Free sensitivity training at Berkeley tonight: as part of Relationship Violence Awareness Week, Jackson Katz, a leading figure in the field of sensitizing men to "gender violence," will speak at 7 pm in 2050 LSB. There he will challenge each member of the audience to become "empowered bystanders." In his own words: "The goal is to create a male peer culture, an atmosphere whereby the abuse of women by some men will be seen as completely unacceptable by the male peer culture." Someone at Berkeley, please go and report back. I am dying to know what an "empowered bystander" is. How, for instance, does an empowered bystander differ from an innocent one? What is the nature of his or her power? Does an empowered bystander feel good about standing idly by rather than getting involved? Is an empowered bystander endowed with special interpretive abilities, so that the act of doing nothing becomes the condition of understanding what others are doing? Inquiring minds are standing by, waiting to be empowered.