For Sarah Schulman, her passion for martial arts isn’t about learning to fight. It’s about learning to protect herself.

Following a summer riddled with crime including robberies and an on-campus shooting, police officials and martial arts instructors suggest self-defense classes will help students be more aware of their surroundings, and if necessary, escape trouble.

Nancy Moore, an on-campus Aikido instructor, said students benefit more from a non-aggressive fighting style.

“Aikido is more practical in comparison to other Karate classes where you learn to hurt people,” said Patrick Hughes, a physics graduate student who has been taking Aikido for five years. “We learn to use attacker’s own strengths against them.”

Simply paying attention to your surroundings while walking around the campus at night is the best way to stay out of danger, Moore said. Students often are plugged into their headphones or talking on cell phones and don’t realize what is going on around them.

Aikido isn’t only about staying alert; students are also taught techniques for helping themselves in potentially violent situations. Every class, students pair up and simulate an attack and ways to get out of it.

Turnout for the class has been great this semester, Schulman said, adding that the highest attendance so far has been 30 people.

There are typically more men than women in the class, which Moore finds surprising. She used to teach in California, where Aikido was known as a “women’s sport” because it is less aggressive.

The Aikido Club, where students learn how to use the Japanese fighting style started in the 1800s, is geared toward self-defense, not aggressive fighting, said club president Schulman. Students won’t learn to break an attacker’s bones, but they will still know how to adequately protect themselves.

Freshman astronomy and mechanical engineer major Melissa Edgerton has been taking martial arts for eight years, mainly to learn about self-defense. She said she often feels safer walking around at night because of the skills she has learned.

Schulman agrees that she also feels comfort because of her background in Aikido.

“Aikido increases the awareness tenfold,” Schulman said.

University Police Capt. John Brandt strongly agrees that being alert is key to being safe on campus. This becomes a problem when students drink, and therefore become less aware of their surroundings, he said.

“Students become less observant, and that’s what puts them in danger,” he said.

University Police offer a course for women called Rape Aggression Defense, which is part of a larger national program. It’s an intense 4-week program that teaches women what to do in situations of sexual assault or abduction.

“I’m over 180 pounds and wear 30 pounds of gear and I’ve been knocked out cold by a woman under five feet tall,” Brandt said. The classes are generally offered based on demand, he said. “Right now there have not been a lot of sexual assaults and rapes, so there aren’t too many. At one time we were teaching six per semester.”

Students must pay $25 to take the class, which covers the cost of the manual, Brandt said. Similar classes taught by business owners cost from $600 to $1,000, Brandt said. The techniques are also taught by police through a kinesiology class, Brandt said.

About half the class deals with teaching women physical techniques to incapacitate a man or attacker. Brandt said they don’t discuss the techniques outside of the class because, “Men are the predators, so we don’t tell them.”

The instructors, who wear about 30 pounds of protective gear for the women to practice on, usually get “whomped” on by the women, Brandt said. “A class of 20 women will just wipe four men out.”

One of the most important things the class teaches is confidence, Brandt said. After the final day of the class, he can always observe a significant difference in the students’ attitudes.

Attila Wallrock is an instructor at Best Martial Arts Styles on Route 1, and has seen attendance increase this semester, particularly with women.

“Women feel like they need self-defense more than men,” said Wallrock, who has been a martial arts instructor for more than 20 years. “They come to my classes to gain confidence so they can learn to defend themselves.

No matter how a student learns self-defense, the most important thing is to alert the police after viewing suspicious activity.

“I’ll take 1,000 false alarms to catch one bad guy,” Brandt said.

Contact reporter Emily Yahr at yahrdbk@gmail.com