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Williams teen 'draws the line'
New campaign features town

Shaunni Tanori

Shaunni Tanori

The city of Williams played a prominent role during Governor Janet Napolitano's recent "Draw the Line" campaign kickoff in Phoenix. Officials held the kickoff Oct. 29 to help bring awareness to the dangers of alcohol consumption in Arizona. This campaign, organizers said, targets not only susceptible youth, but adults as well.

A number of individuals from Williams took part in the campaign, including 17-year-old Williams High School (WHS) senior Shaunni Tanori, who told the Phoenix audience about her own troubled past when it came to drinking alcohol and how she made a conscious decision to change her ways, which included working with the newly formed Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) chapter in Williams and the Draw the Line campaign as a spokesperson, or poster child. Tanori represents one youth who has, according to her, made a number of bad decisions in her past. Members of the Williams Alliance and high school publications class also attended the Oct. 29 press conference.

Gov. Napolitano told the Williams News that she appreciated Tanori's participation in the campaign due to her direct involvement to the issue.

"It's particularly appropriate for this campaign, given the tragic accident that occurred there," Napolitano said, referring to the Sept. 10 accident on South Road that took the lives of five Williams youth.

"What I would like to see is greater participation with Williams parents in talking to their kids about alcohol," Napolitano said.

Napolitano added that parents have a large role to play in order to make the Draw the Line campaign a successful one in the state.

"There is a real role for adults here, particularly parents," she said. "First of all I think it's refocusing adults on our responsibilities here."

According to information supplied by the governor's office regarding a 2006 Arizona Youth Survey, 75 percent of 12th-graders said they had been drunk or high at school; binge drank or had at least tried alcohol once.

Tanori said she began drinking at the age of 13, without her parents' knowledge, and would do so on an almost nightly basis.

"My grades were slipping, my attitude was becoming worse, just a lot of bad things," Tanori said.

She said there were a number of factors that made her desire to change the direction her life was taking.

"Hearing about all the deaths and my mom telling me, 'Don't do this, if something could happen, your life could be gone in a split second,' and then the tragedy happened with the five people on South Road. It made a bigger impact when that happened, but I was starting to quit before that, but it just made it bigger," Tanori said.

Tanori added that, while her parents were initially upset about the idea of Tanori sharing her experiences publicly, they have since decided to support her decision.

"They weren't too happy," she said, adding that she hopes to send a message to her peers to use more caution when they are out partying.

"Anything bad can happen at any time. Your life as well as anybody else's life can be taken at any point," Tanori said.

She encourages her peers to ask her questions about decision-making.

"I have already been through all of this, so they can come to me and ask like, 'What would happen if this were to happen' or 'Why does this happen,'" Tanori said. "No one has actually come up and talked to me, but you hear side conversations, people saying things, they just asked how it felt to just come out and say what had happened or what you had done."

Williams Alliance representative Patricia Helgeson said that Tanori's decision to speak for the Draw the Line campaign was not one made lightly. Her parents, Helgeson said, had to sign a waiver that would allow her to speak in Phoenix. According to Helgeson, Tanori's parents, Elizabeth and Ted Tanori, stood behind their daughter's decision.

"Shaunni's mom went with us (to Phoenix), which was really great. It was nice for her to have that support," Helgeson said. "Her parents took a bad situation and helped her turn it into a good situation by being supportive of her. We did not take this step without their full support and cooperation. Shaunni being underage, we needed her parents to sign a waiver identifying that they are okay with her, not only speaking to the media at this press conference in Phoenix, but also many communications that I had with Shaunni was for her to recognize that it's not just going to be in Phoenix, it's going to be statewide, it could be national and, more importantly, it will be local."

The Draw the Line program is a statewide initiative to curb underage drinking within Arizona. A large facet of the new campaign targets adults, however, rather than youth. Adults will be asked to severely reduce the access to alcohol in a household where underage people are present.

"It's just asking the adults to take on a more responsible role and to recognize that we are encouraging things just by doing them in front of them, though we may not be saying it, we are encouraging it. The youth will make up their own mind," Helgeson said. "More than anything it's about the access and the tolerance as well, with respect to allowing youth to drink. It's identified as being a rite of passage and there's a lot of controversy behind that, because a rite of passage means something different to everyone. There's the danger of damaging the brain, damaging the internal organs, whether that be the liver or the heart or whatever, so we're not allowing for the young person to develop naturally."

The new campaign was made possible thanks to a $900,000 referendum and will be used to fund a number of aspects for the Draw the Line program, including traveling exhibits designed to ramp up conversation, meetings and various other forums to spread the word on the campaign. Members of the Williams SADD chapter, according to officials, will oversee the campaign in the Williams area.


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