- Up All-Nighter!
Many campuses are
taking advantage of late night student hours and the availability of
their athletic facilities to plan highly interactive programs. Take
over your fitness center for midnight volleyball tournaments, indoor
mini-golf, Olympic type games, swimming contests, or a variety of recreational
sports events! This is a great way to involve your physical education
department or health education. In addition to the fun activities, you
can set up a massage clinic, serve a healthy midnight breakfast, and
teach some relaxation techniques. Get students to form teams from their
campus organization or residence hall. Get a celebrity student team
to compete against faculty!
- Take Aim at Alcohol Abuse
Get your entire campus
involved by sending out colorful 8.5 x 11 flyers with a statistic about
alcohol abuse on one side and an entry blank and instructions on the
opposite side. Instructions should direct people to memorize their fact,
complete the entry form, make a paper airplane from their flyer, and
meet at a certain location. If you have a multi-level building with
a balcony, this would be your best spot, or anywhere that is highly
visible. Create a colorful target area in the center of the room and
ask contestants to recite the statistic they received and fly their
plane toward the target. Of course, there should be good prizes for
those who get closest to the target. This is a great way to get everyone
on campus involved and helps you get important educational messages
out.
- The Great Tailgate Tent Party
Combat the negative
images of tailgating by sponsoring a fun non-alcoholic event during
one of your major athletic games. This event is perfect to seek donations
and sponsors. Get your members to whip up some great mocktails, serve
hot chocolate or specialty coffees if it’s cold. Ask for pizza
or sub sponsors to provide food. Pass out freebie promotional items
if budget allows and make sure you have educational information about
impaired driving available. Invite the crash dummies to serve or to
go through the stands to attract an audience at your event.
- Passport Party
There are two ways
of looking at this program. First, you might have various campus resource
offices and organizations set up information and refreshments in each
of their areas. Issue passports to students and guide maps that indicate
where they must “travel” to collect information and goodies,
and get their passports stamped. It’s a great way to point out
campus resources, and fun to have a progressive party. All stamped passports
should be thrown into a bin for a grand prize drawing at the conclusion
of the event. A second approach might be to develop a local community
guide passport of fun local destinations and things to do – places
to eat, recreation options, historic sights. Distribute the passport
to students and have them get stamped at the locations in your community
listed in the passport with a grand prize drawing at the end of the
semester.
- Parking Lot Campaigns
Select a well-traveled
parking lot as a site to launch an awareness campaign! Create a “Top
Ten Reasons to Be Aware!” list and distribute it on car windshields
or antennae. You may even decide to wash the car windshields so that
car owners “can clearly see the importance of NCAAW”. Get
campus safety involved and do seat belt checks and pass out promotional
items as prizes for those who are buckled up. Distribute your educational
materials in the size, shape, and color of your campus parking tickets;
people will read it. Include a 10% off coupon from your campus bookstore
or snack bar on the ticket.
- Singing Telegrams/Balloon Bouquets
Get some balloons
imprinted with your NCAAW theme and take orders for balloon bouquets,
or if your group is very creative, singing telegrams. This is a great
way to fundraise as well as get your message across. Get your items
like helium, balloons, and string donated. Design healthy messages to
attach to the bouquets. Ask dining services to donate free drink coupons
to attach. If singing is your bag, come up with several healthy message
songs to popular tunes and send out the quartet to deliver. (Hint: Get
the person buying the telegram to designate the time and place of delivery
to save time in filling your requests.)
- Talk Shows!
What about staging
your own “Lovelines” talk show! Get peer educators to play
various outrageous roles and use a call-in line to explore issues like
healthy practices, relationships and personal ethics. Remember! Lots
of scandal, confrontation and surprises. It helps if you have a really
funny show host. This is a great activity to do in residence hall lounges,
and you can do it for many small audiences throughout your NCAAW. Another
format might be to use the “Who Wants to Be a Milionaire?”
game to relay alcohol abuse information and encourage participation
in a fun way!
- Homecoming Halftime
Get on the program
and plan some wacky team competition for half-time at the homecoming
game, or make a parade float. You have a captive audience and a highly
visible event to get your group’s name and message out there!
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