Rogers DECA Group Attempting to Brake the Pattern, Save Lives

Fans were ready. Students packed the bleachers. The Royals were on their home court, ready to roll in an important, January home basketball tilt. The pep band was on scene and the lights were low. 

So why did The Den - the home of the Rogers High faithful - go … RED? 

“For Rogers High, it’s a pretty big color. It’s a huge difference from what we always see. So we decided to go with red,” said RHS DECA student Alida Gorder, senior and director of the Royals’ latest student group.

She was exactly right. 

The red - which did raise some eyebrows - was by design. Gorder and a few DECA cohorts have established a new group with a familiar cause. Dubbed, “Brake the Pattern,” the group aims to raise awareness about Distracted Driving. 

It’s not an unfamiliar problem - phones in every car have created an endemic of issues on highways and byways. The leading cause of crashes, year over year, has become distracted driving. 

For Brooklyn Morman, it’s personal. Her mother, killed in an auto accident when Brooklyn was just a toddler, died in an auto accident. It could have, she said, been prevented. 

“DECA students like us get put onto projects, and we are put onto community awareness. It’s a great topic, and obviously one for me that has a lot of meaning,” Brooklyn said. “The idea is to get students to sign an agreement that they won’t pick up their phone while they’re driving - like a pledge to break the pattern we see of distracted driving all over.” 

With improvements in technology, cars and trucks have screens that utilize things like Apple CarPlay or Google Maps to provide entertainment or navigation. But even those systems and “apps” cause people to take their eyes off the road - just 2 seconds can mean the difference between avoiding stopped traffic and slamming into the car in front of you at a high rate of speed. 

“People think it’s a problem that’s kind of going away, but it’s not,” Gorder said. “And a lot of students are driving older cars that don’t even have the screens, so they’re looking down at the phones to change a song or put in directions. So it’s even worse.”

The team also did research with their Rogers Police resource officer and others at the RPD. The stats were eye-popping.  

“It was clear that it’s a big problem in Rogers,” Brooklyn said. “I mean, it’s a big problem everywhere.” 

So the project had a goal, and was - pun intended - headed in the right direction. But how to raise awareness? 

“Our job - for DECA - was to really market it,” said Henry Mammen, junior. “That’s a big part of the project.” 

Thus, the color red. And the effort to team up both with the school community and the Rogers community at large. 

The first answer was easy - head out to events. Rogers High basketball and hockey teamed up with Brake the Pattern for “Wear Red” nights - students donned the extraordinary color and stopped at a table in droves where they could sign the pledge. Certificates hang on a wall in the RHS building - more than 200 and counting. 

Gorder also teamed up with Broadway Pizza, whose unique beverage filling station brought an opportunity. 

“They have these little stoppers on the bottom,” Gorder said, because drinks are filled from the bottom up. So we created a kind of magnet that works with the system. They’ve run through thousands of them.” 

There are also the stickers 

For Brooklyn, it’s been a bit of an emotional journey. In the end, she feels like she’s doing something so that another father doesn’t have to go through what her dad did, and another child doesn’t have to grow up with a missing family member. 

“Yeah. There are times when I think about it. If it makes a difference, that feels good.” 

The group - which also includes junior Ava Kiffmeyer and senior Ally Kosonpfal, will present their project at the State DECA Conference in March. They’re also eyeing some spring events to continue to get more pledges and raise awareness. 

After that, it will be up to Ava and Henry to keep the ball rolling and the project growing. 

“A lot of the DECA service projects fall off because there’s not someone who wasn’t a senior who wanted to keep it going, but we’ve seen a lot of interest from our group who want to be involved in this as it goes forward,” Alida said. “So we feel like if we can do a couple more things in the spring, it will be there in the fall for the juniors or sophomores who got involved in the events throughout the year.”

Henry, for one, feels confident that will happen. 

“I’d love to head it up next year,” he said with a smile. “It’s a great project and a cause that really does affect our community. So the opportunity is there.”