The University of Idaho will host the second annual Campus Safety Week, with training and forums designed to inform students and keep them secure and happy through the school year.
The Katy Benoit Safety Forum will begin at 3 p.m. Sept. 16 in the Idaho Commons Whitewater room.
Virginia Solan, violence prevention programs coordinator at UI, and Bekah MillerMacPhee from Alternatives to Violence on the Palouse, will talk to students about what they can do to stay safe and keep their friends safe during their time at UI.
The Benoit forum will focus specifically on security within relationships. Benoit was shot and killed by a former UI professor Ernesto Bustamante in August 2011.
“I felt that it needed to be about relationship issues and relationship violence,” Solan said. “It’s about honoring (Katy’s) memory and it’s what her family would like to see, that, as much as possible, some positive things can come out of what happened.”
Bustamante and Benoit had engaged in a relationship prior to the shooting, according to records that surfaced at the time of the incident.
The rest of the safety week events will cover four different programs and informative lectures: the Green Dot program; how to help a friend in a dangerous situation; stalking, social media and technology; and the red flags of relationships.
MillerMacPhee said it is particularly important that the Safety Week has a focus — and that it takes special time to inform students that they are not inactive bystanders in each others’ lives.
“What safety means on campus, and being aware of things that can happen and educating students about what they can do to keep each other safe is really important,” Miller MacPhee said.
MillerMacPhee said the first day of the week will present information on sexual violence and relationship abuse, in addition to the Green Dot training. She said she expects the turnout to be even better this year.
“The safety week last year was really different,” MillerMacPhee said. “But there was a lot of support around it, a lot of people came out to learn and honor Katy Benoit as well.”
This year, MillerMacPhee said, they are offering more and building on what they have already done.
Solan said this year would offer even more empowerment than last year’s Safety Week.
“I always see prevention as so important,” Solan said. “If I can prevent an assault indirectly, it is worth my while.”
The Campus Safety Week and the Katy Benoit Safety Forum are part of a UI initiative called I Got Your Back, which promotes a culture of Vandals helping Vandals.
MillerMacPhee said they hope to change the culture by having conversations with students about the power they have, and how they can get involved.
“Part of it is promoting awareness so students understand issues,” MillerMacPhee said. “But the ultimate goal is that they walk away from these programs with some tools.”
Solan said the culture of violence needs to be real and tangible, even if a student has not experienced it directly.
“It’s this paradigm shift that gets people out of this sense of helplessness,” Solan said. “You don’t have to feel helpless and frustrated.”
Solan said that, like the Green Dot slogan, no one has to do everything, but everyone has to do something.
Alycia Rock can be reached at [email protected]