Red Ribbon week’s purpose is to educate and help students on a number of issues affecting teenagers, including maintaining healthy relationships, not smoking, and promoting internet safety through fun games and activities.
Sophomore Prashant Sinha considers himself lucky because he hasn’t been in an unhealthy relationship. He does, however, have lots of friends and that he’s never even gotten into a small fight with any of those friends, even as a minor feud.
“I have lots of friends in my Advisory on A days, and we hang out and eat and play sometimes, and I know we’ll be best friends forever and ever,” Sinha said. “They’re my bestest friends ever, and I know they’d never make fun of me or hurt me, and that’s why they’re best friends.”
Red Ribbon Week will feature all sorts of activities and games that students can participate in, for each sponsored awareness topic. Monday will be ‘Healthy Relationships Day’, while Tuesday will focus on the negative aspects of smoking. Wednesday will promote internet safety and safe browsing habits, Thursday will promote and explain how to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and Friday will advertise safe driving the negative effects of drinking under the influence.
Sophomore Salah Daghlas was interested in the potential such a week could have. Having personally experienced a negative interaction on the internet, he’d like to be able to browse more safely in the future, and to avoid undesirable conversations on the web.
“Well I’m most looking forward to the internet safety day, cause I mean cyberbullying goes on and it can be really terrible. Even though it doesn’t sound that harmful, you can get hurt psychologically and it can be kind of depressing when someone makes fun of you on the internet.”
Sinha, on the other hand, hasn’t experienced any cyberbullying or other problems on the internet, but he did see how it could be a problem. He is excited for Red Ribbon Week and how it will help students to better understand and deal with their personal problems.
“Red Ribbon week is really good and fun and I’m looking forward to it, even though I don’t smoke and drive,” Sinha said. “My best friends and me are going to hang out and have fun and I’m excited. Even though I don’t have an unhealthy relationship, it’s still going to be helpful and fun and I’m looking forward to the activities and games.”
By Nadav Govari
