By Elizabeth Wulfhorst
RED BANK – The Hot Topics club at Red Bank Catholic high school, which normally implores students to “just drive,” changed its message in April. Now it wants teens to “just stay home.”
For the past seven years the club has been working with the Brain Injury Alliance of New Jersey’s U Got Brains? Champion Schools Program to get the message out about safe teen driving. But when the COVID-19 pandemic caused school closures and stay-at-home orders across the state, members of the club decided “no driving” would be a more appropriate public service announcement, for now, than just “safe driving.”
A nonprofit organization, the Brain Injury Alliance has been working since 1981 through education, prevention, advocacy and support to improve the quality of life for those who suffer brain injuries, providing services to 10,000 New Jersey residents each year, according to its website. This year is the 10th anniversary of the school program which encourages students to spread the word about teen driving safety.
Since September, members of the club have been working on the RBC creative campaign titled “Just Drive” which pays tribute to the Brain Injury Alliance’s work with schools, said Kathleen Booth, RBC student assistance counselor and moderator of the Hot Topics club. During each of the 10 months of the 2019-20 school year, the club planned to focus on a different aspect of safe driving.
By the time schools closed in March, the club already had that month’s message completed so the focus was on April. The club met remotely using Houseparty, a social media app that creates “rooms” for video chatting.
“I was sitting at my dining room table and we were supposed to be discussing our April message but we just kept on going back to the seriousness of the situation,” said Booth about the pandemic. “It was then we knew we wanted to try to make some sort of statement about staying home, because kids were really having a difficult time with this.”
Booth said they discussed how challenging it was for teens used to being around friends, teachers and coaches during the school day, at sports practices and other activities to adjust to the isolation of quarantine. However, the club also discussed how important it was to stay home to flatten the curve and prevent the spread of the disease.
“That’s when the girls came up with ‘Just Stay Home’ because it was such a simple change from ‘Just Drive,’ ”
said Booth.
Through their work with the Brain Injury Alliance, members of the Hot Topics club understood that driving is a privilege and responsibility that needs to be taken seriously, which is similar to how they were feeling about the stay-at-home order. They put the word out to the RBC community and asked for support in creating a video to promote the new message.
To show unity they asked teachers to record themselves waving from their homes. Booth collected all the videos and then reached out to a recent RBC graduate, home from college because of the pandemic, to put those videos together with others taken by club members. The club used a song to support each month’s message throughout the year and this one was no different; the soundtrack of the Just Stay Home video is, appropriately, “Home” by Phillip Phillips.
The club has about 20 student members and four officers. Booth met most often with members Paige Stansbury, Emma Bruther, Katie Riddle and Anthony Boriello; Anthony can be seen offering the new message on the video after the montage of teachers and students waving.
Booth applauded the “group effort” from the school community. “I appreciate the RBC Caseys coming together, which was not always that easy, to make a difference during COVID-19,” she said.
The “Just Stay Home” video can be viewed at vimeo.com/412028349.
The article originally appeared in the May 28 – June 3, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
