Projects

PACE LogoJSU’s coordinated community response team addresses sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking on campus and in our community. We formed the campus organization PACE to ensure that all interested staff, faculty and students can join our efforts No Matter how much time or energy they can commit.

Join our mailing list to stay in the loop of our activities, volunteer and leadership opportunities, and upcoming meetings and events.

If you care about anti-violence work, you belong with PACE! 

Northeast Alabama Sexual Assault Response Team NEALSART

The brainchild of our community partner 2nd Chance, our team is now coordinating with 2nd Chance in leading the SART Team, which features victim service providers and law enforcement and spans six counties: Calhoun, Cherokee, Cleburne, Etowah, Randolph and Talladega.

Mission: Provide comprehensive, compassionate, specialized services to victims, survivors, and others impacted by sexual assault, holding perpetrators accountable, and improving a multidisciplinary response to sexual assault.

Be The Friend Bystander Intervention Program

Rather than focusing narrowly on perpetrators and victims, the highly interactive, researched and evaluated Bringing in the Bystander® Prevention Program uses a community of responsibility approach in high schools, colleges and workplaces. It teaches bystanders how to safely intervene in situations where an incident may be occurring or where there may be risk.  The program is customizable to reflect the locations, colloquialisms, and culture of your school or organization. 

Based on the evidence-based Bringing in the Bystander curriculum, the PACE team developed the Be THE Friend program on bystander intervention specifically for the JSU community

Direct

You may want to directly respond to harassment by naming what is happening or confronting the harasser.

Try This:

  • "That's inappropriate, disrespectful, not okay, etc."
  • "Leave them alone."
  • "That's homophobic, racist, (insert type of harassment), etc."

Distract

The aim here is simply to derail the incident by interrupting it. The idea 15 to ignore the harasser and engage directly with the person who is being targeted. Don't talk about or refer to the harassment. Instead, talk about something completely unrelated.

Try This:

  • Pretend to be lost. Ask for the time. Pretend you know the person being harassed. Talk to them about something random and take attention off of the harasser.
  • Get in the way. Continue what you were doing, but get between the harasser and the target.
  • Accidentally-on-purpose spill your coffee, the change in your wallet, or make a commotion.

Delegate

Ask for assistance, for a resource, or for help from a third party.

Try This:

  • Find the store supervisor, bus driver, or professor and ask them to Intervene.
  • If you're near a school, contact a teacher or someone at the front desk. On a college campus, contact campus security or someone at the front desk of a university building.
  • Get your friend on board.
  • Speak to someone near you who notices what's happening.
  • Call 911 if it is safe to request help.

Delay

You can wait until the situation is over and speak to the person who was targeted.

Try This:

  • Ask them if they're okay and tell them you're sorry that happened to them.
  • Ask them if there's any way you can support them.
  • Offer to accompany them to their destination or sit with them for awhile.
  • Share resources with them and offer to help them make a report if they want to.
  • If you've documented the incident, ask them if they want you to send it to them.

Document

Record an incident as it happens to someone.

Try This:

  • Keep a safe distance.
  • Record street signs and landmarks that help identify the location.
  • State the date and time.
  • ALWAYS ask the person targeted what to do with the footage.
  • NEVER share the recording online without permission.