Portland State’s Healthy You program will be sponsoring a women’s self defense seminar on Saturday, May 5, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event will take place at the Academic and Student Rec Center, room 430.
Portland State’s Healthy You program will be sponsoring a women’s self defense seminar on Saturday, May 5, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event will take place at the Academic and Student Rec Center, room 430.
According to campus rec Facility Coordinator Tyler Baker, PSU is offering to donate the Rec Center space for the event in recognition of the flurry of sexual assaults that occurred last December, as well as in observation of sexual assault awareness month.
“We just feel it’s a pretty important seminar to find space for in our facility, mainly due to some of the activity that’s been [occurring] on campus,” Baker said.
Peter Kramer, the martial arts instructor donating his time to lead the class, said that he will focus on teaching women simple instinctual principles that they can apply to a myriad of different situations.
“No one is going to grab you the way you think. Everything is different in real life, and in a stressful situation, people won’t remember how perform a technique,” Kramer said. “So, when I teach a self defense class, I’m more focused on teaching principles that people can actually apply in real situations.”
Kramer—who has been a martial arts instructor for more than 20 years—said that he does not normally teach self defense seminars but claimed that all self defense principles and techniques come from the martial arts. His motivation for instructing the seminar is twofold. One of Kramer’s martial arts students, also a student at PSU, told him about the several assaults that took place on campus last December.
“[I’ve heard] that there have been some troubling instances on campus recently,” Kramer said. “I think the high numbers of rape and sexual assaults are appalling, and if there’s anything that we can do to help alleviate that, that would be an amazing thing.”
Kramer also has a personal connection to this event. He has three daughters, one of whom is a senior in high school this year. He said that his own daughter’s safety, along with the safety of all young women on college campuses, was his motivation for donating his time to instruct this seminar.
“I want my daughter to be able to arm herself with something of value so that when she goes off to school and I can’t be there with her, she’ll have some tools that she can use,” Kramer said.
An additional benefit of attending the self defense seminar will be increased self-confidence, Kramer said. He added that women can feel safer and more empowered with the knowledge that they have skills waiting in their arsenal should they ever need to use them.
Child and Family Studies junior Erin Seitz said that it’s important for everyone to have some degree of self defense training. Seitz has previously taken self defense classes offered by the PSU physical education departmentand feels that the knowledge she gained has given her peace of mind and improved self-confidence.
“Even if you don’t remember specific strikes or techniques, self defense still gives you the power to do something to help yourself,” Seitz said. “Whether it’s just screaming and running or knowing how to attack someone, just having that belief that you can do something, and that other people have survived attacks, makes you more powerful.”
While the seminar is predominantly geared toward women, Kramer said that men can also attend if they wish. Prospective participants do not need to have any prior experience with self defense or martial arts to attend the seminar. In fact, Kramer said that a main purpose of the seminar is to encourage people with no experience to come to the event and learn some basic skills that can help them in the future.
Attendees are advised to wear loose-fitting, comfortable clothing, as the class will include a lot of physical movement.The seminar is sponsored by the Healthy You program. Healthy You is part of PSU’s Healthy Campus Initiative, a collaboration between several different PSU departments with the goal of creating a cleaner, safer and healthier campus for students.
