Sacramento State students and faculty gathered in the Summit Room of the University Union to take part in “Men Who Ask: Fraternity Men Against Sexual Assault,” a program organized by the Women’s Resource Center to discuss the prevention of sexual assault.

The interactive discussion panel was led by Gaby Bermudez and Carlos Velasco. Both are student assistants of the Women’s Resource Center and project co-coordinators for “Men Who Ask.”

“Men Who Ask had a pilot program last semester,” Bermudez said. “We had a few organizations participate and then this semester, it’s kind of like a revamp of the program.”

Jose Gonzalez of Nu Alpha Kappa, Jaime Moncada of Lambda Theta Phi, Jafahri Oler of Phi Beta Sigma and Manuel Lomeli of Epsilon Sigma Rho were the fraternity men who sat on the panel and assisted Bermudez and Velasco with the discussion.

A video created by Bermudez and Velasco was played to kick off the discussion.

“We want to provide an opportunity for a true transformative experience and a behavioral change,” Bermudez said.

The members of the Sac State Greek community were involved in the video by displaying statistics surrounding sexual assault. At the end of the video, they challenged the audience to take a stand against sexual assault.

“One in five college women are sexually assaulted per year,” Velasco said. “When I changed it into a percentage, that’s 20 percent of college women that are sexually assaulted per year.”

Bermudez and Velasco engaged the audience by asking them what their definitions of sexual assault, consent, bystander, and bystander intervention were. They also informed the audience of the three different bystander intervention techniques: direct, delegate, and distract.

“Bystander intervention is the prevention of an act from occurring, in our case it would be sexual assault.” Gonzalez said. “Being a bystander, you have the option of deciding if you want to intervene or not intervene.”

At the end of the discussion, audience members were challenged to take the pledge to prevent sexual assault by writing their name on a red piece of paper as well as why they were making the pledge. The red piece of paper was then taped to a banner hanging in the back of the room.

The audience was also asked to turn in a short survey at the end of the program to help evaluate the discussion, a tool that will help the Women’s Resource Center to keep educating the public on sexual assault prevention.