According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted during their college careers, and more than 90 percent of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report the assaults.

A business team from the Lake Forest High School’s Business Incubator class is taking the problem head on and developing a solution to arm vulnerable college students. Gwendolyn Driscoll and Jenelle Frevert, founders of Safe & Sound Spray, developed an affordable hand-held protective device that includes an alarm and pepper spray with UV dye that will expose and frighten attackers, and make them easily identifiable.

“While I’m really excited to be in college, I’m worried about it too, and so is my dad,” said Driscoll. “The facts are crazy: every 107 seconds, another American is sexually assaulted. So this is a big problem for all of us. Because of the built-in alarm and UV-dye, we’re hoping this unique pepper spray could be part of the solution.”

Just this year, the company hired four new interns: Annie Aberle, Mary Doheny, Taylor Rappeport, and Su Yardimci to help run the company while the girls are away. The four are current seniors at Lake Forest High School. Member Annie Aberle says, “I had no idea what a huge issue safety is on college campus,” The interns are also very passionate about this product, because they themselves, will be going onto college campuses next year.

Safe & Sound Spray is a two-switch system. The bottom button activates a loud safety sound to scare a potential attacker and alert others nearby of the danger. The top button releases UV and blue dyed pepper spray, and activates the alarm simultaneously. Safe & Sound Spray is the only multi-functional device available at an affordable price of $25 per unit.

To learn more about Safe & Sound Spray, go to www.safeandsoundspray.com.