As Lake Highlands High School students prepare for prom season, the planning includes more than making a date, selecting a new dress, and securing transportation. It includes making a promise for life.
Prom Promise, sponsored by Nationwide Insurance, is a positive peer pressure program for high school students which encourages them to sign a pledge not to use alcohol and drugs, especially on prom night. The mission of the program is to eliminate fatalities and injuries due to teenage drunken driving.
In 1993, Lake Highlands High School was one of the three Dallas area schools participating in the Nationwide Insurance Prom Promise Campaign. For 1994, more than 20 area schools are “making the pledge.”
At Lake Highlands, seniors Emily Rector and Suzanne Schiff return as co-chairpersons for the 1994 student committee. With the support of Ron Mathews, principal, and Mary Jacobi, teacher and a faculty sponsor of Students Against Drunk Driving, Emily and Suzanne will coordinate awareness activities in the weeks leading up to prom night.
Last years activities included a posting of Lake Highlands faculty prom night pictures from years past. Other activities included a costumed Grim Reaper who designated an appropriate percentage number of students as drunken driving victims, and a red ribbon tie-on for cars in the student parking area. Tables were set up throughout the school for students to sign pledge cards to not drink on prom night.
The students document the Prom Promise campaign efforts by compiling a scrapbook featuring the week’s awareness events.
As sponsor, Nationwide Insurance provides schools with comprehensive program materials and cash awards which are presented to schools with the highest percentage of student body participants and the most creative scrapbook documentation.
Lake Highlands captured a $500 check for its outstanding effort in the 1993 campaign.
Prom Promise will reach more than three million students in 3,000 high schools this spring.
And the administration, staff and students of Lake Highlands High School will again be an important part of the program. Our entire community will benefit because of their increased awareness, commitment, and desire to do what is right.
