Turn to your right. Now turn to your left. One in three women are affected by relationship abuse in her lifetime.

Yeardley Love, a senior lacrosse player at the University of Virginia, was one of them. In 2010, Love was beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend weeks before her graduation. No one around her recognized the possible danger from her relationship. As a result, her parents began the One Love Foundation which strives to educate and end relationship violence.

The One Love Foundation visits high schools and colleges, as well as lacrosse programs around the nation to spread awareness, educate and provide the tools and resources to stop relationship violence and abuse.

Last Wednesday, juniors and seniors watched a video called “Escalation” that took students through an abusive relationship. Afterwards, students broke into advisories and answered questions regarding the video, discussing possible signs of violence as well as what students can do if she sees the signs.

Last year, the Class of 2016 watched the video for senior transition week, but this year, Form IV Dean and Upper School Health Teacher Rebecca Calhoun decided to bring them back earlier so that students can follow up on the information they have learned.

“People see different pieces, but nobody sees the whole thing,” Calhoun said. “I’m hearing more and more every year from students that are struggling with relationship issues and don’t know what to do.”

Thus, she decided to get the juniors involved in addition to the seniors. There were also One Love presentations for parents and faculty.

“I want parents to talk to their students and say, ‘hey, if you’re ever worried about your relationship, come talk to me. Let’s talk through it. It’s yours to decide, but I want you to know that I’m here,’” Calhoun said.

Aside from having conversations with parents, discussions among students are also important. In fact, each advisory had two discussion facilitators who led the discussions. These facilitators were trained by One Love Foundation members two weeks ago to hold conversations amongst their advisories.

The facilitators were trained by One Love Foundation member Zoe Skinner who is the Regional Coordinator for Dallas. “The conversation is best received when it is peer to peer facilitation,” Skinner said.

One of these facilitators was senior Emma Deshpande who is a member of the Lawson advisory. As facilitators, students learned to guide questions and conversations. “I think that what differs from a lot of other videos on this subject is [this] tells you the warning signs and tells you how to recognize them,” Deshpande said.

This is also the hope for Skinner. Not only does she want students to recognize the warning signs, she wants them to see that although they may be happening all the time, this does not mean that it’s an okay behavior.

“We see that unhealthy behaviors are proliferating in our society, and we don’t step in or don’t say anything because we are so used to it, or we hide behind excuses of ‘oh all couples have their problems’ or ‘oh that’s just a crazy girlfriend’ or ‘that’s just a guy that has anger issues,’” Skinner said.

Through these conversations, Skinner and Deshpande hope that students know how to react to abusive situations whether they may be in one or may be seeing one.

“I hope [students] get how to act as a friend to someone who they think might be in an abusive relationship, how to be as sensitive as possible and to learn the warning signs, so they never get themselves in a dangerous situation because I think that’s priority number one,” Deshpande said. “

For more information on the foundation as well as relationship violence, visit www.joinonelove.org.

Sonya Xu – News Editor –