Sponsored by the JEDI Committee at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography
Date: January 18, 2022
Time: 1:30-3:00 p.m.
Location: Coastal Institute Hazard Room
Speaker: Keith Labelle, Assistant Director of Community, Equity & Diversity for Bystander Intervention Training, University of Rhode Island
Learning Objectives: Participants will be engaged in an interactive program to learn about the dangers of sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, and date rape drugs. Audience members will be engaged in order to solicit a bystander approach to preventing these crimes.
Purpose of Training: The i-STAND Program has had unprecedented success working with first-year college students, athletic teams and coaches, fraternity members and area police, all groups that have traditionally, or perhaps stereotypically, been resistant to utilizing Bystander Intervention Theory to prevent domestic violence and sexual assault from ever taking place. Using an interactive, non-antagonistic, and humorous approach we will demonstrate and discuss how community members can evoke positive responses and solicit bystander involvement from members of your community. We will educate students what to look for, how to safely intervene and how to utilize Title IX policies to ensure a prompt response to ALL forms of sexual violence in order to prevent its recurrence and remedy its effect.
Speaker Bio: Keith Labelle, Assistant Director of Community, Equity & Diversity for Bystander Intervention Training at the University of Rhode Island created the nationally recognized iSTAND Program and conducts thousands of trainings nationally on sexual assault, domestic violence, and substance abuse prevention every year. Keith received his Master’s Degree in Communications from URI and was an Honor Roll graduate of the University while he was a 4-year starter on the varsity baseball team, serving as team captain his senior year. Keith has been a member of the NCAA Speaker’s Bureau and served as a consultant for the National Football League on Domestic Violence for eight years. He has presented at national conferences, colleges, high schools, and for various agencies all over the country on Bystander Intervention, including for student-athletes at colleges in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten (Big 10), Ivy League (Ivy), Pacific 12 (PAC-12) and Mountain West (MW) Conferences. Keith has presented internationally at the International Feminist Activism on Campus Conference at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England. The University of Rhode Island Bystander Intervention Program, iSTAND, was named winner of the 2019 Its On Us Pledge Drive Competition in April, 2019 and was featured in Forbes Magazine.