Bjorn Bartlett, Kathryn Murphy and Heidi Dockery working the Criminal Justice Club Table at lunch on University Day, hoping for college students to come and take their survey
The CRJ/SOC 358: Domestic Violence class put on an educational presentation on the Hope and Justice Project and their work for the organization. Instructor Lisa Leduc started off the presentation by informing the audience on what service learning is, a requirement for the criminal justice program.
“Service learning is designed to promote the goals of the course through application of the classroom in service settings,” Leduc explained. The class pairs with a community partner relevant to what they are learning in the class, “When service learning really works, it serves as another application of the textbook.”
The first topic the students touched on was domestic violence. The first step is identification of violence. Student Jacob Worthley discussed the difficulty of recognizing the forms of abuse due to lack of identification and discussed forms of abuse such as physical, emotional and sexual. Heidi Dockery discussed issues that come from living in a rural area: lack of resources and everyone knowing everyone.
“Rural areas are geographically isolated communities and don’t have as much exposure to resources or diversity that metro areas have,” Dockery said, ““Everyone knows everyone else. So when it comes to reporting, it makes it harder for the victim because that stigma tends to stick a little bit more in smaller communities.”
Joy Gibson continued that theme by discussing patriarchy and religion in rural areas. “Men hold the higher roles. They are the breadwinners of the family, and the women are usually the homemakers, especially in these rural areas,” Gibson said.
Doran LaBree and Hannah Brewer then discussed what the Hope and Justice Project is, some features it has on its website and services that it offers, such as a 24/7 hotline. “One thing we have been wanting people to know is that they don’t just help women, they help men too…. The main goal is to help people, make them feel good about themselves and to make people happy,” LaBree said.
Next, Kathryn Murphy discussed what the Hope and Justice Project wanted the class to do. Hope and Justice wanted to know why college-aged students don’t go to them or consider them an option or resource. Hailey Nadeau discussed some misconceptions people may have about Hope and Justice.
“If you were to go to your professor, advisor or coach on campus with any complaints of abuse, they would have to legally go to the authorities with it,” Nadeau said, “But with Hope and Justice, it’s different where they are there for information, advice and options.
Caleb Thompson talked about how the class eventually decided to do an anonymous survey. Alyssa Finlay and Bjorn Bartlett talked about how it went. Finlay talked about what they want the survey to give students and how they have been getting the survey out to students by working tables at events on campus.
“We want to educate students on this campus that Hope and Justice is there for you if you’re going through any type of domestic violence situation,” Finlay said.
Bartlett discussed successes and challenges of the survey. Successes included the incentive the group used: full-sized candy bars. Another success is that about 60 people (as of April 10, 2019) had taken the survey. Some challenges included people walking by the table, thinking the group was trying to sell them something, snow days interfering with events and events not being popular.
If you are in a relationship or situation where you feel unsafe, please call the authorities or reach out to the Hope and Justice Project at www.hopeandjusticeproject.org or call its 24-hour hotline at 1-800-439-2323.
