Gaucho Green Dot is a campus initiative focused on preventing sexual assault, relationship violence, and stalking by mobilizing proactive and active bystanders. Green Dot is a nationwide initiative that has been adopted by campuses across the country and utilizes research-informed and evidence-based approaches to ending violence by training students on how to effectively intervene as a bystander. The Green Dot Strategy is an innovative approach to violence prevention. Green Dot harnesses the power of individual choices to shift social norms, resulting in broad-based culture change. Green Dot is based on a wealth of interdisciplinary research including social change theory, diffusion of innovation, communication, marketing, bystander intervention, and perpetration patterns. (Cited from Alteristic.org, creators of the Green Dot Strategy)
Bystander intervention education and training relies on the premise that if everyone does their small part and commits to individual responsibility, the combined effect is a safe campus culture that is intolerant of violence.
What is a Green Dot?
A Green Dot is any choice, behavior, or action that promotes safety for everyone and communicates intolerance for interpersonal violence on and off campus. A Green Dot is ANYTHING you can do to make our community safer. Here you will be introduced to red dots and green dots and what they may look like on our campus or in our community.
Types of Green Dots
Green dots are divided into two categories: reactive and proactive. Reactive green dots are things people can do to intervene in a red dot situation. Proactive green dots are things people can do to prevent interpersonal violence from happening. Here you will learn more about the reactive and proactive green dots, the 3 D's of bystander intervention, and how you can become an active bystander on campus and in your community.
Schedule a Presentation
The Gaucho Green Dot Bystander Intervention workshop is a 3-4 hour interactive training session* that will teach you how to recognize situations of abuse or violence. This training will address what stops us from helping and provide tools to overcome these barriers in a variety of scenarios. The main goal of this training is to equip you will the skills and tools you will need to intervene as an active bystander in situation of harm and violence.
*During remote instruction, this training is offered virtually via Zoom and will be 1-2 hours
Green Dot Committee
The Green Dot team at UCSB is comprised of a diverse group of professional staff members from across the Division of Student Affairs and beyond. We currently have several departments represented on our Green Dot team, including: Associated Students; Campus Advocacy, Resources & Education (CARE); Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS); Educational Opportunity Program (EOP); Graduate Division, Housing; Letters and Science; Recreation Center; Office of Student Life; Transfer Student Center; Undocumented Student Services.
One of the core tenets of our Green Dot strategy is to have staff representation from all areas of student life across campus to foster the message that interpersonal violence prevention is critical to all of us and that we all have a role to play in preventing violence.