News Coverage

If you are sending a child off to college, you no doubt are filling his or her head with lots of good advice. I know my parents did.
The precollege tip that I remember most clearly (and the one that may have been the most valuable), however, came from my brother:
"Never drink the punch at parties.''
This really stuck with me. Partly because I had never before known him to counsel against anything involving a party.
But mostly because he was already in college and...

A Vanderbilt University student will soon be honored with the so-called Nobel Prize for child advocates after creating self-defense videos that help women fight back and live life on their own terms.
Dallas Jessup, 20, began her mission to empower women when she was just a high school freshman and saw a frightening video of a Florida girl.
"A man came up and said something to her, and she went away willingly. And four days later, they found her body. And I watched that going, 'that...

When you think of customizable apps for the college crowd, the first thing that comes to mind is rarely public safety.
But that’s exactly the goal of Ping4 this fall. Using innovative technologies such as geo-fencing — which allows users to target a specific area — Ping4 enables students to notify others of a dangerous situation. If you witness a mugging, for example, Ping4 lets you tell all other users who are within the area. You can provide details on what you...

Dallas Jessup came home from high school one day and watched the surveillance footage of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia's abduction -- never suspecting the short video would change the course of her life.
In the footage, Carlie is approached by a man as she walks home from a friend's house.
"She went away with him willingly," Jessup said. "And they found her body four days later."
Watching the video ignited a passion in Jessup, then 14 years old. She's 20 now, and the same passion...

For most young women, college is typically their first experience living away from home. They’re excited, naive, and believe themselves world-wise. Unfortunately, regardless of geography or socio-economic circumstances, 1 in 3 will be victims of dating abuse, sexual assault, date rape drugs, hate crimes, or just random violence. (Dept. of Justice stats)
Dallas Jessup of Vancouver, a Vanderbilt University junior, created a way to reduce those numbers. She put together an...

"FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!!!" someone yells. Students at the school bus stop look over, but instead of a fire they see a large man grabbing a petite teenage girl by her arms. Yelling, she kicks his groin jabs her thumb into his eye and pulls his ear. He backs off in pain, enabling her to escape.
The girl is 14-year-old Dallas Jessup, starring in her own film, Just Yell Fire. The film is aimed at helping 11- to 19-year-old girls avoid abduction and sexual predation with fight-back skills and...

Dallas Jessup of Vancouver garnered national attention at age 14 for producing a self-defense video — "Just Yell Fire" — that taught teen girls how to protect themselves from sexual predators.
Now a 20-year-old Vanderbilt University student, Jessup has produced a sequel — "Just Yell Fire Campus Life" — tailored for her peers and offering strategies for defending against date rape, date drugs, abusive relationships and sexual assault on and off campus.
"Right...

Hollywood has always loved its plucky movie heroines, but this year the girls – and yes, these are girls, not yet women – are younger, braver and less focused on men. This, say some media watchers, is the good news in the rash of “kick butt” teen protagonists on screen in films such as “Brave,” “Snow White and The Huntsman,” and “The Hunger Games.” All three movies have drawn large audiences to cheer on strong central ...

Model and author to-be Anjhula Mya Singh Bais says Delhi fit the bill perfectly, when the city with the highest number of registered cases of violence against young women was to be chosen.
In India to shoot for "Just Yell Fire Campus Life", a film being shot in different countries around the world to spread awareness about the dangers faced by girls in college, Anjhula delivered her dialogues with perfect ease, seemingly unperturbed by the crowd of men around her that kept growing....