By Lizzy Tsuang
Staff Writer
Red Ribbon Week is well-known for normally expressing how alcohol and drugs are dangerous for people if misused and can easily cause people to become addicted.
This year, however, Costa’s People Attaining Complete Equality changed its approach, creating a more up-close and personal experience for Mira Costa students.
PACE devoted the week of Oct. 21, nationally known as Red Ribbon Week, to promote the consequences that alcohol and drugs have as well as violence prevention. On the final day of Red Ribbon Week, PACE held an assembly featuring five guest speakers who shared personal experiences with alcohol and drug abuse.
“Red Ribbon Week is important because even if we change one person’s life by stopping their use of drugs or drinking alcohol, it makes a difference,” PACE member junior Isabelle Chau says. “I just want students to realize the consequences and that it can happen to anybody.”
The theme of this year’s assembly, Three Choices: Run, Numb or Stand in Fear, was inspired by the main speaker, Anna Pirkl. Pirkl used the word “stand” to describe a few ways to help stand in fear, such as stopping bad thoughts, talking positively, asking for help, taking a breath and living in the now.
“Research has taught us all a great deal about emotions and their connection to overall mental health,” Pirkl said. “We know now that, under normal circumstances, the best way to deal with difficult emotions is to ride them like a wave.”
The speakers directed their speeches toward the ways drugs and alcohol can negatively impact users’ futures. They centered their ideas around the concept that people can make their own decisions in life and that all actions can come with several different consequences.
“Every year there are always kids that don’t want to listen,” junior Ali Derosa says. “This
year, the speakers approached the introduction in a different way than the past speakers, so people better understood their point of view.”
According to Derosa, speakers not only shared stories, but they also connected their experiences to the audience. In their speeches, they explained the consequences of drugs from a perspective that high school students could truly relate to because they experienced issues in high school.
“All of the speakers, myself included, worked very hard to present our authentic human selves,” Pirkl said. “We wanted to show our level of vulnerability as well as our truth because adolescents can see through phony, hypocritical adults lecturing them. We are all hoping that students could see our hearts’ desires to deeply connect with them as equals and inspire them not to make our mistakes.”
PACE juniors Isabelle Chau and Gillian Searer were in charge of coordinating and planning the assembly and speeches, making posters and ordering the bracelets and lollipops that promote Red Ribbon Week to pass out to students around Costa’s campus. In addition to spreading awareness around Costa, PACE visited Manhattan Beach Middle School as well as Hermosa Valley School to spread the Red Ribbon Week message.
“Everyone has had times in their life in which they have to deal with difficult emotions,” Pirkl said. “Most emotions have a component of fear. Fear is a very powerful factor in the choices we make. The speakers shared their stories of the three choices, and we know standing in your fear can be difficult. It is a lot easier if we ask for help and assistance from those around us.”
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