New iPhone app seeks to keep students safe, prevent sexual assault

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/new-iphone-app-seeks-to-keep-students-safe-prevent-sexual-assault-1.2838120 [1]

Preventing sexual violence could be just a text message away, thanks to a new free iPhone app targeted at college students that allows users to send pre-programmed messages when in a dangerous situation.

The app, called Circle of 6, was co-created by anti-violence advocate and filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman to help make it easier for college students in uncomfortable or dangerous situations to quickly get in contact with friends for help. Two weeks after its release, the app has been downloaded more than 15,000 times â€" and university officials said it could be a useful tool for both female and male students.

After users download the app, they choose six friends to make up their circle. The app has pre-programmed SMS messages like “Come and get me. I need help getting home safely,” “Call and pretend you need me. I need an interruption” and “I’m looking up information about healthy relationships and respect. Just letting you know.” Once users select an option, the message, along with the user’s GPS coordinates, is sent out to the six friends in their circle. The app also has a feature that links users to resources and allows them to program in a localhotline, Schwartzman said.

“The purpose of the app is to really prevent violence before it happens,” she said. “We wanted to really harness those relationships into ways to prevent situations that we know to happen.”

While many other apps and methods of violence prevention focus on “stranger danger,” Schwartzman said â€" such as how to avoid a stranger in an alley â€" Circle of six is more connected to college experiences, like meeting someone at a bar or sleeping on someone’s couch, that can lead to assault. She said the idea for the app came from talking to college students nationwide about sexual assault and violence, as well as the fact that the average teen sends 60 text messages a day, according to a research Pew Research Center poll.

“It’s been born talking to college students across the country, talking about what they need and what violence looks like across their lives,” Schwartzman said. “We thought, let’s keep it really, really simple.”

Circle of 6 won the White House “Apps Against Abuse Technology Challenge” and launched March 19, Schwartzman said; today is the app’s national “Download Day.” University Health Center Assistant Director of Health Promotions Hope McPhatter said the app is unlike anything else she has seen on the market, noting she thinks students should download it so that they have multiple options when they are in uncomfortable situations.

“The idea of it actually sounds pretty good,” McPhatter said. “I don’t see the harm in trying it out.”

However, McPhatter said sexual assault is still a topic that makes people uncomfortable, and the app would be best promoted as a resource that both men and women could use in tricky situations.

“I think there are a lot of situations where anyone would feel uncomfortable,” she said. “It really comes down to how they market it.”

Senior psychology major Becca Abram said although she always sticks with her friends when she is out, she is aware she could always get into a dangerous situation. She said the app would probably be most helpful for people who tend to go off with people they do not know.

“I don’t know if I’d personally download it and ask my friends to do it,” Abram said, adding that she would be more likely to download it if one of her friends wanted Abram to be in her “circle of six.”

“I think if I had it and discussed with my friends that it would never be a joke, it would be good,” she said.

Junior law enforcement major Bethany Petersen said she thinks the app could help students get a quicker reply from friends than an individual text message, and she wished she had had the app last week when she was hit on by a middle-aged man in Starbucks.

“I pretty much had to lie my butt off to get out of the situation,” she said.

Petersen said she would have liked to use the app so that one of her friends would immediately call her and she could pretend to be busy.

“It would have been a good out if they had responded,” Petersen said.

Takeaway: Students using this would be better off locked in a room. Come get me- WHERE?  Cell phones cannot acurately provide reliable accurate location information and bad guys usually don’t attack vitims on the phone. When they do the first thing they take or break is the phone. Come get me- Oh I forgot to text these people are shooting. Students and schools need to be informed .

 

Links

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source: www.rfvisibility.com