Photo Credit: CAROLINA MARTINEZ
BY ALLISON BARNARD
Cooper City High School recently teamed up with the Broward Prevention office to start a new chapter of Project Brain, a movement running throughout Broward County schools that aims to spread the importance of brain health and the dangers of teenage drinking.
For the past month, the slogan “Project Brain” has been plastered all over campus, sparking curiosity in many students. Utilizing everything from posters to t-shirts, CCHS’s newest club has been drawing just the attention they needed.
“Our primary goal was to draw the attention to get people interested in finding out more information about Project Brain, which came very easily with our mysterious slogan,” Secretary Shelby West said.
Led by President Allison Barnard, Historian Valentina Rodriguez, and West, this “street team” of students is taking the attention directed towards Project Brain and redirecting that focus to make students aware of the negative effects of teenage drinking on the brain. The main goal for CCHS’s Project Brain is to help open students’ minds to the fact that there are actually more teens that would prefer not to consume alcohol than those that would.
“When we enter high school, there’s this assumption that drinking is what’s ‘cool’ and ‘normal’, but in reality, the majority of our peers simply would rather have a good time without the aid of alcohol,” Barnard said. “You’d be surprised how few kids actually drink.”
Project Brain initially started at the Broward Prevention Center and quickly spread to various high schools in Broward County. This “social norms campaign to discourage underage alcohol use” has been incredibly successful in all of the high schools that it’s influenced through the individual tactics each school has used to tackle the issue of teen drinking.
CCHS’s Project Brain team hopes that by the end of the school year, they’ll open some minds to the fact that we can have just as much fun in our lives without the negative consequences of drinking. Assisted by their sponsor and 11th grade guidance counselor Theresa Sullivan, the street team will share the frightening side effects that accompany drinking before one’s brain is fully developed, hoping to make a difference in our community’s youth today.
