By Emily Blackner
Elm Staff Writer
Public Safety is offering a Rape Aggression Defense program for Washington College women.
Sergeant Nancy Kutz from Anne Arundel Community College is one of the instructors of the course, which costs $10 to take. There are two sessions per day on April 2, 3, 9, and 10, which are held in the Lifetime Fitness Center. “The purpose of the RAD class is to bring awareness to women about personal safety,” Kutz said. “We talk about risk awareness, prevention, recognition, and avoidance.”
The RAD Systems program is a national one based in IL. Currently, there are 800 instructors in the United States and some in Europe as well, according to Kutz.
“One good thing about RAD is that everyone’s a family. If you have a question you can send an email and get bombarded with answers. If you need an aggressor, someone will always volunteer.”
Aggressors are needed for the second part of the program, which provides instruction in self-defense techniques.
“The problem is that in attacks against women are abductive in nature,” Kutz said. “The assailant wants to control them and take them somewhere else. That means that, for this course, we want to teach about defending yourself against such an attack.”
Erick Mitchell, another instructor and a Public Safety officer from the community college, added, “We present options and tools to use. It’s also important to teach the women to have a plan for these situations, and to have the right mindset in addition to the physical moves.”
Sophomore Nicole Musho is one of the young women who signed up for the RAD class.
“I thought it would be a very useful class and I had always wanted to know self-defense,” she explained. “Through the class, I learned that extremely simple self defense moves can get you out of almost any dire situation.”
The comprehensive approach that RAD uses is especially important for women. “A lot of the time, women have never hit anyone or anything,” Kutz said. “Each person has their own mechanism for dealing with a situation, which is called Fight or Flight Syndrome. We are trying to create the mindset where each person can tap into what she has inside her but doesn’t know that she has.”
RAD has been extremely successful in the past. “This isn’t hard to learn,” said Kutz. Mitchell added, “I haven’t seen anyone not be able to get it.”
Musho certainly agrees with that assessment. “I loved doing the class and it was extremely helpful,” she said. “The instructors were very nice and charismatic and really helped me understand the material. I can honestly say that I learned skills that will help aid me for the rest of my life.”
In addition to empowering students, this session of RAD courses includes two of WC’s own Public Safety officers who will then take an instructor course and be able to teach students themselves.
“I would definitely recommend this class to other women,” Musho said.
April 8, 2011
Volume LXXXI Issue 21