Kelly Nemecek ‘18, a student who just recently lost a friend to suicide, says she has heard of  Reach Out And Report (R.OA.R.) and  Acknowledge, Care, Tell (A.C.T.) and that these systems are being used by the LT Peer Leadership Club to spread awareness for suicide.

“I feel like they can be great systems for kids that feel they need help, or friends that are trying to get help for their friends. But I also feel that the school can’t do everything in their power to fix things or help. Students can’t and won’t get help if they don’t want it, even if someone reports something,” Nemecek said.

In just the past year, there have been two suicides of LT students.

“I feel like we needed to do something, even if it was just a poster,” Kaitlin Lizik ‘18, the Peer Leadership Club President, said.

Lizik thought of the idea of putting up posters for spreading suicide awareness, and she emailed Jane Bauer, one of the sophomore counselors and the Peer Leadership Club sponsor, Christina Rossetti ‘18, the Peer Leadership Club Vice President, said.

The Peer Leadership Club is putting up two posters in every classroom and a few in the hallways. One poster will be a R.O.A.R. poster, and the other poster will be an A.C.T. poster. On Wednesday, Oct. 7, before the late start of morning classes, Peer Leadership Club and a few volunteers went around all of the halls and looked in all of the classrooms to make sure that there was a R.O.A.R. and an A.C.T. poster in each classroom and some scattered throughout the halls too.

Rossetti said what she would do if any of her friends or just anyone at LT in general would ever consider committing suicide.

“I think if any of my friends are thinking about it I’ll talk to them. If anything else happens [regarding more suicides] we will definitely make more suicide awareness posters,” Rossetti said.

Other than what Peer Leadership has done so far with the R.O.A.R. and A.C.T. posters, there are a few ideas in the works for spreading more suicide awareness.

“[Peer leadership isn’t planning more things to do] that I’m aware of. Putting up the posters is the best that we can do right now. I thought of trying to get a speaker to come talk about suicide, but I don’t know if we will be able to do that,” Lizik said.

Lizik isn’t the only one who has thought of holding an event to spread more suicide awareness, though.

“I feel that there should be an assembly or some kind of event that the school should hold to spread awareness about suicide, because students are just not aware and other people need to know that there is help. I feel like an event gives people a chance to not feel alone and for other people to understand more,” Nemecek said.