Red Cross, students collaborate on humanitarian issues experiment

11/24/2014 8:00 AM

By Margaret Cipriano ‘15

To test students’ humanitarian values and knowledge of the Geneva Convention, Caterpillar Professor of Psychology Dr. Claire Etaugh and her former student Dr. Bob Wiltz ‘70 used a grant from the American Red Cross to test EHS 120 students.

When describing the project, Wiltz, a Red Cross volunteer, noted that the American Red Cross does not focus singularly on blood donations and disaster relief.

“One of the missions of the Red Cross is to educate young humanitarians to encourage humanitarian values like equality among all people regardless of differences, inclusion, human dignity and compassion,” he said. “Those humanitarian values are embodied in the Geneva Conventions started by the same man, Henry Durant, who started the Red Cross.”

When Wiltz received the grant from the Red Cross to work with students from Bradley to raise awareness about humanitarian values, he contacted Etaugh to propose conducting research to see if their methods were effective.

To test the students, the two designed a pretest about humanitarian knowledge and attitudes to give to all EHS 120 students. As part of the experimental group, select classes then participated in a 50-minute training activity that simulated environments of armed conflict. Students were led into darkened classrooms, treated like prisoners of war and had their human dignity taken away from them.

Wiltz noted that students initially had to agree to participate in the experiment, and, if at any time they became uncomfortable, could leave the room. Wiltz and Etaugh also imparted information about Bradley’s counseling services to students participating in the activity.

After the experiment, the students sat down in groups to debrief and participate in a “walking debate” where they choose sides on various humanitarian issues and discussed their viewpoints.  Both the control group and the experimental groups were issued a posttest a week after the pretest.

“We will find out if there is a short term effect of doing this activity,” said Dr. Etaugh. “Of course, we would expect that the values of the control group, who did not participate in the activity, would remain relatively the same. For the experimental group, we want to see if students are willing to spread the word themselves through electronic media or face to face, we want to see if their knowledge and attitudes have changed.”

When describing the importance of this experiment outside of Bradley, Dr. Wiltz noted, “Anytime that we can impart more humanitarian values in people, the more that people are going to treat each other the right way, with respect and dignity, and that has applications in everyday interactions with almost everybody.”