Professor and Assistant Athletic Director Jackie Boxley has reached out to administration to expand her self-defense course to make it more available to students’ high demand.
KIN 104 teaches students many ways to protect themselves from hypothetical attackers, both armed and unarmed. The course shows specific counter attacks against certain positions an attacker may attempt to use.
Boxley said she brought the class back to Citrus roughly three years ago. It was canceled because no other professor wanted to pick up the class.
“It’s been awesome for the students as human beings, but it has also been a great trigger for a lot of kids because they have learned about some of their strengths and weaknesses.” Boxley said.
Boxley wears a full protection body suit used to recreate a situation and allow the students to practice physically.
“Honestly we do physical stuff, we have the full body dummies out,” Boxley said. “The students are pounding on them and kicking on them. I have the whole protective suit to create different situations and it’s fun, but then it does get serious if you imagine someone getting on top of you and you ask yourself that question ‘what are you going to do?’”
“Not only does this class offer self-defense skills but it really offers more than that. It offers a safe environment for the students.” Boxley said.
Gabi Reynoso, a student in the class, said it feels safe because of Boxley.
“I think honestly one of the biggest things that makes this class a huge success is professor Boxley,” Reynoso said. “She creates a super comfortable environment and really gets in-depth with a certain situation, but it’s okay because she creates such a comfortable environment.”
Like any other class, there are only so many spots open. Since the class is in high demand Boxley is trying to expand the class to potentially double the students.
Savannah Anderson also had trouble getting into the class.
“One of the things I experienced at Citrus was I tried to take the self-defense class, but unfortunately it was already full and I was super bummed out about that,” Anderson said. “I feel like that class really would’ve helped me out with an incident that I had happened to me over the summer.”
The class has approximately 90 percent women and 10 percent men.
Another key reason Boxley is expanding the class is the need for more types of classes like this.
