By Kristine Thomas
No student bags, purses or backpacks.
No bringing in outside beverage containers.
No leaving the football stadium and returning.
Those are the new rules, beginning this fall, for students attending Silverton High School football games.
The new directive is intended to prevent students from drinking alcohol at the football games, said Silverton High School Athletic Director Greg Kaatz.
“The goal of the new policy is to keep kids or anyone else who comes on our campus safe,” he said. “If someone is intoxicated or impaired, then they are at risk of something happening to them and the percentage of something happening goes up. A person’s choices can be skewed and they aren’t thinking with a clear head when they are drinking.”
The idea for the new policy came from a group of students attending a town hall meeting on underage drinking in May.
The meeting was sponsored by Silverton Together, Somos Hispanas Unidas, ROBES (Russian Old Believers Enhancement Services), Marion County Health Department, Silverton Police Department and Silverton Peer Court.
Silverton High School Principal Jodi Drescher recalls listening to a high school girl say that one way to prevent underage drinking would be to prohibit students from bringing outside open drink containers to football games and not allow students to go back and forth from the stadium to their cars.
“Our staff has been thinking for the past couple of years what we can do to prevent students from drinking,” Drescher said. “When I attended the Silverton Together meeting and heard a group of eight or nine kids tell me what I had suspected, it was a defining moment.”
In the past, Drescher said she and other staff members would see kids drinking from containers brought into the stadium and wondered if they were drinking alcohol. With the new policy, students can only drink beverages purchased inside the stadium.
Silverton Together Program Coordinator Doreen Kelly was thrilled to learn a positive change is happening because of the town hall meeting. Often, she said, it’s the simple things parents or community members can do that prevent underage drinking.
“I think parents need to be more aware and alert that their teen could be drinking,” she said. “There are some wonderful kids who are bright and involved in school who are drinking. It doesn’t make them bad kids. It means they are making bad choices.”
The decision by the high school to implement the new policy “is incredible,” Kelly said, and will help the community to become more aware of the problem of underage drinking.
The new game attendance policy is similar to ones used by neighboring high schools and is an extension of the policy for students attending high school dances, where students can’t come and go or bring in bags or containers, Kaatz said.
Students can’t bring bags or backpacks into the stadium, Kaatz said. Bags brought in by adults will be subject to search.
“We haven’t had a ton of problems with kids drinking at games,” Kaatz said. “The staff reported more than a half a dozen times when kids were drinking and a police officer wasn’t close by to give a MIP (minor in possession.) The staff has had a difficult time monitoring if alcohol was being brought into the stadium and found it hard to enforce no drinking on school property.”
Students will no longer be able to leave the stadium and return, Kaatz said, calling the third aspect of the new policy “One and Done.”
For example, if a band member forgets something he or she needs to perform at the game, Kaatz said they better have their band teacher go with them to their car to get the bag. He said there aren’t any exceptions for students who want to leave and then return to the game.
Realizing some students may drink before the game, Kaatz said adults monitoring the gates and taking tickets will look for signs that a student has been drinking. If they think a student has been, he or she will not be allowed into the stadium and a police officer will be called to visit with the student.
In the past, the gates were only monitored until half time. This year, Kaatz said the gates will be monitored the entire game.
“This new policy is an easy step for us to take to be proactive and prevent students from drinking,” Drescher said.
