A psychology professor invited to campus as a guest speaker by the Hunter Women’s Rights Coalition told audience members that ample research indicates that they would quite possibly do nothing if they were witnesses many, many years ago – just like her neighbors – to Kitty Genovese’s demise as she was sexually attacked and repeatedly stabbed, fatally, for more than 30 minutes.
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You’re walking home through the streets of New York City after dinner out with friends. You turn a corner and see a man forcefully gripping a woman’s arm and screaming at her. A crowd is watching. What should you do?
Shout for him to stop? Physically confront him? Urge the crowd to help?
Dial 911?
The reality is that you would probably continue walking, iPod volume upped, head turned in another direction. After all, you think, reasonably, someone in the crowd has probably called the police or will intervene. It’s not your business.
However, it may be more of your business than you can imagine, according to Robert Eckstein, professor of Psychology and Justice Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Eckstein and two of his colleagues have developed “Bringing in the Bystander: A Prevention Workshop for Establishing a Community of Responsibility.” They travel to colleges around the country to preach a gospel of community responsibility regarding situations like the one described above.
The University of New Hampshire professor, dressed in black slacks and a white and black plaid button-down shirt, started off the event with a slide show. “What is a bystander?” was the first question of his PowerPoint presentation. Audience members volunteered opinions until Eckstein revealed the exact definition in the next slide: “Bystanders are individuals who witness emergencies, criminal events or situations that could lead to criminal events and by their presence may have the opportunity to provide assistance, do nothing or contribute to the negative behavior.”
Researchers say that victims of sexual violence are less likely to receive help if their attacks are witnessed by several people. Witnesses in groups tend to believe that someone else in that assembly may help, thus freeing them from having to intercede. As a result, no one acts and the victims suffer. Some violence prevention workshops, in fact, instruct participants that if attacked they should focus their pleas on one individual in a group.
Eckstein said that a bystander is neutral until he or she makes a decision. He wants his program to inspire students to make the right decision to become pro-social bystanders and provide assistance whenever possible. He also criticized and contrasted what he referred to as “Victim Responsibility Training,” for example, so-called rape prevention classes that teach women certain skills, such as self-defense or how to dress to avoid attacks by not attracting attention. He said these types of classes can lead to a blame-game mindset. That is, if someone falls victim to sexual assault, the question becomes, quotes for emphasis, “How did it happen? Didn’t you take that class?”
Imagine This: You’re Sitting in Thomas Hunter Room 105 For an Empathy-Building Exercise in Four Sheets of Paper
The presentation included multifarious accounts about rapes that could have been prevented by bystanders who failed to intervene. One infamous episode that is part of Big Apple lore (which resonated across the country) recalls the death of Catherine Susan Genovese in 1964. The 29-year-old woman was stabbed several times and sexually assaulted over the period of about an half hour. A slew of neighbors aware of her being attacked did nothing to help though they heard her cries and pleas until she was silenced. Newspaper stories about her death – they preferred to identity her as Kitty Genovese – tried to explore and explain the behavior of the witnesses who failed to help.
Social scientists followed with their own explorations leading eventually to the academic study of the psychological phenomenon known as the “bystander effect.” Eckstein told the audience that he refers to men throughout the program as the perpetrators and women as the victims because males are the usual predators. After more discussion and definitions in Room 105, Eckstein moved on to an “empathy-building exercise,” but said that students didn’t have to participate if they felt uncomfortable.
They were about to become uncomfortable.
The attendees were instructed to rip a sheet of paper into four pieces and to write on one piece the names of persons they trusted the most in the world. For the second piece, they were told to write the names of places where they felt the safest, and on the third piece, they were to note heir favorite classes at Hunter. Eckstein, who stressed that he would not make people share their answers, told participants to record a code word for any dark secret the audience members were hiding – secrets that if uncovered, could harm many aspects of their lives. That was for the fourth piece.
Subsequent steps of the exercise revealed the depths and motives of Eckstein’s empathy-building exercise. He asked volunteers to share the information on the first piece of paper, the persons whom they trusted the most. Most answered their moms or dads.
