Strategy: Interrupt the behavior
Purpose/goal:
Protect someone from being hurt or offended and someone else from giving offense
or harm.
Make it clear that such behavior is not acceptable in this community.
Tips:
Intervention may be direct and obvious, such as stating directly
to the offending person that the behavior is unacceptable, or may be
via subterfuge, such as interrupting an argument to ask for directions.
Examples:
- Situation #2
A fellow
graduate student receives a public dressing down by a professor in a
lab meeting.
Response: Remove the student from the situation by inventing
a very important phone call for the student.
Response: Deflect attention
to yourself but “accidentally” dropping
your bookbag and all its contents, or a vase of flowers, or anything
that will take a few minutes to clean up.
- Situation #3
In
a small to medium-sized class you see another student repeatedly surfing
the net on a laptop. It’s distracting. The instructor has not
said anything.
Response: Whisper to the student that you are bothered
by the bright images on the screen and ask him/her to shut it down.
- Situation #5
One
person in your office/lab group frequently makes critical or even mean
remarks about others behind their backs.
Response: Interrupt and say, “I’m
sorry to interrupt, but I want to stop you before you say something
you will regret.”
- Situation #6
You
see a student who appears so drunk he or she can barely walk stumbling
towards a car parked nearby, keys in hand.
Response: Accost the student,
take the keys from his/her hand, and then say something about this
not being a good time to drive and getting the keys back from the Campus
Police the next day. Then drop the keys off at the Campus Police station.
Response: Accost the student, take the keys from
his/her hand, and then offer to call the student a taxi. When the student
gets in the taxi, return the keys.
Strategy List | Situation
List |
