BRIDGEWATER STATE COLLEGE

Massachusetts Aggression-Reduction Center (M.A.R.C.)

Public Service Announcement Contest 2005-06

Thank you for your interest and participation in the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center Public Service Announcement contest. This contest is open to all grades 6 - 12 students in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

A Public Service Announcement (“PSA”) is, in essence, a video commercial designed to raise awareness or change attitudes, rather than to sell a product. Examples of previous Public Service Announcements are those that promote buckling your seat belt in a car (the “Click It or Ticket” television campaign) or those designed to discourage drug use in teens (the “This Is Your Brain On Drugs” campaign).

At MARC our mission is to promote tolerance and raise awareness and knowledge, and thereby to change attitudes, about the issues of aggression, violence and bullying. As part of that mission we seek to reward students who make positive efforts to change the attitudes in their own social groups. This contest is part of that effort.

The Contest Guidelines are below. Students in schools should form groups of 2 to 7 students, and those groups should together produce a Public Service Announcement video. That production must be designed to raise awareness and improve other teenagers’ attitudes around the issues of aggression and bullying in school.

Within the guidelines below, content may be anything that students consider would be effective in raising awareness about bullying and aggression among teens. Student production groups might consider, as suggestions, the following questions: What is bullying and why does it happen? What can be done about it? Who can you turn to when you are bullied?

The winning production team will be honored at an Awards Ceremony at Bridgewater State College on March 28th, 2006 (Snow date: March 30th). We are currently negotiating and hope to offer the winning team a limousine to escort them to the Ceremony. Winning schools, supervising adults, and others are welcome and the students’ families will also be invited.

Contest Guidelines

  1. The video must be produced, written, and acted in by students.
  2. The student group producing the video must be under the supervision of a teacher, coordinator, guidance counselor, theater teacher, or other adult in the student group’s school. The supervisor may be a volunteer adult (e.g., a parent from the community) if the school authorizes the project.
  3. The PSA/video may be in digital or analog format. It may be submitted on video tape or DVD, or may be made available on a school-run website where we can view it for judging purposes.
  4. The PSA/video must run between approximately 30 and 45 seconds.
  5. Content must be appropriate for all audiences. Submissions will be disqualified if they contain:
    1. Obscenities of any type;
    2. Inappropriate or offensive language of any type, including racial, ethnic, or group slurs;
    3. Nudity;
    4. Sexual innuendo, sexual content, sexually suggestive filming techniques; or
    5. Any other content which the judges decide is inappropriate for a school contest.
  6. Parental releases (found at the end of this page) must be signed by every student under age 18 who is immediately involved in the production. People that do not play a vital role do not need them. (For example, students who help run a school television studio but only assist in this particular production tangentially would not be part of the winning team and therefore do not need releases; but anyone who speaks on camera or anyone who is actively involved in the production must have a parental release.) The parental release is necessary because the winners’ names will be released to the press and their PSA/video may be aired on cable or network television.
  7. Productions must be turned into MARC by January 20th, 2006. Submissions should be sent to: PSA Contest, Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center, Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater, MA 02325. (Please take care to package DVDs and videotapes appropriately. PSA/videos may also be posted on a school website for judging; in that case we only need the appropriate link.)
  8. This contest is open to any 6th thru 12th grader in the state of Massachusetts.

Download the Parental Release Form

Last Modified: December 2, 2005