By Karen DeMarco

Students learned how to stay safe while having a fun spring break this week during a three-day long event, “One Sweet Trip.”

Sponsored by the Dean of Students Office, among the events was a self-defense class, “Protect your Goodies,” taught by Jay Guerin, Aikido instructor.

“It’s more based on body awareness,” Guerin said of his techniques for self-defense.

He explained that it does not require any physical strength. “It’s all about being in the present moment at the present time. Distractions put us into situations that get us into trouble.”

Guerin gave his students several real life examples and taught them ways to use their own bodies and physical awareness to gain an advantage over a situation.

Rebecca Miller and Samantha Weaver, two freshmen going to Daytona Beach for spring break, expressed their interest over the techniques they learned.

“We learned the basics, stuff we’ll actually use,” Weaver said.

Miller added, “It’s something fun to learn, something different.”

International speaker, Dan Davis, spoke about his own experiences with drugs and alcohol in the lecture, “Fire and Ice.” The goal was to make students more aware of the consequences of their actions.

“I’m dying,” Davis said to the audience. “My life is coming to an end very rapidly and my biggest fear is that you’ll look at me with your immortality.”

Davis’s dream as a boy growing up in a small town in Upstate New York was to be a professional football player, and he said he often wondered what he could have been if he had never gotten involved with drugs and alcohol.

Davis said he started drinking alcohol when he was 14 and he became addicted to coke, meth and speed during his college years. He warned that each was a stepping stone to a new drug.

He gave a detailed and often gruesome description of his life as an addict. He explained every time he got into an accident or got arrested, his dad and coach would get him out of trouble.

Only after his parents locked him out of their house did he realize what he was doing to himself. He decided to go to rehab for 10 weeks and then began to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

Davis has been drug and alcohol free since Oct. 6, 1986, and thought he was doing great until he tested positive for HIV. Several years later he tested positive for Hepatitis C, which Davis explained has no cure. He spread the disease to his wife and daughter.

“I’ve stolen her choice,” Davis said remorsefully of his little girl who never touched drugs or alcohol and now has this deadly disease.

“The stuff you put in your body, it’ll get you now or it’ll get you later,” Davis warned. “You can’t beat it. I can tell you I was the biggest and the fastest and I tried to beat it all.”

The speech was not what many students had expected it to be.

Krissy Weiss, freshman, said, “I didn’t even know what to expect. I think it is really important to open people’s eyes.”

“I thought it was very effective and emotional,” freshman, Amy Lupardi, said.

The speech touched several students who approached Davis afterwards to thank him and share their own experiences.

Students learned how to stay safe and healthy during their spring break trips. (Karen DeMarco/The Chronicle)