Threatproof: College Safety for Young Women

A young woman steps off a curb at two in the morning and gets into what she believes is her rideshare.

A young mother hears a knock, sees a delivery bag through the glass, and opens the door to tell the driver he has the wrong house.

A woman working out alone at night sees a man at the gym door. She’s seen him around the complex before. She lets him in, turns her back, and goes back to her set.

None of those starts as an attack. That’s the whole point. Every one of them is an ordinary moment that a reasonable person handles that exact same way a hundred times and nothing happens. Which is precisely why they’re worth studying.

In all three, the danger began before the attack.

When I break down a real-world incident, I often ask three questions.

What was the first easy opportunity to make the person safer?


What was the last opportunity to change the outcome?


What 60-second lesson would have made the biggest difference?

That first question is the one I want parents to teach. Because there’s almost always a moment where the decision is still cheap, and it could often have changed with a short 60-second lesson. Then I ask what layer of S.M.A.A.R.T.S. was the failure point.

For young women out on their own, early prevention and action are even more valuable. Those actions are still socially comfortable and still reversible. They are easier in both the required training and the risks of the results. Avoiding a dark alley is free; carrying yourself with a touch of confidence takes little work; pulling a gun or fighting for your life can be very costly, even if it works out in your favor eventually.

Of course, when the early actions don’t work, or you find yourself in a situation you couldn’t avoid, you better have a functional handle on those later skills and tactics exactly because getting them wrong can be a big problem and getting them right might be the last thing to save you or your loved ones.




WHY I BUILT THE FRESHMAN 15

A couple months ago I put together a program called the Freshman 15. It’s a play on words. The original freshman 15 is the weight some people put on their first year away from home because of bad habits. This one is about a different set of habits.

I built it because I have several relatives and plenty of friends with young daughters heading off to college for the first time, and they wanted something specific. Not general safety advice. Something aimed at what these young women were actually going to run into.

The first thing I realized is that they needed a framework that covers both criminal predators and social predators.


We all know that much of the risk to young women, maybe most of it, comes from young men who are already familiar to them. A friend, a date, someone in the building. That’s a different problem than a stranger in a parking lot. But the same awareness, the same assertiveness, the same boundary control works on both. That’s the useful part. You don’t need two separate skill sets.

So I built it around fifteen conversations parents should have with their daughters before she goes.

https://threatproof.substack.com/p/college-safety-for-young-women-the