Substance awareness event receives record attendance
Student Advocating for Mental Health held an event to inform students about the effects of substances on April 23.
The event turnout thoroughly exceeded the expectations of the SAMH team.
“We had set up about 84 chairs and we didn’t expect them to be filled out. But there were so many students that not only did we fill out all the chairs that were set up, but students were sitting on the sides, in the back and everywhere.” Cecile Wegman ’23, co-founder and current co-chair of SAMH said.
At least 114 students attended the event. “It was the highest non-required attendance of any SMH event” Wegman ’23 added.
“The first hour were educational presentations on vaping from Dr. Courtney who has training in neuroscience and marijuana myths and facts from Ms. Roethling who is a licensed addiction specialist,” Lisa Roethling, the director of counselling, stated in an email about the timeline of the event.
The idea for the talk about vaping first came to Wegman and Rodriguez in their psychology class.
“Dr. Courtney mentioned that she had done work with vaping, so we just had the idea where we were like she would be great.” Wegman ’23 said.
Their choice for the second speaker was “obvious as Mrs. Roethling is a licensed addictions therapist, so it kind of just made the most sense,” Wegman ’23 continued.
The event ended with activities that were held in the Admissions Parking Lot. The activities were “focused on a real life demonstration of how using substances impair driving, reaction time, and depth perception,” Roethling said.
The outdoor activities included a pedal car demonstration, which allowed students to attempt to manoeuvre a pedal car through an obstacle course while under the influence.
“I really enjoyed the bumper cars, I thought it was interesting to learn about the effects of alcohol through a hands-on method” Abby Rice ’26, one of the participants, commented.
A lot of time and effort went into planning the event by the SAMH team in order to make the event such a success. “We had to order the fatal vision roadsters a couple months in advance, assemble and then plan a course with other stations that taught students about alcohol and drug education,” Roethling stated in an email.
The team also spent “40 hours of planning and 3 hours at the actual event,” Roethling said.
SAMH’s goal for this event was to “was to reach as many students as possible to teach about different aspects of drug and alcohol prevention,” Roethling said.
Although there are no more SAMH events to look forward to this year, the group’s officials urge think that “if you have an event idea or anything you want to see done, bring it to the SAMH leaders,” Wegman ’23 said.