Auburn Health Promotion and Wellness Director Eric Smith describes now as the "safest time to ever ride the Tiger Transit."

 

With First Transit providing employees to keep an eye on the live feeds from each Transit's camera, in addition to the new employee training, students should feel safer than ever. Yet, the haunting image of what happened to one 18-year-old Auburn student won't be easily forgotten.

 

Green Dot is Auburn's bystander prevention program, and employees new and old must all go through one of these training sessions. The next training for Tiger Transit employees will be later this week, but Green Dot provides training for students, too.

 

Smith describes in detail what the Tiger Transit training is like for the Green Dot program. He says it's like an "interactive lecture" with clicker questions and activities to keep participants continuously involved.

 

"We all have different barriers as to why we don't intervene," Smith says. To explore this, participants get together in groups and brainstorm all the different barriers they might have and write them on paper. According to Smith, they crumple them up and throw them across the room like snowballs.

 

"People will get them and read them, and the wonderful thing that usually always happens is everyone has the same barriers but they always think, 'Eh, these are my barriers,' and it helps unify us all," Smith says.

 

Green Dot will be on the concourse next week handing out ice cream and giving students more information about the program.

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This story was a project I did for my Digital News Reporting class.