Contact: Funda Alp, 203-396-8241, alpf@sacredheart.edu
For Immediate Release
June 4, 2007
SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY STUDENT LANDS A KNOCK OUT WITH ANTI-SMOKING POSTER DESIGN
FAIRFIELD, Conn. — A pair of black boxing gloves dangles from a nail on SHU Art & Design student Carl Henry’s poster, accompanied by the message: “Knock Out Smoking Before It Knocks Out You.” Henry’s poster design took first prize in the Regional Youth/Adult Substance Abuse Project’s (RYASAP) anti-smoking public service ad competition. All schools and colleges in the region are invited to enter, and a winning design is chosen from each school.
“It feels great, because the students in my class are extremely talented,” Henry of Bridgeport said of winning. “To know my piece was chosen over their entries gives me a strong feeling of accomplishment.”
Henry, a senior at SHU, received a certificate and two free movie passes during a May 3 ceremony at RYASAP’s Bridgeport headquarters. The organization’s executive director, Robert Francis, said 52 people attended the event. All winning entries will be shown on 16 screens at Bow Tie Marquis Theater in Trumbull sometime during the busy holiday movie season, a period from November to January, according to RYASAP Prevention Partnership Director Jan Laster.
Henry’s initial poster idea was of a boxer punching a cigarette out, before his professor, SHU Department of Art & Design Chairman Jonathan Walker, helped him toward the final concept of the boxing gloves. “That went well with the theme, because when boxers retire, they hang up their gloves,” Henry recalled. “If you don’t stop smoking, that will happen to you. You’ll hang up your gloves because your life’s retired.”
Henry said he hopes his poster contributes to efforts to prevent children from ever lighting up.
“I think it is part of a larger idea,” Francis said of the posters. “We keep the idea of tobacco prevention in people’s eyes. This is one more part of our counter-advertising campaign.”
Laster said local community prevention councils underwrote a portion of the program with funds from the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
RYASAP is an urban/suburban youth and community development coalition serving the Greater Bridgeport region. Its mission is to create healthy communities, free of the harm caused by substance abuse, crime and violence.
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About Sacred Heart University
Sacred Heart University, the second-largest Catholic university in New England, offers more than 40 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs on its main campus in Fairfield, Connecticut, and satellites in Connecticut, Luxembourg and Ireland. Approximately 5,800 students attend the University’s four colleges: Arts & Sciences; Education & Health Professions; University College; and the AACSB-accredited John F. (Jack) Welch College of Business. The Princeton Review includes SHU in its “Best 366 Colleges: 2008,” U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges 2007” ranks SHU in the top tier of Master’s Universities in the Northeast, and Intel rates it #11 among the nation’s most “unwired” campuses. SHU fields 32 division I athletic teams, and has an award-winning program of community service. www.sacredheart.edu
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