MORRIS COUNTY — As domestic violence incidents continue to pervade the world of professional sports, the Jersey Battered Women’s Service (JBWS) is excited to announce the launch of the Yellow Card Campaign, a program that will reach out to young athletes with a proactive message to encourage them to become leaders in preventing dating violence.
Basketball players from Morris Knolls High School’s boy’s and girl’s teams helped shape the Yellow Card campaign that JBWS will now take to colleges, schools and independent sports programs throughout the area. On Wednesday, May 27, the teams will come together at the school to celebrate the launch of the program that they helped shape. Athletes will receive Yellow Card t-shirts, sign a large pledge poster for display at their school, and hear program endorsements from their coach and teammate. The event will take place at 2:00 p.m. inside the Morris Knoll’s gymnasium.
“Morris Knolls basketball helped us determine how we would move forward with this important new program that we believe can be a model for high school and college teams everywhere,” said Patricia Sly, executive director of JBWS. “Now, we’re excited to come back and officially launch the program with them.”
Though estimates of dating violence vary, one study funded by the National Institute of Justice found the following results from a sample of middle and high schools in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania:
- 33% of students responding reported experiencing psychological dating abuse
- 18% reported experiencing cyber dating abuse
- 21% reported experiencing physical dating violence
- 9% reported experiencing sexual coercion
These numbers are unacceptable.
Through Yellow Card, JBWS will leverage our expertise to communicate a basic but crucial message to college and high school athletes: you can help prevent dating violence. By tapping into the natural leadership role that athletes often enjoy, the program is designed to inspire athletes to set the tone in the locker room and the classroom that abuse in relationships is unacceptable.
“Yellow Card reaches these athletes at an important and vulnerable time in their lives and teaches them not just how to make the right choices in their own relationships, but how to promote healthy behavior in their peers,” Sly said.
Yellow Card will educate athletes on the warning signs of dating abuse so that they can first learn to model healthy behavior in their own relationships, then to encourage it in others. Dating abuse is cultural problem and Yellow Card will enlist athletes, a crucial component of the high school culture, to stop it.
The program involves direct training sessions with teams and groups of athletes as well as a wealth of supporting activities and materials including game-day awareness events, a broad media campaign and No2DatingAbuse.org, our resource-laden website. Every athlete involved is asked to sign a three-part pledge that addresses the tenets of the program. This pledge is available for anyone who wants to read and sign it on our website as well.
This campaign has been made possible thanks to the support of the Community Foundation of New Jersey, Morristown Medical Center-Community Health, Becton Dickinson, Verizon, F.M. Kirby Foundation, Inc., Laurie Peter and Betsy Bernard, Brushfire Inc.’s professional marketing services, and several key individual donors.
