By Jack Ryan, executive social media editor
Physical Education teacher Aaron Marnstein sat down on his couch and turned on one of his wife’s favorite shows, “20/20.” During the show, they aired a segment called, “What Would You Do?” where two actors act out a real-life scenario in front of unwitting real people to see how they react.
This time, one of the actors would take the other actor out of a bar and pretend to try to sexually assault them to see how the people in the bar would react.
Watching this scenario last fall, Marnstein saw a familiar name in the show — Michael J. Domitrz. He is a leader of the Date Safe Project that Marnstein heard about when organizing the district-wide event “Girls Fight Back,” which teaches women how to protect themselves from attackers.
Marnstein is passionate about advocating for sexual assault awareness and teaching students about the topic because this issue can affect students at Prospect. With this passion, Marnstein researched Domitrz’s work about informing students about sexual assault and eliminating misconceptions about dating. He reached out to Domitrz, asking him to come to Prospect and present to the student body.
“We haven’t really done an all school assembly at Prospect in a long time,” Marnstein said. “We usually [have assemblies] for athletics, for pep assemblies, for academic recognitions, but it’s really been a long time since we’ve had an assembly that has talked about an educational issue.”
Marnstein was thrilled when the administration approved this all school assembly, which is called “Can I Kiss You?” run by the Date Safe Project, shown to students in the fieldhouse on Nov. 21. It will be presented by Domitrz, and there will be two presentations that are each an hour long. One presentation will be for freshmen and sophomores, and the other for juniors and seniors.
According to Marnstein, Domitrz breaks up his presentations this way because he knows that freshmen and sophomores have a wider range of relationship experiences, some having been in a relationship for a couple years, while some are completely new to the dating world. For upperclassmen, Domitrz talks more about moving onto college or the real world and how to handle relationships and boundaries when there is less supervision from adults.
During the presentation, Domitrz will choose two students from the audience to act out different scenarios dealing with relationships and boundaries. After the scenarios, he will then ask students their opinions about the scenarios just played out.
This presentation will also address personal boundaries, ranging from relationship boundaries to social boundaries, and what to do if people cross these boundaries, according to Marnstein.
“This presentation really has everything to do with personal boundaries, and it’s [about] any type of relationship, [whether] it’s a friendly relationship, a romantic relationship or how we treat each other at parties,” Marnstein said.  
After Marnstein had this presentation approved, he teamed up with Knights’ Way Advisor Dr. Jay Kyp-Johnson to have one of their topics be about dating safe.
Kyp-Johnson was happy to partner up with Marnstein because he believes it is important for Prospect to reassert the importance of boundaries to students. Kyp-Johnson thinks boundaries have changed due to the use of social media and the internet.
“I think it’s important for us to talk about limits and boundaries. [They] have been totally destroyed by the internet,” Kyp-Johnson said. “Even people who have a good sense of limits and boundaries have to learn [them] all over again when using the internet.”
This Knights’ Way topic, which is called “Date Safe, Limits and Boundaries”, will be on Dec. 8 and was spearheaded by senior Maggie Determann. She believes this presentation on Nov. 21 is very important because it talks about what students she expect after high school, particularly in college, and how to handle limits and boundaries in relationships, whether they are with a friend or a significant other.
After the presentation on the 21st and the Knights’ Way topic two and half weeks later, Marnstein hopes this opens up a dialogue between students about consent in relationships and boundaries that should be respected when two students are in a relationship.
With all of this happening, Marnstein is still shocked that he has made this presentation happen, but he is happy that the students will be able to benefit and learn from this experience.
“I look back and I think, ‘How did I get to this point?’, and I don’t know how I got here, but I think at the end of the day, it’s about looking out for our students and making sure that they can succeed,” Marnstein said.