Teri Deardorff, a junior, often walks alone to the USF St. Petersburg parking garage from her job at the Fitness Center after 11 p.m. Walking through campus late at night makes Deardorff and at least 10 other women at USF St. Petersburg feel unsafe.
Equipping them with a solution and the skills to defend themselves, is a semester-long self-defense course called RAD, which stands for Rape Aggression Defense.
“It’s very empowering,” Deardorff said. The program makes her feel like a “deadly weapon” and confident to defend herself. “It makes me feel not afraid to walk around and it lets me know I have resources here [at] the university.”
Meghan Ward, graduate assistant with Campus Recreation, partnered with USFSP police and P.E.E.R.S. to bring the RAD back to campus. The program was previously discontinued due to lack of interest.
“We want to make sure individuals on campus feel safe and if they need to defend themselves, are knowledgeable,” Ward said.
The six-week course meets once a week for two hours. Officers certified with the RAD. program rotate instruction over the 12 hours to offer various techniques on defending against and disarming aggressors.
“A lot of times, students don’t want to take a whole weekend for a course, so we figured [we’d] have it late at night and make it really easy for the individuals interested to take part in the class,” Ward said.
RAD is a national nonprofit program with more than 11,000 instructors. It has instructed 900,000 women since 1989 in colleges, classrooms and law enforcement programs. Instruction is also available to children and men.
“I think if we can drum up support and the interest to those different programs offered by RAD taught on campus, that would be awesome and I think that would empower a lot of students,” Deardorff said.
The mats in the Studio 1 Aerobics Room at the Fitness Center were the best option for falling exercises in the self defense course, according to Sgt. Walter Ewing, of University Police Services. Demonstrations of defense mechanisms come first, and then the women try for themselves.
“RAD can show a woman how to defend against someone bigger, stronger,” Ewing said. “It gives women an alternative to submitting or running. It gives them another option.”
Ewing, who teaches defensive tactics, encouraged more officers to become RAD instructors after the program was first brought to campus in 2009.
“A lot of people don’t have prior fighting experience,” Ewing said. “RAD will give students techniques that they probably never thought of, things that they can do in a bad situation.”
Admission to the program is closed for now, but if enough interest in garnered, courses will be offered again in the spring. Sign-up is done through the Fitness Center.
