High school students get grim lesson in alcohol awareness

Students witnessed an "accident," complete with victims.

The Grim Reaper stalked the halls of Mountain Home High School April 24, silently removing selected students from their classrooms, pronouncing them "dead."

As part of a day-long alcohol awareness program, the selected students had their faces painted white, were given black T-shirts and sent back into their regular school day, forbidden to speak, phone, text, or communicate by any other means with any student. They were "dead" and their friends and classmates would have to do without them for the day, and, perhaps imagine what it might be like to not have them in their lives ever again.

The program, presented by the Natural Helpers and Health Occupations Students of America, held alcohol awareness activities during the lunch hour and speakers during an assembly.

The day ended as dramatically as it began, with representatives from law enforcement, the fire department, ambulance and an extrication unit working together to stage a realistic looking head-on auto collision, surrounded by fire, police and rescue vehicles.

As students filed out of the assembly to the outside of the gym, they were met with the sight of a small pickup and a car that appeared to have collided. Smoke poured out from under the cars as firefighters and rescue workers began pulling the "victims" (actual students) from the crash.

The boy driving the pickup was pronounced "dead" and the girl in the driver's seat of the car was moulaged to appear severely injured. The extrication unit removed her from the car and she was placed in an ambulance and taken away.

The Elmore County Extrication Unit removed the top of the car and pulled out three female students. There were soft gasps among the observing students as the limp bodies were pulled from the car and placed on the pavement, covered with sheets.

While some of the students laughed and talked through the demonstration, many were quiet and respectful and even those who seemed not to take it seriously may have been more thoughtful than they appeared.

Firefighter Ron Nicolosi approached one young man who was in front of the other students, very noticeably laughing and joking and pointed out that situations like the one they were staging really did happen and Nicolosi said, "it breaks my heart every time I have to pull one of you out of an accident like this."

When the same student was asked how he would feel if the girls on the ground covered by sheets were actually dead, he answered seriously, "I'd be devastated. . . even if I didn't know them. They're my age and they'd never get to have a future."

One of the white-faced black-shirted girls who is a senior, said she thought that it seemed to her that more of the older students took the presentations and the accident demonstration seriously. She said she had the impression the things that could happen as the result of excessive drinking didn't seem as real to the younger students she talked to.

All of the time and combined effort of the student organizations, faculty, law enforcement and fire and rescue units were given in the hope that students would become more aware of the potentially disastrous results of drinking and avoid alcohol, especially during prom and graduation celebrations.