Daniel Webster College offers nationally recognized “Rape Aggression Defense” system to local high school students
High school women with an eye toward college and beyond can learn realistic self-defense tactics and techniques; moms can join them for free!

(Nashua, NH) — Daniel Webster College is offering greater Nashua high school women the opportunity to empower themselves. The “Rape Aggression Defense” system (R.A.D.) develops and enhances the options of self defense through lecture, discussion and hands-on self defense techniques, so that those options become viable considerations to women who may find themselves at risk.

Having trained more than 300,000 women since 1989 and as the largest network of its kind, the R.A.D. program is being offered in February by Daniel Webster College as a service to young women who may be looking at colleges in metropolitan, or even unfamiliar rural areas, to provide them with the skills to keep themselves safe.

“What is really at the foundation of the program is ‘awareness,’” said Daniel Webster’s Campus Safety Director, Jamie Provencher. “In addition to teaching blocks, parries, and kicks, women are taught self awareness, self reliance, and gain an acute understanding of their surroundings.” It is not, noted Provencher, a martial arts program; the comprehensive, women-only course begins with awareness, prevention, risk reduction and risk avoidance, while progressing on to the basics of hands-on defense training.

One woman who participated in the R.A.D. program as a freshman claimed it was the “best thing I ever did.” “It was very empowering; you learn how to be the aggressor, how to fight, how to ‘get a voice.’ As a group of women, we found strength within ourselves. I learned skills that will be with me my entire life.”  

The four-session program is slated for Mondays, February 13 and 20, and Wednesdays, February 15 and 22, from 6 – 9 p.m. at Daniel Webster in Nashua. The cost is $15 and moms may accompany their daughters and receive their own training for free. Space is limited and reservations may be made by calling Daniel Webster College’s Campus Safety Office at 603-577-6033.

Upon completion of the four sessions, “graduates” receive a certificate of completion; R.A.D. is the only existing program with a free lifetime return and practice policy, honored throughout both the U.S. and Canada, noted Provencher. Additionally, it is the only self-defense program ever endorsed by the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.

“It’s absolutely incredible how empowered women feel after learning these skills,” said Daniel Webster’s nationally certified R.A.D. instructor. “In addition to the self-defense techniques they acquire as an option of last resort, they learn awareness, how to keep themselves safe, how to ‘present’ themselves, and how to walk in situations in which they may be uncomfortable.” The final night, participants have the opportunity to try out their newly-learned self-defense skills utilizing specialized simulation techniques and equipment.

Additional information may be found both on the Daniel Webster website, www.dwc.edu, and on the R.A.D. website, www.rad-systems.com.