Elemental Sessions:
Aug. 16, Aug. 18, Aug. 23 and Aug. 25.
$20 each - Register at www.elementalprotection.org/courses
Shouts of “Get away from me!” and “Stop!” filled the air of the Park Hall multipurpose room as eight girls, two “creepers” and two instructors practiced defense mechanisms against sexual assault during Elemental.
Elemental is a sexual assault protection program designed to help students train to protect themselves and get out of potentially dangerous or harmful situations.
Elemental started in 2011 when it was developed by Mellisa Holtzman, Chad Menning and a team of 15 students as a Ball State immersive learning project. Since then, the program has grown and received national attention.
In April, Holtzman was invited to the White House to attend a briefing on the first 90-day report for Obama’s sexual assault task force.
“I had been in contact with the White House about Elemental, and they invited a select number of program representatives to come to the White House for that task force’s unveiling of their first report,” Holtzman said.
The name comes from the techniques taught to the students to defend themselves based on the four elements: earth, water, fire and wind. Each element has a different response to a given situation.
The “fire” approach to being cornered in a parking garage, for example, would be to catch the aggressor as they block the door and elbow repeatedly into their exposed ribs, while the “water” approach is to use the attacker’s own momentum to spin them around and force them down.
Menning said Elemental is tailored mainly to assaults where the victim knows the attacker.
“We talk about how to keep someone from kissing you when you don’t want them to, how to keep someone from taking your shirt off, how to get someone off of you when you’re on a bed,” Menning said.
He said while assaults by strangers tend to be what students fear most, assaults by people the victim knows are actually much more common. Two third of assaults are committed by someone known to the victim and 38 percent of rapists are a friend or acquaintance of the victim, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.
Menning said they cover what to do in scenarios between strangers, two friends, two people who just met at a party, long-term dating partners and hook-up situations.
But Holtzman said the way Elemental teaches students to deal with those scenarios is unlike many other sexual assault programs.
“Most sexual assault programs are either self-defense based or they’re educational programs,” Holtzman said. “But Elemental marries those two approaches. It’s an educational classroom experience coupled with a self-defense experience.”
She said the self-defense part of the program is unconventional because it doesn’t focus exclusively on violent responses.
“That’s in part because we know we’re dealing with acquaintances, and individuals aren’t willing to break their boyfriend’s nose even if he deserves it,” Holtzman said. “So they need to have other options available to them.”
Freshman business management major Larissa McFarland said since it was her first time away from home, she took the class to make sure she felt safe.
“I want to know that if something were to happen, I could defend myself properly,” she said.
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