A University of Texas Rio Grande Valley project aimed at creating a safer campus has been given a national recognition from the National Behavioral Intervention Team Association’s Best Practices/Institutional Impact Award. The association, which has more than 2,800 active members, gave the award to The UTRGV Superhero Project, an active bystander program designed to encourage students to look out for one another. “We try to educate students on how to intervene in problematic situations,” said Ceilhy Garcia, a Superhero Project peer leader and UTRGV biomedical science major from McAllen. Those situations can include preventing sexual assault, addressing someone smoking on the tobacco-free campuses, discouraging plagiarism, and helping someone recover from a bad breakup. “We teach our students that they can intervene, like go up to a certain person and say things directly,” Garcia said. “But if they don't have the confidence to do those things, they can report it to the resources that we’re providing them.” It is usually best to not ignore “little hints” pointing to a problem situation, she said, “because all those little hints might be them trying to call for help.”
