Founder of National Ophelia Project to speak tonight on relational aggression

Susan Wellman, founder and president of the national branch of The Ophelia Project, will be speaking Friday and Saturday all day at a workshop the Monroe County Community sister branch of the organization is holding at the First United Methodist Church, 219 E. Fourth St. \nThe workshop is designed to help train community members in recognizing and combating relational aggression, the passive-aggressive way in which girls pick on each other in order to gain social power and respect from their peers.\n"We are going to put together a community action plan so that everyone works together to create a normative change and a safe culture for girls," said Michelle Martin-Colman, co-director of the Bloomington Ophelia Project.\nThe group's goal is to help girls learn how to treat each other civilly. Oftentimes, when girls are angry or seeking attention or popularity, they pick on other girls to make themselves look and feel better. The Ophelia Project teaches girls how to deal with their anger in ways less harmful to others, according to the group's Web site, www.opheliaproject.org. \nErika Dauber, communications director of the national branch, said Friday's activities are designed to get the community motivated in joining volunteer groups to help educate people about relational aggression and create support structures to help girls who are experiencing it. \nThe Ophelia Project is looking for college students to become mentors to middle school-aged children and volunteer in its programs.\n"College mentors have a huge impact on youth because college students are still young enough to seem cool, and kids look up to them," Dauber said. "The resources of being in a University town like Bloomington are endless. I would encourage college students to go to the conference to raise awareness on campus and help out the community."\nDauber said Wellman's keynote address generally inspires audiences. \n"Hopefully after they hear her speak they will want to come back the next day to get involved," she said.\nMany other members of the national Ophelia Project will be speaking Friday and helping the Monroe County branch to organize its goals and plan for the future. Other workshop presenters include Ophelia Project CEO Mary Baird, "Girl Wars" author Charisse Nixon, Ophelia Project Assistant Director Katie Allison and Jane Kirschner, who is the national director for the Creating a Safer School program.\nCASS is a nationwide movement to set up support systems in schools for children who feel threatened by their peers. A successful CASS program has already been set up in Valparaiso and played a large part Martin-Colman's motivation to start Monroe County's sister project.\n"This conference is our first training session from national," Martin-Colman said. "From this we will establish a core that will initiate more programming throughout the community."\nThe Monroe County Community Ophelia Project has already been educating students, parents and teachers about relational aggression. Last month, Monroe County Ophelia Project Curriculum Coordinator Lucy Papier gave presentations to Batchelor Middle School gym classes to stimulate conversation between the girls about how they treat each other. Some of the classes got really animated when exposed to ideas about how cruelty can be used to obtain popularity. The gym teacher continued discussions with the classes in the days following Papier's presentation and has since made efforts to stop relational aggression among her students whenever she notices it. \n"She's really managed to pinpoint the relationally-aggressive girls and done her own intervention," Papier said. "The faculty is trying to do what it can to help these girls."\nThroughout February, the Monroe County Committee Ophelia Project held parent discussion groups about relational aggression Thursday nights at Batchelor Middle School. The group is planning to have similar discussion panels at the other middle schools in the near future.\nAdmission to the workshop this weekend is $35. To pre-register for the workshop, contact Martin-Colman at 323-1807 or opheliam@sbcglobal.net. \n-- Contact staff writer Jenica Schultz at jwschult@indiana.edu.