By D'ANN LAWRENCE WHITE
The Tampa Tribune
Published: July 5, 2008
VALRICO - Coming soon to a theater near you could be some suspiciously familiar teenagers with well-meaning but dubious acting skills.
Come to think of it, that rap singer with them on the big screen looks an awful lot like the school resource officer at Blake High School of the Performing Arts.
Starting July 25, a seat belt safety public service announcement featuring Bloomingdale, Blake and Newsome high school students is scheduled to be shown at AMC Veterans 24, AMC Westshore 14 and Regal Citrus Park Stadium 20 theaters. The public service announcement will be shown at AMC Regency 20 Brandon starting in late August.
Produced by WFLA, Channel 8, the video is the result of the Bloomingdale High School student government's success in the national Act Out Loud: Raising Voices for Safe Teen Driving contest in May.
Bloomingdale beat out nine other schools across the country in the contest, winning the $10,000 grand prize - a portion of which was used to create the public service announcement that will be shown before featured films in movie theaters and in drivers' education classes.
The commercial features Blake School Resource Officer Lawrence White pulling over some teenage drivers who aren't wearing seat belts. White and a group of nine high school students perform a catchy rap song called "Click It or Ticket" to get across the seat belt safety message to the offenders in the car.
White has been performing rap music with public service messages at schools throughout the county for 15 years and has produced two CDs of original rap songs.
"Click It or Ticket" has been a mantra at Bloomingdale High for the past year, said student government sponsor Candice Remmert. She said her students became active in seat belt safety after joining the Katie Marchetti Memorial Foundation following the death of 16-year-old Durant High School student Katie Marchetti in March 2006.
After Marchetti died in a car crash, when she was not wearing a seat belt, her family launched a campaign stressing the importance of wearing seat belts and attempting to get legislation passed allowing law enforcement to pull over and ticket drivers for failing to buckle up.
Bloomingdale students have participated in the foundation's A Cross Your Heart Promise, pledging to buckle up and asking that all passengers do the same; A Night of Seat Belt Awareness sponsored by the Lightning Foundation; and the first Hillsborough County high schools Battle of the Belts, in which high schools compete for prize money.
Katie Marchetti's mother, Laura, and grandmother, Dianne Sipe, nominated the Bloomingdale student government for the Act Out Loud contest, sponsored by the National Organization for Youth Safety and the Allstate Foundation.
Remmert learned the day before spring break that her students were finalists for the contest and had just weeks to put together a campaign to earn Internet votes for the $10,000 prize.
"They were outstanding," Remmert said of the 30 students who took part in the contest. "Even though it was spring break, they went to work right away."
"We set up a conference call and started planning and coming up with ideas," said Mike Radder, 18, one of the team captains for the Bloomingdale campaign.
For Bloomingdale student Lindsay Valdez, 15, the campaign was personal. She wanted to save the lives of friends and heal her wounds following the death of her stepbrother, Tyler Clark.
Clark, 17, of Valrico, was killed in October when his Jeep Wrangler flipped over on the newly constructed median on Bloomingdale Avenue near Bell Shoals Road in Valrico. Like Katie Marchetti, he was not wearing a seat belt. Seven teens in the Jeep with him survived, though none were wearing seat belts.
"After Tyler's death, my family and I didn't talk about it too much, because to me it was just one of those things that I never wanted to bring up because everyone would break down and cry, or change the subject instead of just remembering the good times," Valdez said.
"I really thought I'd never find a way to heal, even just a little," she said. But once she started volunteering with seat belt advocacy initiatives, she said, "and then talking about it publicly, I think that helping other people is helping me heal."
For the Act Out Loud campaign, students designed T-shirts bearing the Act Out Loud logo and the Web site address, directing votes for their campaign. And they made posters, banners and marquis signs urging drivers to honk if they were buckled up.
"You could see all these students putting on their seat belts as they drove by," Valdez said. "And it wasn't just students. There were truckers honking to support us."
The sponsors provided video cameras, and the students' recorded the public's reaction as part of their campaign.
"The sponsors gave us $1,000 to spend on our campaign," said Griffin Isabel, 16, who designed the T-shirts. "About half went to the T-shirts."
The remainder went to a student government-sponsored rap contest on teen driver safety with mall gift certificates going to the winners.
For a few tense days, said Allison Schneider, 15, the Bloomingdale team was neck-and-neck with Notre Dame Preparatory School in Scottsdale, Ariz., for votes.
However, at the end of the 10-day campaign, Bloomingdale High School came out on top by 7,000 votes.
"Here's one instance in which parents are glad peer pressure is succeeding," Laura Marchetti said. "A parent can tell a child to buckle up. But when it's coming from other teenagers, it has a much greater impact."
White said that's why he's found rap music so effective.
"You're speaking their language," he said. "I've been using rap music to get messages across to kids for 15 years. And I know it's effective. Unfortunately, we still have teens who don't wear their seat belts. We always will. But we're being proactive, and I know for a fact that we're getting our message across to a lot more teens, and they're buckling up."
Valdez believes it, too.
"I am doing all that I can in this campaign because I would never want others to have to go through all of the pain that my family and I went through," she said. "Hopefully, Bloomingdale High School can make a difference."
Nevertheless, Laura Marchetti said, there's a fatal car crash every 13 minutes in the U.S., and car crashes are the No. 1 killer of teens - especially during summer, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
"Fifteen teens lost their lives in Hillsborough County last year because they weren't wearing seat belts," she said.
That's the reason she's gearing up for this year's Hillsborough County high school seat belt safety campaign.
She's organizing a kick-off meeting in September with Hillsborough County Schools Superintendent MaryEllen Elia, school board members, PTA representatives and other activists to begin planning this November's Battle of the Belts contest. Last year, 19 Hillsborough County high schools participated, and this year 25 schools have signed on.
Laura Marchetti also is working with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office on putting together a schedule of unannounced monthly seat belt checks at high schools and distributing pledge cards and decals to high school students.
For information about the foundation's seat belt safety campaign or to sign a seat belt pledge card, visit www.katies story.com.
RAPPING IT UP
The "Click It or Ticket" public service announcement can be viewed at AMC Veterans 24, AMC Westshore 14 and Regal Citrus Park Stadium 20 theaters July 25 to Sept. 4. The PSA will begin showing at AMC Regency 20 Brandon in August or September.
