention stories, or creating plans with friends when you go out to try and keep everyone safe.

Reactive Bystander Intervention

Reactive bystander intervention is what we think about when we hear bystander intervention. It means that the person sees a situation and does something to stop or prevent harm from happening. Green Dot teaches three ways to intervene. They are direct, delegate, and distract. It is important to not that you should only intervene in a situation if you feel that it is safe for you to intervene. 

Three Ways to Intervene:

Direct

Check in yourself with the person being harmed or person doing the harm.

Examples:

• Check in with someone who looks uncomfortable and ask them if they are OK.
• Tell someone who is about to do something that may harm another person that their behavior isn’t acceptable.

Delegate

Get someone else to intervene. This type of intervention recognizes that sometimes other people may be better suited to intervene.

Examples:

• Tell someone that they may want to go check on their friend.
• Let a party host know that there is something going on that they should look into.

Distract

Create a diversion to defuse the situation; i.e, an action that stops a situation for a few seconds to give everyone a chance to recollect.

Examples:

• Set off your car alarm
• Ask for directions

To schedule a Green Dot Session, please contact the Office of Prevention and Well-being Education