Experts will come together at MTSU from 11:00 this coming Thursday (3/22/2018) morning until 3:00 that afternoon to pool knowledge with a Campus Safety Summit. The goal is to ensure safety on and around university campuses. The forum will take place in the Parliamentary Room of the Student Union.

Discussion topics include stalking, sexual assault, sexual harassment, dating violence, domestic violence, intimate partner violence and rape.

MTSU's Sexual Assault Intervention Liaison Amy Dean, said the summit "is an opportunity to bring area universities together ... and come up with a best practice model for implementing the education and techniques from the Safe Bar Initiative in Washington, D.C., to make our area bars and restaurants safer for our students and community."

Two Washington-based nonprofit organizations, Collective Action for Safe Spaces and Defend Yourself, introduced the Safe Bar Initiative in 2016. Its purpose is to train bar and restaurant staff "to recognize and respond to sexual harassment among staff and patrons," according to www.collectiveactiondc.org.

Scheduled summit participants include Murfreesboro Police Chief Michael Bowen, MTSU Police Chief Buddy Peaster, MTSU Health Education Programs Director Lisa Schrader, Sharon Travis of the Nashville Sexual Assault Center and Barbara Scales, director of the June Anderson Center for Women and Nontraditional Students.

This National Women's History Month event is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the Sexual Assault Center of Nashville, the Tennessee Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence and the MTSU STOP Grant, which is the stipend that funds Dean's position.