Eric Reid, 17, said he "sort of had to be dragged" to the presentation about Senior Week put on by HC DrugFree last week. His mother, Crissy Reid, sitting next to him in the Howard High School auditorium, had insisted on it.
The Howard High senior, like most new graduates from Maryland and surrounding states, plans to spend a week in June at the beach with his friends, and she wanted to be sure he knew how to stay safe and out of trouble.
"He's never been away from home before, unchaperoned," Crissy Reid said. "You hear that there's drinking and there's partying."
Like Senior Week, the HC DrugFree presentations about the risks involved have become an annual ritual. Laura Smit, executive director of HC Drug Free, estimates the nonprofit organization has been hosting the talks for seven years.
This year has special significance for her, she said, because her daughter is graduating from high school and heading to Ocean City.
"We really think it's important," Smit said of the 90-minute presentation, which included talks from Ocean City Police Officer Howard Caplan, Beach Patrol member Josh Wasilewski, and a parent who opted for a family vacation instead of Senior Week.
Smit recognizes that many new high school graduates consider Senior Week a rite of passage as much deserved as the ritual of tossing a graduation cap in the air. That's why the population of this normally sleepy beach town swells to 200,000 or more during the month of June, up from 8,500 in the winter months.
"It's a 24-hour party," Caplan said. "Imagine Mardi Gras for the entire month."
But that party atmosphere means the Police Department goes into high gear, watching for underage drinking and making sure the visitors are safe.
Caplan said that Ocean City hires about 135 seasonal officers to supplement the usual Police Department roster of 104. These young men and women, generally in training to be full-time officers, are in plain clothes, he said. "They look just like the rest of the kids," he said.
Caplan rattled off some numbers as the Howard High audience gasped. In January 2007, the Ocean City Police Department issued eight alcohol-related citations, he said. In June, the number was 919. In January, the department responded to 2,580 calls. In June, it responded to 13,400.
Not all brushes with the law are alcohol-related. Loud music in cars or late at night can also lead to citations. Caplan also urged the young men in the audience to use common sense when socializing. "If she says no, it's no, and if she can't say no, it's still no," he said.
Caplan told parents in the audience to consider Ocean City police officers their allies in the quest to keep their children safe. Parents can call the department any time of the day or night, and police will knock on a motel-room door and tell the child to call home.
"We will do what we can to keep them safe," he said.
That mission is shared by the Beach Patrol, said Wasilewski, who teaches health at Mayfield Woods Middle School during the school year and works for the Beach Patrol in the summer. He described risks ranging from sunburn and dehydration to rip tides, and said lifeguards are on duty from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
"If your sons and daughters go on in the ocean off-hours, they are on their own," he said.
Though Senior Week remains a popular Maryland tradition, not all families participate. Donna Thewes, the parent who spoke at Howard High Wednesday night, said that her three daughters were each allowed to choose a family trip that would take place instead of Senior Week. Much as she loves Ocean City, she said, she thinks Senior Week is dangerous. Even if her children behaved, she said, "I wasn't going to have a drunk driver hit my kid."
Her family traveled to Europe, Alaska and the Mediterranean, Thewes said, but the trips don't have to be so extravagant.
"We did it because we wanted family time," she said. As children grow up and leave home, she said, "you're not going to have that family time like you do now."