Commons Campaign
Project Portfolio
Due June 2nd, 2017
Evan Cox, Tyrin Ferguson, Aaron
Williams
Driving Under the Influence
Initial
Proposal
We feel that driving under the
influence of alcohol is a current issue that has affected many people today and
in many years past. It not only effects those who get cited for a DUI, but also
those in their family, their job, and can cause pain to other families if there
were injuries or fatalities.
In the past several days, we have
been thinking of possible constraints to the matter that involves being against
drunk driving. In our opinion, we feel that even the most radical protesting
groups never promote drunk driving. Everybody knows that drunk driving is bad,
the problem is – There are not many advertisements for drunk driving as there
is for cigarettes or hard drugs. Our main goal is simply to increase awareness
and get as many impressions as possible out to people. These quick and easy
reminders can make or break someone’s decision making process, and could
ultimately save someone’s life along the line.
We feel that with an issue of drunk
driving in general American culture is at a very high caliber. Due to our
opinion on the seriousness of our topic, our audience can be very abstract. Since
we are all college students, we think that we should move forward with our
intended audience to persuade should be all college students. Having our
message spread to college students by college students should really hit home
with the number of impressions it makes. This means that most of our promoting
would be on the campus of University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A very high traffic
area we plan on focusing on off-campus will be the downtown bar scene. The
vicinity of “O” Street between the 12th and 16th Streets
contains a majority of the bars where students aged 21-24 spend a lot of time
on the weekends. We will include surrounding gas stations and liquor stores that
are either directly adjacent to campus, or well known hot spots for college
students.
We plan on adding our creative touch to
the campaign by promoting in gas stations where there is really no regard for
being the legal age to consume alcohol and verifying that the person is over 21
years of age. We will be going downtown and place no drinking and driving
flyers around the surrounding cars parked near bars that within 5-10 minutes
away from the middle of campus. With our specific group, we have a decent
amount of followers across numerous social media platforms. We plan on
developing a simple, and creative hashtag that shows the meaning of what we are
promoting at a glance.
We plan on making our campaign more
successful and unforgettable by using the resources that surrounds us. We are
contacting numerous professionals that are directly involved with the criminal
charge of ‘Driving Under the Influence.” We are speaking with local city and
county police officers and sheriffs. We are also contacting Nebraska State
Patrol officers in Omaha, Lincoln, and other outposts in rural Nebraska. We
will be contacting defense attorneys that specialize in DUI’s to interview them
on all of the factors that they are involved in. On top of all of this
discussion and information we gather from local professionals, we believe that
using our social media accounts will lead to great success and leave a lasting
impression for individuals. All of this will increase our networking
experience, meeting many new people that specialize in all different types of
work, but focus on fighting for the same cause.
Final Portfolio
Over the last ten days, our group has put
in a total of twenty hours working and promoting our topic, Against Drunk Driving. We worked very
well together as a group because we knew we were working for a good cause that
we all believed heavily in. We have seen the struggles that individuals have
gone through because of the mistakes they have made driving under the
influence. We have seen the effects first hand that it causes to families and
loved ones. We have seen the movements that have risen in our own respective
states we have come from to come to as close to and end for drunk driving as
possible. We knew going in that we were not going to bring the number of DUI’s
to zero. We did know that the effort we put into our campaign could save
someone. We pondered as a group when we thought about ‘saving someone.’ We
might not be saving the person who is drinking and driving, but possibly their
job, or the other driver they could’ve hit. We might be saving the mother,
father, or child of someone that is cared for immensely. We were all on board
that we wanted to make a difference in our community on the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln campus.
We started by getting connected to local
and state police officers, interviewing them and asking questions about DUI’s
and the problems they cause in communities. We also asked about their efforts
to put an end to drinking and driving. The highlight of my interview with
Trooper Kyle McAcy from the NSP was when I asked him, “What is the biggest
problem with drunk driving?” He responded, “The biggest problem with drunk
driving is the unnecessary loss of life and injury, and the tragic impact it
has on communities.”
Afterwards, we found attorneys in the Lincoln
area that we also interviewed and found more about the costs of getting a DUI. I
sat down with Todd D. Bennett, J.D., who is an attorney at law here in Lincoln.
I asked him, “How much will getting a DUI cost me?” Todd responded, “Well,
besides the possibility of it costing your job, license, and family, between
the court costs, lawyer fees, and fines, it can be anywhere from $10,000 to
$20,000.”
Afterwards we developed posters with
simple designs that we could place around UNL's campus. We wanted to make the
posters as easy to read as possible. We felt that this would make our message
easy to read at a glance. After creating all of the posters, we printed them
out in bulk and placed them at local hotspots around Lincoln. We focused on
popular bars and liquor stores that students go to throughout the year. We took
pictures at the locations that we placed posters, and spoke with local police
officers in the downtown area about what we were doing, which they greatly
appreciated. We will attach a few of the pictures we took next to our posters
in the aforementioned locations.
Later, we sat down as a team and discussed
potential hashtag ideas to use on our social media accounts. Since Tyrin and
Aaron have a large amount of followers, we used their Facebook and Twitter
accounts to blast out the message to a greater number of people. We chose the
message #DriveHammeredGetSlammered. It was original to us, and exceeded our own
expectations with the feedback we received from their followers. Some Husker
football fans replied, giving them praise for what they were doing not only on
the field, but off the field as well.
We spoke with the campus police about
teaming up for another partnership in regards to spreading our message more
on-campus this coming fall when all of the students are here. We are planning
to make an impression on as many students as possible when the highest percentages
of DUI’s occur on or adjacent to campus.
Many things went well for us throughout
our campaign. From the beginning, with the group we selected, we knew we could
do well together. Our team oriented mentality got us through the biggest
hurdles of the project. We were able to properly and evenly split up the work
between the three members and get as much work done as possible and be as
efficient as possible at the same time. Everything went extremely well, you
could compare us to a well-oiled machine.
If we could do anything differently the
next time around, we would first like to be given more time. If we had more
time, we would’ve been able to start a GoFundMe page and try to receive donations
from people supporting our cause. We planned on using that money to make
wristbands with our #DriveHammeredGetSlammered motto on them. We are hoping to
make up for the shortened time period by capitalizing on the opportunity we
were given with the campus police. We want nothing more than to spread our
message as much as possible in our community and ultimately make a difference.
Photo Evidence of our intervention
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