Dave Portnoy will be at the College tonight to avenge a violent attack on his sister on a college campus is 1996 by teaching other college-aged women how to protect themselves against violence.
Portnoy, a self-defense instructor from St. Louis trained in a school accredited by action-movie star Steven Segal, said his sister was "forcibly attacked and raped from behind in a parking lot."
Since the attack in 1996, the two have been committed to teaching 5000 women self defense before the attacker is released from prison in 2002.
Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority is sponsoring the 45-minute free self-defense workshop tonight at 8:30 p.m. in Collis Common Ground, and the event is open to both men and women, although it is geared towards women.
Portnoy will cite rape and crime statistics on college campuses nationwide, demonstrate a few defense methods and discuss weapons in his program.
KDE Programming Co-Chair Erica Wygonik '99 said Portnoy will also stay after the program to help people who want to practice the defense techniques.
Audience members will receive written and pictorial explanations of the self-defense techniques so they can practice at home, Portnoy said.
Four St. Louis-based private companies sponsor Portnoy, enabling him to give the workshops free of charge as long as 100 or more people attend, Portnoy said.
If 100 or more people do not attend the event tonight, KDE will have to pay for Portnoy's travel expenses, Wygonik said.
But most of the sororities have committed to attending the event, KDE Programming Co-Chair Posy Evans '99 said.
Portnoy and his sister formed the Women's Rights Group in 1996, which teaches self-defense seminars on a voluntary basis to women's groups and college students.
The Women's Rights Group has access to a poll of 950 rapists. Portnoy uses the information from the poll to warn women in his workshops about techniques rapists might use.
"All of them said that when attacking a woman, they grab her or try and take her away with some type of hold or grab," he said. "I teach the women how to escape any type of hold or grab that a person could place on them."
Portnoy said his techniques are so simple, his 10-year-old daughter has taught the program to sorority women in the Midwest.
He has taught his program to about 3,800 people on over 100 college campuses. His visit to Dartmouth is his first to New England.
Out of the 3,800 people, 16 women have called Portnoy and told him they were attacked, but because of what they learned in his session, they were able to escape.
Although Wygonik said she does not believe rape is a "huge problem" at the College, "women feel safer when they have a defense mechanism" and attending the workshop may encourage people to participate in the Rape Aggression Defense program.
Evans agreed the College campus is fairly safe but said the skills students will gain from the seminar could help them in the "real world."
