Rochester Youth Group Looks for Safe Alternatives

Article published in Foster's Daily Democrat on November 10, 2009

By Leslie Modica, Tuesday, November 10, 2009

It was Friday evening. School was out but the football game hadn't yet started. The time was ripe for restless high school students to find trouble.

And that's exactly what members of Students Taking Action in Rochester (STAR) were trying to avoid. So they set up a Battle of the Bands — complete with free pizza and french fries — and invited Spaulding High School students to support their peers and hang out after school.

"We feel like you need things to do outside of school," said Hannah Leonard, a senior at Spaulding who helped found STAR.

The new organization, which was started last spring, is modeled after Dover's Youth to Youth program, antismoking and drinking youth advocacy group.

Leonard and Bonny Sigurdsson, another founder, said the tenants of STAR are similar to Youth to Youth, but they added that STAR wants to have a greater focus on the positive things teens can do instead of drinking and smoking, rather than simply fighting the negatives.

"We want to focus more on the good ways to have fun, rather than what not to do," Sigurdsson said.

And that's where providing activities like a Battle of the Bands can come in handy, they said.

Spaulding High School students Miranda Avery and Breanna Keenan said they typically would have spent their Friday night in other Seacoast towns, but they stuck around to support some friends who were playing and check out the local music scene.

"It's something to do," Keenan said. "Rochester doesn't usually have anything to do."

Students were streaming in and out of the Rochester Community Center throughout the event, and organizers estimated that about 100 people had come through the doors for STAR's first major event, which featured six bands made up of current of former Spaulding students: Now or Never, Sexorcist, The Shiznit, Life Cycles, Enough Said and Hung Out to Dry.