SADD teaches life lessons for Wabash Valley children

The Fourth Annual Students Against Destructive Decisions Games were hosted Saturday, January 19 by Triangle Fraternity. This event is designed to educate young children on the results of poor choices in their life, one of the principles of the nation-wide organization SADD.

Saturday’s festivities were targeted at the numerous middle schools in the local Vigo County School Corporation, with representatives from each of the area’s six middle schools. To begin the day, the children were set to play various games designed to have fun and build teamwork. They played games including dodgeball, balloon pop, and relay races. Throughout this time, raffles took place in which the middle school students won various prizes including gift cards and discounts to various area stores. All of this in effort to “help the kids at a young age learn the differences from wrong and right, and how those decisions will affect them,” as stated by project lead Andrew Steward.

The students also had the pleasure of hosting Eric Gardner, a motivational speaker on drug and alcohol abuse. His message was about a portion of his life under which he went through the trials and tribulations of becoming addicted, living an addicted life, and then breaking the addiction. In a way of elaborating the dangers of his former lifestyle, Gardner said, “I went through my first day of rehab when I was your age,” to the sixth through eighth grade children. The students then continued their day with more fun games, followed rapidly by a meal provided for them by Triangle.

The Triangle participants appeared to greatly enjoy the opportunity to enlighten the young while also entertaining them. One member of Triangle, freshman mechanical engineer Kreigh Williams, thought that “the kids had a good time and got a good message at the same time,” which was the goal of Triangle’s SADD games.