Leadership emphasizes saying no to drugs in Red Ribbon Week

The Leadership class organized Red Ribbon Week, a school-wide spirit week from Sept. 24 to Sept. 28 to “say no to drugs,” where they encouraged students to wear different types of clothing every day of the week to show support against drug use and abuse.

Red Ribbon Week is a nationally celebrated event by rehab and drug-resistance organizations across the country. Organizations like the Red Ribbon Campaign and the California State Parent-Teacher Association have held charity events and public marches, among other anti-drug activities, to emphasize the negative effects of drug abuse.

To branch off from these national efforts, Leadership made an outfit agenda for students from Monday through Friday, with each day’s outfit oriented around a clever pun that spread an overall anti-drug message.

On Monday, students wore crazy socks to “sock it to drugs.” Students wore sweats on Tuesday to show that saying no to drugs is “no sweat.” Students then wore tie-dye on Wednesday to show that they wouldn’t “get tied up” in drugs. Then on Thursday, students “teamed up” against drugs by wearing their favorite team shirt or jersey. Finally, on Friday, students wore red to show their school spirit.

To further include the student body in Red Ribbon week activities, Leadership passed out red ribbon pins to students and held a tailgate on Monday morning with free donuts.

“Spirit days invite students to show off their school spirit and also get them to come out and say no to drugs,” said senior ASB club commissioner Cameron Lin, who oversaw the week’s activities.

Outreach commission, consisting of commissioners sophomores Aliza Zaman and Katie Chen, juniors Rohan Rao, Tarun Krishnan and Sally Kim, and seniors Iman Laique and Usman Khan, is the section of Leadership that planned the week. The commission correlates student-related activities like Red Ribbon week to the overall high school community.

“While other commissions are more about spirit, Outreach is more about spreading awareness about issues not usually talked about in school,” Chen said.

According to Zaman, while Leadership has held Red Ribbon week for the past few years, the recent trend of students engaging in Juuling is “one big part” of why Leadership is especially stressing the message of “saying no to drugs” this year.

“There’s no other outlet for uniting efforts against serious issues like this in other places besides school, so Red Ribbon week is important to spreading the message to students about why resistance to drug abuse is so important,” Zaman said.

With Red Ribbon week, Leadership tried to unite the school in resisting drugs through multiple school spirit events.

“I really think we’ve made more of an involved school community and have tried to break down barriers with the topic of drug abuse,” Zaman said.