Jennifer Sweeney has been involved in many different extracurricular activities during her four years at Sacramento State. The senior communications major has completed public relations work for catering company Dream Dinners and is actively involved in her sorority, among her many commitments. Now, as the account executive of her COMS 158 group project, Sweeney’s involvement is really making an impact.

Along with fellow students and group members Jessica Cleveland, James W. Morris, Ashley Patton and Lindsey Watts, Sweeney is providing free public relations assistance to a Sacramento nonprofit organization that successfully pushed to pass Senate Bill 547. SB 547 established a pilot project in Sacramento County which targets repeat drunken drivers by impounding their vehicles.

The hands-on project is the centerpiece of the public relations planning and management course, in which students complete actual public relations projects for nonprofit clients and one state agency.

Professor Sigrid Bathen is a journalist and PR consultant who teaches journalism and communications courses part-time at Sac State. Bathen said responses from past clients have been positive.

“The clients, by and large, have been extremely satisfied,” Bathen said, adding that each group project has different requirements based on the organization’s needs. “The projects provide important real-world experience for the students as well as valuable PR assistance for the nonprofits, which often have little funding for PR.”

Other clients this semester include the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill-California, Elk Grove Community Food Bank Services, the Mercy Foundation, the WIND Youth Center and the California Department of Fish and Game.

Sweeney’s group members agreed that the vast needs of the SB 547 project caught their attention. And while none of them have been affected personally by drunken driving, the potential impact of the bill was alluring.

“I felt it was an opportunity to be able to put our names on something that could one day be a statewide program,” Patton, a senior in communications said. “It would be great to say we were part of this program at the beginning.”

“They needed so much, so it was a really good opportunity,” Sweeney said. “We’re going in there and giving them our opinion.”

The group’s expertise is greatly valued by Dr. Leon Owens, the director of the Trauma Care Program at Sacramento’s Mercy San Juan Hospital, and the architect of the project. The students’ enthusiasm energizes the other volunteers helping with the initiative, he said.

“They’re like a breath of fresh air,” Owens said in a telephone interview. “Their presence adds a sense of vitality to what it is we’re doing.”

After his family suffered personal tragedy – the death of his 21-year-old son Jacob in a single-car accident as a result of impaired driving in 2002 – Dr. Owens resolved to champion new efforts that would make it more difficult for drunken drivers to get behind the wheel. He approached Senator Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks) and the two worked together to create a program that targets repeat drunken drivers who have previously been convicted.

Senators Jack Scott, D-Altadina, and Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, also supported the initiative.The bill was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September and gave the project two years, starting Jan. 1, 2007, to evaluate its effectiveness. Depending on the results, the program may then be implemented across the state.

“Senator Cox felt that something needed to be done,” Peter DeMarco, communications director for the senator, said in a telephone interview. According to DeMarco, not only does the program, funded with a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, allow for a vehicle to be impounded for up to 30 days, but it also makes repeat offenders immediately eligible for an intervention program and refers them to treatment.

Treatment is an integral component of the pilot project, senior communications major Morris said.”Once you get your vehicle impounded, you’re also entered into a treatment program,” Morris said. “They say that, on average, a person drives drunk 300 times before being arrested, so Dr. Owens feels that treatment is necessary.”

Sweeney and her team will be involved in many different promotional aspects of the project, including compiling a media kit, assisting in the creation of a logo and slogan and helping with fundraising efforts. They are also planning a press conference to be held Oct. 11. The group hopes to be able to give the program the basic tools to get its feet off the ground and move forward to where it needs to go, Sweeney said.

“Dr. Owens has really high goals for the program, and I hope that we can start him on the path to getting to those goals,” she said.

Patton said she hopes the group’s efforts will help inform the public about the consequences of drinking and driving and how vehicle impounding may be able to help reduce alcohol-related accidents.

“I’m really hoping that we pull together a successful product that they are able to actually use and distribute it to the media,” she said. “And we want to help shed more light on the subject.”Ultimately, the students hope the bill will eventually be implemented statewide as well as nationally ?” a vision shared by Owens.

“The essence of the program is to make the opportunity for a teachable moment for an impaired driver and get them to change their behavior,” he said. “(Impounding their vehicle is) the specific deterrent.”

He said the program also plans to use advertising to get the public to change its behavior in terms of drinking and driving. In addition to providing much-needed help to get the program up and running, Owens said the Sac State students offer fresh ideas and perspectives.

“They provide insight from a different demographic,” he said. “They will help make us current in respect to what media does now and what messages are appropriate for public attention.”The students are equally excited about being on board.

“I feel that it is definitely a tool in lowering DUI rates,” Patton said. “I hope it will persuade people to think twice before putting keys in a vehicle after drinking.”

“It would be awesome to know that we were part of the beginning of such an exciting project,” Cleveland, a senior in communications, said.

Megan Chuchmach can be reached at [email protected]