York has been developing a bystander intervention program to ensure the community is more active on campus in preventing crime.
The bystander intervention program is designed teach community members how to identify problem situations and to intervene. The program has been in development since 2010.
Robert Castle, senior executive officer for the vice-president of finance and administration, and a member of the steering committee for the program, says the earliest the program will be implemented is in the fall of 2014.
The idea for the program came from a 2010 campus-wide safety audit conducted by the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children.
“The great thing with a bystander program is that we can distill stuff down to a fairly easy level for people to understand the issues, to understand that we all face obstacles to getting involved in situations,” says Castle.
“There’s been tons of research, and we want people to be able to walk out of a three-hour seminar or workshop with some really good concrete skills and tools that are easy to remember and
very practical.”
Following the METRAC recommendations, Castle and 35 York staff and students, along with several staff members and students from the University of Toronto attended a training session with Green Dot, etc, an organization that works to reduce violence within communities.
From this training session, the group decided a more York-specific anti-violence program was required, and a committee was formed to develop the program.
The committee is comprised of representatives from the Office of the Vice-President Finance and Administration, Centre for Human Rights, Student Community and Leadership Development, Residence Life, Office of Student-Conflict Resolution, Sport York, York Security Services, Sexual Assault Survivors’ Support Line & Leadership, Centre for Women & Trans People, and the York Federation of Students.
Castle notes the committee is currently in the process of developing the main principles of the program, and there are no criteria yet.
“We didn’t just want to have a short-term program,” says Castle. “We wanted to really look at how we could connect more deeply with the community.” York is not the first university to develop this sort of program. The University of British Columbia already has its own bystander program, and the University of Windsor has a program called “Bringing in the Bystander.”
Castle says the committee developing York’s version plans to take initiatives from these programs into consideration. Castle says the program isn’t designed to get community members to intervene in dangerous situations, like the shooting that occurred in the Student Centre on March 6, where they may be injured, but to pinpoint earlier signs of problems.
Ashley Glovasky
Deputy Copy Editor
