A local health organization is seeking student volunteers to give input on policy changes in response to the Reality Check Survey administered in October.

Although the Palo Alto Drug Alcohol Community Collaborative (PADACC), whose mission is to reduce alcohol and drug abuse, will run out of grant money in June, it may receive a large Drug-Free Communities grant, PADACC Project Director Karin Bloom said. The program can only receive the grant if it finds student representatives from the freshman, sophomore, and junior classes. Since the representatives will be discussing nest year’s policies, senior input will not be needed.

“Honestly, without students, we can’t go on,” Bloom said. “The grant would give us $125,000 for four to five years.”

Bloom will be accepting up to 20 volunteers over the next two weeks, and students can sign up with guidance counselor Susan Shultz or contact Bloom directly. Volunteers will need to attend monthly meetings as representatives for the student body and will receive community service hours and recognition for working with an official organization, Bloom said.

In a presentation to Paly journalism programs on Friday, Bloom, Shultz, and former Paly parent and Palo Alto Medical Foundation Health Education Manager Becky Beacom announced the results from October’s Reality Check Survey.

Paly administered the Most of Us Survey for five years before switching surveys this school year, Shultz said. About 80 percent of the student body participated in the new Palo Alto Reality Check Survey, which is designed to assess social norms that are relevant to Palo Alto students.

“The concept of social norms is a pretty easy one,” Shultz said. “It tells us what most people are doing. Especially with teenagers, you guys [the student body] seem to get a lot of bad PR. We know you guys [students] are a group of great teenagers.”

Shultz acknowledged that many teenagers do engage in risky behavior, but that it is definitely not the norm.

Beacom said that this year’s survey was different from previous Most of Us surveys because it addressed more student concerns.

“We got a tremendous amount of feedback, especially from The Campanile, with students like Malcolm Harris and Mike Wright,” Beacom said. “We tried to create a survey responding to feedback.”

The students expressed a need for improved communication between adults and students and a concern about binge drinking and drunk driving among peers. Beacom used the feedback to create a new survey that was more relevant to the students’ interests and specifically addressed the reasons why students engaged in unhealthy behavior, and the safety strategies they used.

Beacom believes that more relevant surveys will result in more awareness and action in the community.

“We know you guys [students] have been surveyed a lot,” Beacom said. “With best intentions, things haven’t happened.”

Beacom hopes that the survey will result in a change in policy. More than 70 percent of the students surveyed want their voices heard in school policies, and more than half strongly support fair and consistent enforcement of policies.

Beacom does not want people to draw definitive conclusions from the survey.

“Social norms is really about holding things in context,” Beacom said. “I’m not drawing any conclusions from this survey.”

The Reality Check Survey and the Most of Us Surveys have consistently revealed that most students are making healthy decisions — about 80 percent do not drink or smoke. However, most students also underestimate the number of students in the community who make healthy decisions — only 20 percent correctly believe that most students are making healthy choices, according to Bloom.

“You guys [students] are underestimating the health that exists in the community,” Beacom said. “What’s interesting is, why does this exist? How do you explain the discrepancy?”

The Reality Check Survey further revealed that a disturbingly large number of students are engaging in high-risk behavior, according to Beacom. The survey showed that many of the frequent drinkers, daily or weekly, also drink and drive. Beacom is concerned that when people focus too much on the general social norms, they fail to address these students.

“Although it’s a small percentage, it’s a number of students we really care about,” Beacom said. “When we normalize, the people who really need the help don’t get the attention they need.”

Among the students who engaged in risky behavior, many said that they chose to drink and drive because they had a curfew or were afraid to call their parents to pick them up, according to the survey. Beacom hopes that the survey results will encourage better relations between adults and teenagers.

Beacom also pointed out that most students agree that breathalyzers should be used at dances, but only on students whose behavior suggested they’d been drinking. Most students share the administration’s belief that alcohol use is inappropriate at dances, but they disagree with the way the administration currently handles breathalyzers. Beacom hopes that the student representatives will allow the administration to incorporate more student ideas when deciding on school policies.

“You [students] share the values of your administration that it is not appropriate to use or have alcohol at school dances,” Beacom said.

The complete results of the survey can be found here.

Editor’s note: the second and third to last paragraphs were changed to more accurately request Beacom’s statements.