Violence Prevention & WSU

Hidden under the Washington Building on the Washington State University campus is a new organization geared towards keeping students safe from campus violence.

Nikki Finnestead is the Violence Prevention Coordinator in the center for Health Promotions. Her program has only been on the WSU campus for a year but she and her team of volunteer students are helping the program expand. Last year a Department of Justice grant given to the school gave Health and Wellness the opportunity to expand their Health Promotions program.

Finnestead is the leader of the Green Dot Violence Prevention Program. “Our program has been around since late 2011,” said Finnestead; “a group of students and professors at Washington State decided that violence prevention needed to be a priority and decided to take the initiative in starting up the program.” The Green Dot program has been growing on WSU’s campus and only seems to be getting bigger.

One student who works closely with Finnestead is WSU senior Jillian Altizer. Altizer is a Student Violence Prevention Facilitator; her main goal with the organization and for the campus is to focus on bystanders of violence. “What we want to do is engage the whole WSU community to be active bystanders and not tolerate campus violence,” said Altizer. She is very passionate about her position and would volunteer her time “giving persuasive speeches to dorms, classrooms, Greek houses and try to get the Green Dot message across.”

“The Green dot program was created about a decade ago at the University of Kentucky by a group of Health Advocates,” said Finnestead. They wanted their main focus to be bystander intervention, so that others could make a difference if they noticed something going wrong between two individuals. 

Altizer explained that a green dot stands from someone taking action against violence. “We want people to achieve as many green dots as they can,” she said. That means red dot are not just acts of violence, but they also represent someone ignoring an act of violence that they may witness. Altizer said that they view red dots like a disease, and that if people don’t start contributing green dots violence will spread. “We focus on the three D’s- direct, delegate, and distract,” said Altizer. The three D’s are mean to give bystanders options when trying to step in on a possibly violent situation.

“We notice three types of violence on our campus; interpersonal violence-stalking, sexual assault, along with partner violence,” explained Altizer. She helps coordinate six hour Green Dot training programs to help students recognize a potentially dangerous situation, known to her program as red dots. Altizer explained how when she first participated in her bystander training she felt empowered. “Some types of programs like these normally leave people feeling depressed,” said Altizer. Green Dot training gave her the opportunity to learn healthy alternatives to confronting violence.

The Green Dot program has been viewed as empowering by many others as well. “Evaluations we’ve received from the Green Dot training have all come back with positive results,” Finnestead said. “After the Green Dot training the bystanders seems to feel more comfortable confronting situations that would normally have them feeling uncomfortable.”

However, Green Dot isn’t the only program working with the Health Promotions department. Some other departments that work closely with Finnestead and her team are Cougar Health Awareness Team (CHAT), V-Day WSU, Safe is Sexy, and Cougar Communications. Vice President of V-Day WSU, Diana Chun is also really enthusiastic about the growth of her program. “I really liked the ideas [V-Day] had so I wanted to learn more about violence prevention and decided to get more involved in the program,” said Chun. She first got involved with Health Promotions by participating in the Vagina Monologues as an actress. Their program focuses on telling the story about Violence prevention around the world.

Eve Ensler, the creator of Vagina Monologues helped spark this nationwide program. “All of the profits we make through Vagina Monologues go to the Alternative to Violence of the Palouse,” said Chun. “My main goal for next year is to help the president and get the message of violence prevention out to our campus,” Chun said. Violence prevention is becoming a very serious topic on the WSU campus and the number of volunteers and students participating in bystander training, Vagina Monologues and the other Health Promotion organizations are blossoming.

Students like Altizer and Chun want their fellow peers to understand violence prevention the way they do now. “Personally I think it really brought my attention to different aspects of violence prevention; I’m really excited to show and share what I’ve learned to other students next year,” Chun explained.

“We want to make sure students know we exist,” said Altizer. The Health Promotions organization and all their partners plan on starting their first summer training with incoming freshman during ALIVE sessions. Finnestead hopes this small glimpse at her program will help freshman understand how important violence prevention is, and is looking forward to the number of bystanders that they could train next year.