By SARAH DEAN
Staff Writer
Class of 2006 alumna Brooke Burdge shared a presentation for juniors and seniors on the dangers, causes and types of distracted driving April 27.
Burge, a graduate of Fordham University, currently works as an advocate and speaker for End Distracted Driving in partnership with the Casey Feldman Foundation.
“I thought it was a really powerful assembly,” senior Amanda Librizzi of Manasquan said. “She wasn’t there to yell at us, but rather spoke from experience about how terrible distracted driving can be.”
Burdge included the personal experience of losing her close college friend, Casey Feldman, in 2009 to a distracted driver.
Burdge said Feldman, who was a 21-year-old senior at Fordham University at the time of her death, was walking across a crosswalk in Ocean City, New Jersey, when a driver reaching for an iced tea struck her. Feldman died five hours later.
“The use of personal experience and the different examples shown in the commercials added to the overall message,” junior Chrissy Doyle of Middletown said.
Feldman’s father, Joel Feldman, established the Casey Feldman Foundation in 2009 and End Distracted Driving in 2011. End Distracted Driving has shared presentations in all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. The organization is well on its way to reaching its goal for the 2012 Student Awareness Initiative, in which it hopes to reach 100,000 students in all U.S. states and provinces of Canada. According to End Distracted Driving’s mission statement, its goals are “to preserve life and safety and create change on a large scale through advocacy, education and action.”
“I thought the presentation was effective because I thought of different ways to improve my own driving as well as my parents,” said Doyle.
At the end of the presentation, which included Feldman’s story, videos sharing the losses of others, and facts and statistics, students received contracts in which they could pledge to drive safer be more alert.
Students are encouraged to return their pledges to the main office. One pledge will be drawn at random and that student will win a $50 gift card.
“I am going to sign it because I think it’s a great idea,” said Librizzi. “And maybe I’ll win the gift card!”