On Tuesday, Apr. 3, students and staff wore blue shirts in honor of autism awareness month.

T-shirts could be purchased the past few weeks in the activities office. Students who purchased shirts received them on Tuesday, Mar. 27.

Athletics secretary Nicky Haas ran the awareness campaign and the sale of t-shirts. Haas has a stepson who is on the autism spectrum and has encouraged the staff in past years to wear blue on Apr. 2, in honor of World Autism Awareness Day.

“I thought it would be cool to try to make the halls at West blue for one day to get the word out about Autism,” Haas said.

Haas plans to split the profit and donate all the proceeds.

“I plan to donate half either to Autism Speaks or TACA (Talk About Curing Autism), the other half I would like to donate to the life skills/ autism program at West,” Haas said.

Autism awareness month is the whole month of Apr. Students can help spread awareness this month by wearing blue, or changing the lights outside of their homes to blue to show support.

Students are always welcome to stop by and visit students at West on the autism spectrum as well.

“It would be nice if kids would stop down and just say ‘hi’ to some of our kids who are on the spectrum, and even eat lunch with them sometime,” Haas said.

Other staff members at West spread awareness in their own unique ways as well.

“We (my family) have a racecar that we race at the fairgrounds with the Autism Speaks logo on the side” Head Secretary Lisa Rostenbach said.