Keene State

Location

Keene, New Hampshire

Situation

Keene State College secured a three-year grant from the Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) to develop or implement programs to prevent, reduce, and respond to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking at the college. With the input of students, faculty, and staff, two bystander intervention programs were researched and evaluated. Bringing in the Bystander® College Prevention Program was chosen based on its ability to be tailored and customized to Keene State and its student body. An additional factor for selecting Bringing in the Bystander was the appeal of enabling students be facilitators of the program.

Keene State College is a public liberal arts college in Keene, New Hampshire with a student body of 3,100. It is part of the University System of New Hampshire and the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.

The Soteria Solution

A group of six staff, students, and community partners received initial Bringing in the Bystander training in January 2022. This group spent the Spring 2022 semester tailoring and customizing the training to choose scenarios and elements that would best resonate with its population. Keene State started the process of implementing Bringing in the Bystander (BITB) with training the trainer sessions in the summer of 2022.

Customization of BITB included incorporating the school’s own statistics on sexual violence and sexual assault as well as using campus landmarks and building names in the scenarios to be highly relatable.

The leadership of BITB at Keene State took the BITB implementation a step further when they worked with Soteria Solutions to add branded SWAG (t-shirts, pens and stickers) to increase visibility among the student body.

Rollout of BITB launched in August of 2022 with facilitators all donning BITB t-shirts as student athletes and members of Fraternity and Sorority Living learned about safe and appropriate ways to be an effective bystander.

Results

While early in its implementation, the post training survey results are overall positive as students, especially, appreciate the interactive elements of Bringing in the Bystander and the relevance of the scenarios customized for Keene State.

With multiple train-the-trainer sessions completed, Keene State now has a pool of 15 trained facilitators, including students. Once a month, all trained facilitators wear the BITB t-shirts to heighten awareness of Bringing in the Bystander on campus.

Prevention Tabling is an additional element that Keene State has incorporated as part of its efforts. Tables are set up in the Student Center sharing bystander prevention materials, materials linked to a particular month (e.g., October Domestic Violence Awareness month), along with the BITB t-shirts, pens, and BITB stickers as giveaways.

The tables draw lots of attention from students as all students love to win a new t-shirt. Quality pens (BITB branded) are also of appeal to students -- who doesn’t like a nice new pen? -- especially a college student! Keene State offers two stickers to increase visibility of BITB; including one sticker with a QR code that enables students to easily access the Keene State Sexual Violence Prevention Virtual Resource Center to get involved and to access additional available resources. The SWAG has helped Keene State achieve more visibility of the Bringing in the Bystander prevention program early in its implementation.