Every year, DePauw welcomes a speaker to talk to the first-year class about an issue, and the topic differs year by year.
Seniors will recall hearing Tim Wise speak on diversity, while juniors and sophomores will remember Jackson Katz discussing sexual assault. This year, the university welcomed Lea Hegge, a representative from "The Green Dot Etc." to talk about bystander intervention.
According to DePauw's coordinator of violence intervention Jeannette Johnson-Licon, this convocation, as well as the two from Kats, are thanks to the Violence Against Women Act grant from the United States Department of Justice.
While there are no records to show whether or not these talks have reduced the number of sexual assaults at DePauw, the crime statistics in the annual Clery Act report from Public Safety show that the number of offenses reported has been increasing steadily since 2009. This indicates that the talks are at least raising awareness and willingness to report such acts.
A video shown before Hegge came on stage cited a survey given to students, the results of which show that 43 percent of students know about sexual assaults on campus. Of that number, a significant portion knew of multiple incidents and victims, some including themselves. This information indicates that there are a lot more incidents that go unreported.
Freshman Perrin Duncan valued this factual presentation.
"I really appreciate that DePauw is getting the word out and showed us the video with the statistics," she said.
Johnson-Licon said that the reason this year's convocation is about bystander intervention is because students need to know how they can help more directly rather than simply reporting the incidents.
Duncan agreed that being a bystander in general is an issue.
During the convocation, Hegge informed the audience that the ways bystanders can help are either reactive or proactive. The examples of proactivity dealt with methods of raising awareness and volunteering, while examples for reactive focused on the "three D's."
The "three D's" are direct, distract and delegate. "Direct" means walking home with a friend who's intoxicated or stopping someone who you think is going to assault someone else. "Distract" includes indirectly preventing incidents by directing the attention of the potential perpetrator away from the victim. "Delegate" means organizing others to prevent potentially dangerous situations.
Freshman Mary Church hopes her peers will take Hegge's speech to heart.
"I think this is a problem we definitely have to face, even if it's a difficult topic to think about," she said. "I hope people can take this seriously and do something when the opportunity comes to them."
Hegge concluded by challenging her audience to be proactive against violence in the next 24 hours.
"My hope is that students on this campus will realize that their contribution matters," she said. "They have a role to play as a bystander who can, either reactively or proactively, make a difference. They have the power to change the culture on this campus so that violence doesn't stand."