__One In Four alums take education program on the road__
The College’s One In Four chapter began an RV tour this week to promote its new “Women’s Program.”
p. One in Four, which has more than 30 chapters nationwide, is a program designed to foster male awareness of sexual assault against women.
p. The group gives presentations to freshmen men each year, but a change is occurring within the program.
p. As of this week, the four One In Four RV tour members will find themselves face-to-face not with freshmen men, but with a new audience of women.
p. Four One In Four members, two College alumni and two from other schools travel to roughly 50 different universities to give their presentation.
p. “One of the things we kept getting feedback about from schools was, ‘Why don’t you have a program for women?’” John Foubert, assistant professor of higher education at the College and founder of the One In Four program said. “We thought about it for a while … and we decided to put together a program for one year on an experimental basis as an RV tour.”
p. Already the challenges of the tour are surfacing.
p. “Every day is sort of an adventure for us,” Jor-el Caraballo, a graduate of UNC — Wilmington and one of the tour’s four members, said. “It takes some getting used to living in an RV, but we’re getting used to it.”
p. College alumnus and tour member J.T. Newberry ’07 echoed this sentiment.
p. “We have four people living in a 37 foot RV … It’s just a matter of keeping a positive attitude,” he said.
p. Yet the cost of the tour seldom outweighs its rewards.
“You will continue to have people come up to you who are incredibly thankful,” Newberry said.
p. “They are just glad that there’s somebody out there who cares.”
Newberry decided to join One In Four after viewing a presentation of the program his freshman year, where he saw the opportunity to convey an important message to a group of people.
p. “It was amazing,” Newberry said. “I went there and I was completely shocked … It just changed my life.”
p. One In Four began in 1993, when Foubert wrote a script for the program while working at the University of Richmond.
In 1997, the University of Maryland became host to the first official One In Four program.
p. The College chapter of One In Four was founded at the College in 2002.
p. The name of the program refers to the statistic whereby one in four college women have survived rape or attempted rape.
As for the success of the “Women’s Program,” Foubert is realistic but hopeful.
p. “When we were writing the script we sent it out to many women and got some good feedback,” Foubert said. “At this point we’re just going to wait and see.”
p. Meanwhile, the open road is met with a sense of optimism.
“My expectation is that the sky is the limit,” Newberry said.
