Joelle Lang-Fredman
Wmal.com
Three rivals schools will come together tonight to fight against one shared issue- underage drinking.
The Parent Teacher Student Associations of Walt Whitman, Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Walter Johnson high schools are hosting a town hall meeting at the Walter Johnson High School auditorium from 7 to 8:30 p.m. to come up with a set of rules and penalties for teenagers caught drinking both on and off school properties.
“The goal was to show a untied force between the three schools in this area,” Joe Busch, president of the PTSA of Walt Whitman High School, said. “We, as parents, want to have all of our kids safe.”
And the issue doesn’t just involve teenagers. Busch said the community has seen parents supplying teens with alcohol as well, with some fatal consequences.
“We’re trying to get the message to the parents,” Busch said. “The parents that are having the teen drinking parties is not something we want to see happening.”
They will have three guests- Ben Stevenson, prevention coordinator for the Montgomery County Department of Health & Human Services, Montgomery County Police Officer Jeremy Smalley and Aaron White from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol & Alcoholism.
“We want to people to understand that teenage drinking is illegal, and providing them the alcohol is just a bad idea,” Busch said.
Copyright 2016 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (photo: Santeri Viinamäki [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
