Audience members became involved in Erin Weed’s self-defense seminar Thursday night – they actually practiced the moves that were taught to them.

The seminar started out with a speech by Weed about the story of how her friend Shannon McNamara was murdered in her apartment by an unknown man in 2001.

Weed said when she first heard about this, she felt like she was part of the movie “The Matrix,” where she found a world she thought was perfect was actually pretty gritty.

Weed then made it her mission to teach women about self-defense and began training with self- defense experts.

“I had never taken a self-defense course in my life,” she said.

The self-defense seminar could be broken down into three parts.

Weed told women to trust their intuition, be a “bad victim” or “hard target” and how to fight back.

Weed asked the crowd what an easy target was and some of the answers were a person on a cell phone, listening to music, alone or drunk.

During the interactive part of the seminar, audience members sat in a circle at Lantz Arena and were shown how to fight if they were ever faced with an attacker.

Audience members were told to tell an attacker “Stop, leave me alone, I don’t want any problems.”

Justin Tomaska, president of the Kinesiology and Sports Studies Honors Club, played the “attacker” with Weed who used him to show audience members how to fight through mock-fighting.

Weed also asked audience members where they thought an attacker would be vulnerable and answers were the throat, groin, knees and shins. She then showed audience members what to do if a victim told an attacker that they did not want any problems and an attacker still came at them.

She said victims should kick their attacker where they were weakest with a hit to the nose or groin, elbow to the back or knee to the face.

The seminar also taught attendants how to properly use common items as weapons, such as a cell phone, iPod, keys, hairbrush, pepper spray or books.

Brittany Bart, a junior kinesiology and sports studies major, said women should learn self-defense to protect themselves when they are vulnerable.

“Anything can happen, especially at night when you are by yourself,” she said.

Samantha Plaia, president of Alpha Phi, the sorority both Weed and McNamara were a part of, said the whole story hits pretty close to home.

“It hits hard because it happened to one of our girls,” Plaia said. “On campus, sometimes girls are walking home at night and not aware of their surroundings. This (seminar) could help prevent problems similar to Shannon’s.”

Heather Holm can be reached at 581-7942 or haholm@eiu.edu

Erin Weed, an Eastern alumnus, presents Girls Fight Back Thursday evening in Lantz Arena. Weed founded Girls Fight Back after the murder of Shannon McNamara, an Eastern student, in 2001. Girls Fight Back allows Weed to teach self-defense and personal safe

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