Walk a mile in her shoes

Recently I walked through campus and was met by an army of women, a few men at their head, all wearing high heels and waving signs that said things like, “just say no to rape.” The practice as I understand it was to enlist as many men as possible to “walk a mile in her shoes” aka walk a mile in high heels. The purpose as I understand it of this yearly event is to help men gain empathy for women raise awareness concerning rape, and raise funds for an antirape organization. I think this is a noble and noteworthy cause, and I wish them the best of success in their efforts to reduce rape occurrences. I wonder though if there is not a better method to go about their goal.

I would propose that there are many things that this group (I estimate them to be about 80 strong) could do to reduce rape occurrence, and I venture to say that most of them would be more effective than walking a mile in high heels while waving signs. I have applied the principals of design thinking to this situation as best I could, and have come up with the following hypothetical situation.

An annual event held in the tsc or on the quad. Hire a few martial arts instructors to teach 20 minute rape defense classes. You would need several levels of classes so someone can come back 5 times in the course of the day. Food needs to be provided on site to help attract people, and I suggest handing it out to anyone who is willing to go through the rape defense class. Offer it to men if they will come and act as practice dummy’s, and women if they will go through the class. I think the food would be I big motivator for participation, I think the learning will be much more effective in deterring or stopping rape than will the memory of seeing 80 people walking a mile in high heels, and I think it will be a lot more fun for guys to participate in. In the way of cost I think getting instructors to donate their time would not be too hard, I personally know 3 police officers who would be happy to donate a day for that purpose. As for cost of food, I would hope that a donation could be made somewhere by someone. Maybe a local pizza place would like to sponsor the event for advertising.

Those are my thoughts, such as they are. I would like to know what yall think about them.

Bryan Scoresby