By. Milan Ramson

Penn State Altoona students were informed about Safe At State on Sept. 5, 2018 from 6:00 p.m until 8:00 p.m. The presentation was held in the Slep Student Center. Safe At State is a term that is used throughout all the campuses the university offers. The term can be verbalized and can also be put into a presentation format. The objective of the gathering is to prep the whole student body on unlawful activities that happens on and off campus.The Health and Wellness center put together a sequence of  presentations for all the student’s misconducts from prior years. After the students were exposed to the statistics. They used their knowledge to conduct a small seminar on how to prevent misconduct from happening in the future. Along with the presentation, Penn State Altoona also had special guest host the second half of the presentation George Kattouff. Kattouf is Altoona’s Martial Arts instructor. Kattouff not only enlighten the students on the ways self defense can be used when a student is being attacked but also lead a small self defense course shortly after the presentation was over.  

 

Here are the statistics that The Health And Awareness Center presented to the students in Altoona.

• Dating and domestic violence is likely in every 1 out of 3 people.
• Sexual Harassment  happens to 1 out of 5 women and 1 in every 16 of men.
• Stalking occurs 1 in every 6th women and 1 and every 13 of men.

Because these stats are provided by the students at Penn State authorities and Township Police these offenses are extremely serious. Not everyone reports acts of misconduct making it difficult to get the best range of numbers for the whole student body. So please, “If You See something Say Something.”

 

After the stats were out and the students engaged in a small conversation about a short film that was revealed. Martial Arts Instructor George Kattouf and trainee Erin Merys gave all of the students who were in this presentation hands on combat to, “Only help protect themselves when ever put into harm’s ways.”

 

  Kattouf said what made him a Martial Arts instructor was that he “had always admired people who were strong. I was a  pretty nice youngster and did not want to be taking advantage off by people who were a lot more aggressive than I was.”

After studying martial arts for over forty years Kattouf  doesn’t refer to himself as an “expert”. His initial goal was to learn self defense in order to protect  himself growing up and to use his character traits to impact others who are not able to defend themselves.

Shortly, he looks at Myers and expresses that, he doesn’t “promote” his class to students and later states,” I usually discourage people to take the class.” He feels that some people take the class for the wrong reasons, so he looks for individuals like Myer, who has great characteristics “peaceful, kind, and good nature”.

Myers continued with the conversation and stated, “He  models the behaviors, all the students do. You model the behavior you’re trying to get  and if other people are attracted to that they join. Then you know those are people like you.”

Both George and Myers know that not all students or young adults have the discipline to be apart of such a structured group.

They state, “ we do not  discriminate on who can join the class because we work with people with all types of different needs.”

For example, Katouff works with kids who has autism and other disorders, but he doesn’t eliminate them because of such disabilities but more so help them reach the goals of the basics. His biggest request to all of his listeners and students is to “ Never put yourself in an uncomfortable situation”.