OUR VIEW: ’Grim’ event aims to alarm
Forgive us if the top of this week’s front page appears a little morbid. We chose to highlight an annual school event that occurred last week at East Ridge High School. The event, dubbed, “Grim Reaper Day,” exposes students to the realities of drunken driving – an issue that can affect all of us, young people included. Some of us might prefer not to acknowledge it, but it does. We’re glad East Ridge continues to use the event to make a statement.
Forgive us if the top of this week’s front page appears a little morbid.
We chose to highlight an annual school event that occurred last week at East Ridge High School. The event, dubbed, “Grim Reaper Day,” exposes students to the realities of drunken driving – an issue that can affect all of us, young people included. Some of us might prefer not to acknowledge it, but it does. We’re glad East Ridge continues to use the event to make a statement.
The appropriately named event – sponsored by the school’s Students Against Destructive Decisions program – is indeed grim: A student clad as the grim reaper roams the school and “kills” other students for the day. Those students represent an alcohol-related traffic fatality. To drive home the point, a Woodbury police officer reports the student has died in a drunken driving crash. Later, the student’s obituary is read.
At the end of the day as students file out of the building, the “dead” students line up near the exits, standing silent and wearing bright-green T-shirts reading “I was killed by a drunk driver.” White face paint and simulated wounds painted on the students’ faces only add to the harrowing image.
Other schools using the program have even taken it a step further, where the “dead” students are sequestered for a night at a hotel. The isolation in those exercises is aimed at illustrating just what it would be like to be separated from friends and family.
It’s pretty heavy-duty stuff because it needs to be.
Consider these statistics from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety:
n Between 2007 and 2011, there were 1,553 crashes involving teen drivers in Minnesota who had been drinking. Of those crashes, 1,190 involved injuries and 40 involved fatalities.
n During the same time period, 8,242 teen drivers were arrested for DWI in Minnesota.
n Among all drivers, there were 651 people killed in drunk driving crashes between 2007 and 2011.
No one likes going to funerals, least of all those for young people. Especially when those deaths can be prevented.
We applaud East Ridge for bringing attention to the issue of drunken driving. Sometimes a gentle reminder just won’t do. Sometimes the worst-case scenario needs to be portrayed right in front of our eyes for what it is: a stunning, gut-wrenching situation where people leave us forever.
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