From the Diary of Mike Domitrz

What one assembly changes in a school that has never said these words out loud, and what 50,000 students report afterward.

At Welcome Week on college campuses, Mike Domitrz asks the incoming students one question about high school: did consent just get “covered,” or did the school go deep and comprehensive in teaching it? He has written about the answer that comes back. Ninety-eight percent of students, sometimes one hundred percent, yell “Covered.”

In his telling, that one word says where the failure sits. “If you want to see what a society cares about and what a culture values, start with what they focus on with their education,” he has written. Schools hold assemblies on drugs and alcohol, on social media, on motivation, and many will not allow one addressing consent, bystander intervention and survivor support. Most campuses require little more than online courses students click through before registration, courses students call a joke, he has written, because they know the right answer whether they believe it or not. The statute books read the same way: by the running count in SIECUS’s State Profiles, only 15 states and the District of Columbia require sex education or HIV/STI instruction to include information on consent.

Mike has been speaking on these subjects since 1990. Founder and CEO of The Center for Respect, author of Can I Kiss You? and Voices of Courage, inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame in 2022, he delivers consent and bystander intervention programs in middle schools, high schools and universities, on more than 100 military installations and for Fortune 500 companies. The work comes with a receipt. Over 50,000 K12 students have taken his post-event survey in the past few years: 97 percent say they are more likely to ask first for consent after attending the assembly, and 96 percent say they are more likely to intervene when someone is using alcohol or other drugs to facilitate sexual activity.

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The Fear in the Room

Often, when a school brings Mike in, it has never had these issues addressed in a public setting before. “The fear can be palpable when I arrive,” he says.

What happens next follows a sequence he describes step by step. First, the room gets comfortable: everyone quickly recognizes how essential these conversations are, and the discussion invites “everyone into the conversation on their own terms.” Next, he meets students where they are in their lives at that moment. “A middle school presentation can be dramatically different than a high school presentation,” he says. Then come the barriers, the reasons people do not ask for consent and do not intervene in a dangerous situation at a party. Only once the barriers are down does he hand over “a specific ‘How To’ skill set for taking the respectful actions moving forward.”

He is exact about what the sequence produces: “More and more students WANTING to build a culture of respect for everyone.” He has written about schools that team up for his “SAFER Choices” assembly, splitting the cost so that every student in both schools gained the skills, and about the pages of responses students write afterward.

The combination of igniting the personal why with the exact skill set is the part most consent education never reaches.

What To Do, Not What Not To Do

On his profile, Mike asks whether we are teaching students what not to do or giving them the skills to know what to do. His answer is specific. “We teach students HOW TO ask for consent so that it goes beyond theory and becomes an action they believe everyone deserves (to have a choice first),” he says. “We teach students HOW TO intervene when someone is using alcohol or other drugs to facilitate sexual activity.” He compares that to people just “telling teens ‘always intervene for others’ while giving them no skills to do so.”

The stakes are not abstract to him. He has written that human beings are sexually assaulted on college campuses and at high school parties every single week, and the largest survey on the question is consistent with the claim: in the Association of American Universities’ 2019 climate survey of 181,752 students across 33 campuses, 13 percent reported nonconsensual sexual contact by physical force or inability to consent since enrolling.

The skills, in his account, are only half of the method. The other half is the reason a person decides to use them.

“Most important, we connect to the soul of each person in the room. We challenge WHY they stay quiet and WHO do they actually want to be when they see wrong happening.”

Mike Domitrz, founder and CEO, The Center for Respect

He learned to run a room that way somewhere specific.

From a Whitewater Classroom to the Hall of Fame

Mike started his speaking business in college, at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and he names that focus and experience as the first turn that mattered.

A professor named Jerry Witherill would have him speak in each of his classes, then sit down with him afterward and go through every student’s feedback card. “He is the person who pointed out that when I asked questions and let the audience’s answer drive the conversation, the room lit up,” Mike says. “That has been my style of speaking for the past 36 years. I am grateful Jerry became a dear friend and I got time with him before he passed away in 2022.”

The second turn came from coaching. He took a high school team to its first state championship title, and the title was not the lesson. “At that time, there were people who thought I was too young and too inexperienced to help those athletes reach the highest levels,” he says. The lesson, in his words, has gone everywhere with him in life: to believe in himself, regardless of what others say.

“Expect for people to take aim at you when you aim for high standards of success.”

Mike, founder and CEO, The Center for Respect

The business built around the message was tested early. “The first year, we had creditors calling. We were struggling to make ends meet,” he says, and they stayed focused on the mission through the most stressful of those times. What began as “Sexual Assault & You,” a program for K12 schools and universities in the Midwest, grew into The Center for Respect, whose clients listed on his profile run from Stanford and Princeton to the Department of Defense. In 2022, the National Speakers Association inducted him into its Hall of Fame.

Where Mike Is Now

The Center for Respect works with middle schools, high schools, universities, corporations and every branch of the U.S. military. Mike writes the weekly newsletter Leading with Respect and also coaches other speakers. The focus he named for this piece, though, is consent and bystander intervention in schools: the assemblies and programs that take the subject past “covered,” for the students in the rooms and for the leaders deciding what those rooms are allowed to hear. His profile invites organizations interested in creating a culture of respect to connect about speaking engagements, leadership training and consulting.

He is just as direct about life outside the work. “Outside of work, my family brings me the greatest joy and peace,” he says. “Spending time with my sons and their partners fills my soul. Spending time with my grandkids is a soul filler. Traveling with my wife is sooo much fun. We both love to explore.”

The line he lives by is the one that ends his posts. He applies it, he says, to every aspect of life: have a goal, ask others for support, and respect their answers, even when you do not agree with them. “Ask First & Respect the Answer.”

Five Lines from Mike’s Diary

“Ask First & Respect the Answer.”

“Saying ‘no’ is never mean.”

“Real confidence doesn’t fear the answer.”

“Never assume. Ask.”

“If you do not IGNITE a person’s ‘Why’, all the skills in the world will go unused.”