The Students Against Destructive Decisions club has been working on the S4SD campaign since early November. This campaign is drawing awareness of distracted driving and driving under the influence for the WHS student community.
They kicked off their campaign by having a “Be Wise; Don’t Compromise” poster contest amongst all the students in the school. The winning poster was then turned into a t-shirt design and given out to students around the school.
The Strive for Safe Driving campaign had police officers as guest speakers in the PBLZ to talk about the dangers of driving impaired. They set up multiple pairs of goggles that showed what you would see if you tried to walk in a straight line and stack cups while impaired. The goggles portrayed being drunk and being on LSD and marijuana. Elsie Philabaum, president of SADD, said, “With the interactive activities that the students were able to do, they were able to physically see the dangers with their own two eyes.”
While the police officers were there, they had a raffle for all the students who came to the presentation and participated in the different activities. There were 30 winners, and they all received t-shirts that had their campaign slogan, “Be Wise; Don’t Compromise.” The SADD members were also giving out bracelets and candy throughout the week that had drug facts on them.
SADD created a PSA, putting the dangerous facts of impaired driving into a fun video. Juna Maxhari stated, “I’m hoping that this PSA video will encourage students to have conversations about safe driving and to prove that being informed about safe discussions doesn’t have to be boring.”
For the last activity of their campaign, they held a spirit week for impaired driving awareness. Monday was “get ‘red’ of impaired driving” (wear red), Wednesday was “piece out to drugs” (tie dye), Thursday was “give drugs the boot” (western), and Friday was “put drugs to rest” (PJ day).
SADD has been working on the S4SD campaign for 5 months now and continues to pursue this path. Senior historian Reed Musial said, “I have put in over 10 hours into this campaign, and it has shown me that there are a lot more repercussions for driving under the influence than you might think. There are so many different ways in which this may impact your life in the present but burden you into the future.”
This annual campaign has continued to bring light to the dangers of impaired driving, and to help inform people of the precautions that they can take to drive safely.
