Emily Brand
Editor-in-Chief
As summer rapidly approaches, the NCHS Ram Council set their sights on creating an event that showed high school students and their parents that it is possible to have a substance free summer. The ‘Safe Summer Roll Out’ event occurred on May 29 in the high school auditorium, the Ram Council’s goal was to prevent underage substance use in the high school by interesting students and parents about substance free summer activities.
Matthew Maddox, co-moderator of the Ram Council’s event, explained why having an event like this before the summer is so crucial to the New Canaan community. “Joyce [co-advisor of the Ram Council] and I both agreed that there are higher risk behaviors that tend to happen in the summer time when students have more time on their hands,” he said. “There really had not been any such event previously organized with an eye strictly toward educating students and their families about the risks and some of the safe alternatives that are available over the summer.”
Joyce Sixsmith, a substance abuse counselor and prevention specialist, is a co-advisor of the Ram Council, which is run entirely by students. Ms. Sixsmith previously ran the New Canaan coalition for about six and a half years and was eager to start a group at the high school. “You’ve got a substance abuse counselor and an attorney who have been doing this prevention work for years, teamed up, we’re so incredibly committed and passionate about this.”
Ms. Sixsmith hopes that students and parents will be able to take away the healthy activity options that the panel and club members will touch upon at the event. “There are so many kids that don’t drink and really don’t want to participate in the unhealthy behavior, the high risk behaviors, that just need to have a place to go to realize that there are other kids that they can bond with,” she said. “And I want to say to kids that there are tons of kids here who are choosing not to drink and you can be hip and cool and happy choosing a substance free life. And then the parents, I want to empower them because I know that there are such great parents in New Canaan, to cheer them on, to root them on. I want to coach them to be emotionally and physically present in their kids’ lives.”
Junior Ram Council member Eddie Piotrowski likes what the group stands for and has tried to be a very active member. “I’ve been with a lot of other organizations that have tried to create healthy, non-alcoholic activities and the honest truth is that they’ve all failed, they haven’t been able to get the kids interested,” he said. “I think that a group run by the kids of the school had a better chance of actually being able to get high school kids involved. I thought that with a high school that has kids who are so often drinking being able to offer substance free activities that people actually want to go to, even if it’s just one friday night that they don’t go out drinking, I think it’s a fun thing to do.”
Mr. Maddox has been working on making the panel format more interactive with the audience. He hopes that students are able to take some element of information or new knowledge away from the event. “What I hope, everytime I speak, is that at least one kid comes away and thinks ‘wow, I didn’t know this, I didn’t know the teenage brain was so susceptible to damage from alcohol, I didn’t realize that there was so much risk in the law to me and my parents from this type of behavior,’” he said. “I hope that one student wakes up and thinks, ‘wow, I’ve got to make a change.’”
