On Friday, Foothill students gathered in Spirito Hall to kick off the first of many events which will be hosted by Friday Night Live, or FNL.

Since 1984, Friday Night Live has been hosting events to promote a safe and drug/alcohol free environment for teenagers.

FNL’s purpose is mainly to be a hang-out place, to keep teenagers out of trouble and to occupy them with fun and safe activities.

“A lot of the time you see TV advertising a message that in order to have fun their needs to be alcohol or drugs involved and FNL shows that you can have fun without those use,” said Foothill Vice Principal La Sonja Brown.

The school has received a GRASP grant, a grant that is given to schools to provide educational activities to all students K-12 grade. This grant was previously used on clubs, educational conferences and other educational purposes.

However, this year the grant money will go towards FNL events. Unfortunately the grant will expire at the end of this school year and if the grant money is not used by June, then the money will no longer be available for the use of FNL.

Foothill’s FNL program was created with the help and support of Foothill counselors Juana Vega, David Vallejo, and Debbie Freeman. They chose 7 students to be part of the FNL committee which plans events every month.

Junior Celeste Lopez who is the Vice President of FNL said that their goal was to have at least 50 people show up, but there were over 75 students that attended the event.

“It was a success for being the first event, there were more people than what we had expected,” said Lopez.

“It doesn’t matter how many people showed up, if 10 kids showed up and had a great time, then it would have been successful,” said Vega.

Many of the students that went to FNL’s first event had a great time.

“It’s pretty chill; there are so many things for us to do here,” said senior Jackelyn Sical.

“I loved the environment because I felt like you could talk to anybody, everybody interacted with each other, it was a place where everybody could be themselves, meet new people and make new friends,” Lopez said.

Students had a variety of activities to choose from including Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), Guitar Hero, sports, hide-and-go-seek or watching a movie.

“We’re very happy; it was a great turn out, a lot of the kids showed up. The best part was seeing all the kids have a great time,’’ Vega said.

Not only did the students have fun, but the supervisors did as well. Brown danced the night away on the DDR, while Vega tackled students in the football game that took place on the quad. 

“What I enjoyed the most of FNL was getting to hang out with the students and seeing the other side of them,” Vallejo said.

Other high school students were not allowed to come to the first FNL event because the committee decided that they wanted to establish a community where Foothill students could get to know each other first. In the future, however, other high schools will be invited to attend. 

Foothill Dragon Press staff reporter Sobeida Curiel contributed to the reporting of this article.