so previous traumatic incidences create a different level of vulner- ability. When we look at our student population, we don’t neces- sarily know people’s life stories. We don’t know where they came from.


We don’t know if they have built resilience and increased insight through the things that they’ve experienced, or if these incidenc- es are creating more vulnerability. What we have to understand as a community is that everyone’s perception is their own, it’s true, and we have to honor it.


Eastern: As a campus community, how do we help our students work through trauma?


Tere’s danger in all of these responses. We don’t want people to isolate themselves because their world feels unsafe and unpre- dictable to them. We also don’t want people to lash out in anger or frustration. Further, we don’t want people to blame themselves or blame victims and say, “Te problem is yours and therefore it’s not going to happen to me.”


Eastern: What affects how an individual might respond to trauma?


Bridge: How someone experiences a violent or a traumatic incident, whether it happens directly to them or indirectly, is very much the result of experiences that they’ve had in their past, and their perceptions.


Bridge: One of the best ways to help people work through vio- lence and traumatic events is through conversation, to assure students that their experiences and responses are normal, that what they’re experiencing is probably prety common, and that they should give themselves permission to have the anxieties, fears, or whatever it is that they are feeling.


“When a group finally says, ‘I’ve had


it,’ they take back their community.” —Tana Bridge


Any two people exposed to the exact same incident can have very different responses to it. Unlike many other experiences that people have, if you’ve been exposed to multiple traumatic events, they don’t necessarily prepare you for the next one. If anything, multiple incidences reinforce the feeling that the world is unsafe, it is unpredictable, and you are vulnerable. Experience doesn’t necessarily teach you that you’re strong and you’re capable. It may actually break the core of who people are,


Equally important, we need to build a community response. When a group finally says, “I’ve had it,” they take back their com- munity. I think Detroit and Angel Night is a perfect example. We’ve seen that happen really not only in Detroit, but throughout the United States, where when the community says, “Nope, it’s not going to happen,” they’re able to address violence and the underlying causes. We need to find the underlying causes of violence, then rally around a solution.


Obviously, if we knew the ex- act solution, it would be fixed, but we really need to think


about the many causes of violence in the community beyond the perpetrator. We need to get all the players involved: our commu- nity, our University stakeholders, and our students who are most greatly impacted. Students truly need to have a voice, both to make sense out of stuff that doesn’t make sense and also be able to feel like they’re a part of a solution.


Te more we can take that multi-pronged approach, the more success we’ll have.3


Eastern | SPRING 2014 15


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