Sunday, April 6, 2014

What the heck is Teal Dot? by blogger Allisyn Ruttle from Pitzer College

As a consortium of 5 colleges, the Claremont Colleges is a fairly large community, with a large array of diverse clubs and student organizations. I am a member of a few of them, though I am not president of any. My roommate is, however, and she received an email saying that because she is a leader of an organization that she is required to go through Teal Dot training. We had no idea what that is and it has never had a presence on campus before. So, we looked it up on the Internet. We realized that this organization is only present at the Claremont Colleges. The description read:

Teal Dot is a bystander engagement program at the 5C's designed to reduce power-based personal violence, like sexual assault, partner violence, stalking,etc., in our community. We are making a difference, one teal dot at a time.


What this means is that every single person that is a registered leader of an on-campus club is required to forego this training, learning how to use their leadership to prevent power-based violence in all capacities in the context of their organizations. Before researching, I had never known that “power-based violence” was an existing concept, an all-encompassing term that, at the same time, does not over-generalize. As someone who has not yet received training, I don’t know what skills are included in teal dot training or how it is different from survivor support training. It seems to be a brand new presence on campus, and I am very much looking forward to it becoming more prominent and sought after. I hope to see organizations like this spreading to other college campuses across the nation. If every single student organization nationally had at least one person trained to spread awareness and prevent power-based violence, imagine the changes our generation could make.


For more information about Teal Dot’s presence on the Claremont Colleges’ campuses, visit https://pomona.collegiatelink.net/organization/tealdot

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