A week-long campaign by Arkansas Tech University students and faculty to raise awareness of dating violence will come to an end on Thursday, April 7, with the showing of a documentary film and a panel discussion on the topic.
“Tough Guise” will show at 6 p.m. in John E. Tucker Coliseum. The Jackson Katz film explores the role that violence in the media plays in developing ideas about masculinity.
Following the film, there will be a panel discussion featuring Keri A. Potts (photographed), associate director of communications for ESPN and founder of a blog (http://www.afightbackwoman.com/) that is designed to empower women who have been victims of sexual assault.
Other members of the panel discussion will include David Gibbons, prosecuting attorney for the 5th Judicial District; Marc Peters, a student in the Clinton School of Public Service and co-founder of “Masculinity U,” a program that seeks to engage young men in taking an equal role in ending gender violence; Dorinda Edmisten, executive director of the Ozark Rape Crisis Center; Cara Brewton, coordinator for the Crisis Intervention Center in Fort Smith; and Dr. Jesse Weiss, professor of sociology and environmental study at the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville.
The documentary film showing and panel discussion are the final events of Red Flag Campaign week. The national campaign was started by the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance in 2005 and has since spread to more than 100 campuses in 27 states.
Other Red Flag Campaign events at Arkansas Tech have included the distribution of posters, buttons and T-shirts on campus, a display of red flags outside the Doc Bryan Student Services Building and the collection of items for the River Valley Shelter for Battered Women and Children.
The events at Tucker Coliseum on Thursday are free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Dr. Julie Mikles-Schluterman, assistant professor of sociology at Arkansas Tech, at (479) 498-6050 or jmiklesschluterman@atu.edu.
Click here to learn more about the national Red Flag Campaign.
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