The LSU Women’s Center will host a stalking awareness workshop Saturday to educate students about the dangers and preventative measures they can take against stalkers. 
The Women’s Center has partnered with the outreach organization Lend Ah Hand as well as local officials to create an agenda aimed at informing University  students of the effects of stalking. 
The Louisiana stalking statute defines stalking as “the intentional and repeated following or harassing of another person that would cause a reasonable person to feel alarmed or to suffer emotional  distress.”
Lend Ah Hand founder Daria Vinning, a victim of stalking, said she wants to raise awareness and invoke stronger penalties for stalkers in state law. Vinning will be one of the keynote speakers at the workshop.
“We should be able to not only have better laws against stalking, but also convictions and enforcement,” Vinning said.
As a Baton Rouge resident, Vinning said she wants to bring her experience and outreach to the University to inform students of this issue. However, the size of campus and the fact that the University is a public institution does not necessarily mean there are more instances of stalking compared to other places, Vinning said. Stalking can occur in a large state university or a small community college, she said. 
Summer Steib, director of the Women’s Center, said there are not many workshops or organizations in Louisiana that focus solely on the issue of stalking. Most of the concern and attention is placed on the instances of violence that often result from stalking, Steib said. 
One of the ways to provide evidence of stalking is to keep a log or journal of instances that have happened over time, Steib said. 
Assistant District Attorney Melanie Fields will also speak at the conference about the difficulties of prosecuting stalkers. Part of the reason building a case against a perpetrator is difficult is the personal nature of the details surrounding each case, Fields said. 
“Intimate stalking,” as opposed to stranger stalking, is more common because the stalker knows the routines and everyday life of the person they’re stalking, Fields said. Losing a case could be a serious outcome for a victim of stalking because there could be a serious threat to the victim’s safety. 
The more serious effect of stalking is the possibility of domestic violence that could result from a lack of action, Steib said. This because most victims of intimate stalking are stalked by someone they were previously in a relationship with, she said. 
“I think we have to look at stalking as on that continuum of gender based   violence,” Steib said. 

“We should be able to not only have better laws against stalking but also convictions and enforcement.”