Students and staff were left breathless after last Friday’s assembly when BMX bikers performed exciting stunts to promote bullying prevention.
The organization behind the event, ASA, travels around the United States on a 14 week high school tour, funded by the Marines. They have been touring for 17 years in hopes of spreading their message of bullying prevention to high school students.
“We are putting out a great message that there are other things to do [than bully], like go outside, ride your skateboard, roller-blade, and just have fun,” biker Trevor Meyer said.
The MC for the event was Sammy Veal and this is his first year on tour with ASA. Throughout the assembly, he shared statistics about bullying while the bikers performed hair-raising tricks.
“If we change one bully, that helps,” Veal said.
The bikers kept the audience engaged by doing stunts on the ramp which was set up in the gym. One of the professional bikers that performed, Meyer, has been with ASA for eight years. He is a flat land biker, meaning all of his tricks are on the ground. Meyer has garnered recognition and awards for his skills, and is a well-known BMX biker.
“It’s great when you pull a hard trip, combo or what not and the crowd goes crazy,” Meyer said.
The Marines had a table set up in the gym as one of the official sponsors of ASA. At the end of the assembly, students volunteered to try to beat the record for pull ups, which was set by the students from other schools on the tour. These Marines are recruiters from the area and gave students more information on military service.
“Bullying is not something that should be taken lightly,” Marine Gunnery Sergeant Richmond said.
This was ASA’s fifth week on tour and they work Monday through Friday, traveling across the nation. October is Anti-Bullying Month and the assembly was brought in as a way for students to become aware of the effects of bullying and to learn how to make a change.
“Bullying leads to so many terrible things in life, and usually the people who are bullied turn into bullies,” Veal added.
Parker • Oct 14, 2016 at 11:16 am
The dude just kept talking really quietly about the bullying stats and then he’d raise his voice when someone did a stunt, like “so and so amount of kids get bullied a year and uh, THERE HE GOOOOEES!!! OH! OH! OH! HE DID IT! YAAAA!!!!!” thats kinda what it just sounded like.
Killian Kenny • Oct 13, 2016 at 7:54 am
I feel like the meaning of the assembly was lost by the bike tricks. We became more focused on the stunts than the meaning of why we took time off from our classes to show up
Cian28 • Oct 4, 2016 at 2:10 pm
Serper Fi!
concerned student • Oct 4, 2016 at 10:31 am
i couldve googled those facts in 5 seconds
also
“60,000 students a year miss school due to….WOAH NICE ONE MAN….bullying”
the mixture of bike tricks and bullying didn’t feel like it went together that well sensibly
deep fried jimmy johns turkey tacos • Oct 5, 2016 at 7:30 am
Agreed also who was that guy spouting the same stats over and over.
Concerned Chroma • Oct 5, 2016 at 12:39 pm
I really could not agree more. While I understand that the bike tricks were to get those who don’t particularly care about the issue to pay more attention than none at all, I feel like it only really served to distract from what was supposed to be the focus of the assembly