Stockton University
Soar Smart, Stay Sober
How many students heard the message of your project?
6000
Project Description:
Our project objective was Impaired driving/riding/walking: Highlighting risks and consequences of impairment from alcohol, drugs (prescription or illegal), drowsy driving, and promoting alternatives like designated drivers or rideshare services. The implementation of this project included two tabling events: Wellness Day, Brain Safety Matters and Crash Event (to be held April 7th)- How do you practice safe driving? Wellness Day was an annual event in which 60 vendors attended to promote wellness related services and resources. This event reached over 300 students, faculty and staff. We tabled this event with two posters we created called, “Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself and a Pledge poster called CRASH Project which included the Pledge to Share the Road: Enter to Win a Gift Card QR Code, The Transportation Safety Survey, our Wellness Center IG QR code and Injury Outcomes of Alcohol Related Crashes, Alcohol Impaired Driving Fatalities (BAC of.08 and above) Annual and 5-Year Moving Average and other statistics on traumatic brain injuries. These events were promoted to over 6,000 students through social media posts on IG, Student Digest, Osprey Hub, flyers on kiosks, and TV/LED screens.
School/Community Engagement:
For our project we reached out to Christine Woltmann who works for Atlantic County Highway Traffic Safety. She provided us with a multitude of resources and data from 2021-2023 regarding Alcohol/Drug/Cannabis in Fatal Traffic Crashes, Pedestrian Safety Laws, Consequences of Underage Drinking and Driving, and much more. Due to this community engagement contact, our C.R.A.S.H project is expected to be featured in the quarterly report to the state on current events in Atlantic County. We also got in touch with Colin Wojciechowski, who was named the 2024 HERO of the Year by the John R. Elliott HERO Campaign for Designated Drivers. The HERO campaign is named after Ensign John R. Elliott, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who was hit and killed by a drunk driver on his way home for his mother’s birthday in the year of 2000. This campaign is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to promoting designated drivers to prevent tragedies related to drunk driving. Colin Wojciechowski, and his fraternity have been invited to our April 7th CRASH Event to table and further educate students on the dangers of impaired and distracted driving.
Creativity:
Stockton University’s C.R.A.S.H Project has gone above and beyond to spread the word about the dangers of distracted and impaired driving while also expressing creative freedom. Although we got a late start to the campaign, we quickly made mock up logos of our mascot “Talon”. We reached out to our University Relations & Marketing team to get the real prints of our mascot to bring our project to life. Stockton University’s mascot is an Osprey, so we decided on the slogan “Soar Smart, Stay Sober”. Small details were put into creating the perfect logo for our C.R.A.S.H project, such as: Talon must be wearing a helmet for brain safety, he must also be flying therefore the “Soar Smart, Stay Sober” slogan is justifiable, there must be a logo of him driving a car with his helmet on. Once these designs were approved, we created two tri-fold posters, “Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself” and “CRASH Project”. We also created our main flyer with Talon giving a thumbs up encouraging students to sign the pledge and take the transportation safety survey.
Use of Resources:
In order to educate students about the dangers of impaired and distracted driving, we used national data, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and data from The Brain Injury Alliance of New Jersey. One of our former Peer Educators, Kim Straniero, who currently works for BIANJ recently provided us with a multitude of resources to give to the students. For our “C.R.A.S.H Project” tri-fold poster we used infographics and charts from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. We focused on the Injury Outcome of Alcohol Related Crashes, 2017-2021 and the Alcohol Impaired Driving Fatalities, and 5-year Moving Average. We put these statistics and data charts on our “Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself” tri-fold poster. The idea behind this was that the title is an attention grabber, especially for college students. So, while we have their attention we put general statistics about the dangers of distracted and impaired driving. At our first event, Wellness Day, these tri-fold posters containing national data got us fifty pledge signatures.
Evaluation and Impact:
In order to measure the community engagement of our C.R.A.S.H Project we used the transportation safety survey provided by BIANJ, created our own C.R.A.S.H Evaluation, and interviewed students with hypothetical superpower questions. The evaluation we created has four questions: What improvements would you like to see on campus regarding road safety? What’s something new you learned while attending the C.R.A.S.H event? Would you like to see this campaign in the following academic year? How did you hear about this event? Our hypothetical superpower questions are what we used to interview Stockton students for our required highlight reel.
PROJECT MEDIA
