When NO is not enough

Sheniece+Smith%2C+senior+biochemistry+major%2C+gets+pratice+with+Ken+Kennedy%2C+chief+of+campus+police+at+RAD+class.

Xiaoyu Wu/The Chart

Sheniece Smith, senior biochemistry major, gets pratice with Ken Kennedy, chief of campus police at RAD class.

The Rape Aggression Defense, or RAD, class kicked off with record attendance on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2013.

The RAD class is designed for women only and teaches real-life self defense tactics. The class is a total of twelve hours broken down into three hour blocks and is free to students.

RAD courses are currently held Thursday nights in the Mills Anderson Criminal Justice building.  

The program itself was founded in 1989 by a former campus police officer. The class is now being taught at hundreds of colleges and universities across America.

“A university police officer saw the need for the program because of the number of sexual assaults on campuses and started it. That’s the same reason I got involved in 2005,” said Ken Kennedy, chief of police at Missouri Southern.

“It’s a way to become proactive about what I consider one of the biggest problems on campuses today, which is that of sexual assault,” said Kennedy.

Kennedy also went on to say that “it is estimated that one in four females are sexually assaulted by the time they graduate from college. With those kinds of victimization rates you just can’t sit idly by and not do anything about it.”

Usually the class is taught once during the fall and once during the spring semesters. If the situation should occur that there is an overflow of female attendance, arrangements will be made to have a summer class.

The class information is posted on the Missouri Southern website and RAD awareness emails are sent out to all students at the beginning of each semester. The class is not for any college credit but the idea is being tossed around by Missouri Southern faculty based on student responses.

The addition of four college credit hours could come as soon as spring semester of 2014.