“Rip it up,” he said. “You’ve been sexually assaulted and this person doesn’t believe you.”
The students were silent as a collective tearing sound resonated pierced the room. Eckstein asked for descriptive words of the participants’ feelings, and he wrote them on a white board as audience members called out “hurt,” “rage,” “betrayed,” “lost” and “lonely.” For many, the second piece of paper, their safe havens, correlated to “home,” “boyfriend’s home” or “with friends” in general.
There was a collective groan when they learned that this piece, too, had to be ripped up, the ripping signifying that the assaults occurred in their safe havens.
Again, responses – words – called out by audience members were added to the white board, including “unsafe,” “like shit” and “hopeless.” By now, the students had caught on to the exercise and were ready to rip up the third piece of paper, their favorite classes at Hunter. Eckstein explained that the perpetrators were in these classes and “every time you go, you see him and it traumatizes you,” he said.
Paper was torn as Eckstein added to the board the new descriptive words – “shame,” “anger,” “despair,” “powerless” and “isolated.” The room fell silent, though, when Eckstein addressed the fourth piece of paper, that harrowing secret. He didn’t want to know what the secret was, but rather asked why it was a secret. “People would look at me differently,” one woman answered. Another volunteer said, “People’s feelings would be hurt,” and another student simply said, “Embarrassment.”
The students were all ready to rip up the paper like the last three. Eckstein stopped them and said that not only must those pieces remain intact but the students should “hang on to it for the rest of [their lives].” Many students were wide-eyed and groaning. Eckstein told them to imagine that everywhere they went, people would be talking about them. How did this make them feel? “Humiliating” and “Terrifying” were the main responses.
As if there weren’t enough gut wrenching, Eckstein went one step further. He wanted the students to then imagine what it would be like to have to tell their secrets to their parents, the police, the news media, and even testify and re-hash every gritty detail in a courtroom.
Danielle Bickford, a sophomore undecided about a major and a Yonkers resident, was alerted to the event after seeing posted flyers on campus and attended because of violence that occurred during the 2000 Puerto Rican Day Parade, when, as CNN.com reported on June 14 of that year that “at least 24 women and girls … had come forward by Wednesday to tell New York City police they were doused with water, stripped naked of their clothing, groped or robbed by a mob of men in Central Park.” And, of course, almost to a one, they said no one tried to help them.
Bickford said she was baffled as to how this went on in a crowd without anyone offering help. Dressed in a navy-blue velour tracksuit, she said she hoped to leave the HRWC event with some lessons on how to deal with this violence instead of “standing around and not doing anything – the opposite of what happened at the parade.”
Sydney Cespedes, 20, the secretary of the HWRC, admitted she was nervous before the event started because she was primarily responsible for organizing it. Dressed in a zip-up hoodie and jeans, she made sure everything was running smoothly before more students started to arrive. Twenty-five showed up, some who arrived late, others who left early. There were three males in the audience, discounting two who helped set up chairs and hand out the free pizza.
In a later email interview, Cespedes wrote, “Often I feel that unless you are the victim or the perpetrator, people do not take responsibility for what is happening out there.” Cespedes, who lives in the Hunter dorms in lower Manhattan, organized “Bringing in the Bystander” to raise student awareness. A political science major expecting to graduate in the spring of 2009, Cespedes said she was originally inspired to join the HWRC after taking a feminist political theory class with Jennifer Gaboury, an adjunct lecturer of political science at Hunter.
After the event, in a follow-up interview via email, Bickford wrote, “I thought [the program] was effective,” and that the discussed topics were interesting. Though she had to leave early to attend class, she wrote, “I was beginning to get an understanding of what needs to be done [for example,] asking someone next to me if they would [help the victim with her].”
Cespedes also wrote in her follow-up email, “I thought [the event] was successful, however, I also felt the people who showed up already had some sort of interest. I want this program to reach more people, especially those who are not very aware of sexual assault.
“We are hoping to bring this program back next year and have student trainings who in turn may give the workshop to incoming freshman. We have lots of work to do as you can imagine.”
The WORD’s Monica Levy can be reached at Mle0043@hunter.cuny.edu.