Drunk Driving Program Teaches Madison Students Every Minute Counts

You drink. You drive. You lose.

This is the slogan of Every 15 Minutes, a nationwide program dedicated to educating students about alcohol related automobile collisions. On Monday, March 19, 2012, the students of witnessed the cataclysmic effects of driving while under the influence.

Monday, 8 a.m.: Senior Melanie Greene was escorted from her classroom by Madison Police Officer Lisa Esposito, and a man shrouded in a heavy, black cloak, meant to represent the Grim Reaper. A priest from St. Vincent’s Church stood solemnly before the remainder of the puzzled class, and began to read an obituary: “Melanie Greene died today as a result of a drunk driving accident. She was 17 years old.” Shortly after, Melanie returned to the classroom with her face painted white, and her lips blue. She was not speaking, and her eyes were empty, focusing her gaze straight ahead. Junior Liz Klein remembers her experience that morning, “I was sitting in physics next to my best friend, like always – but she was like stone, not speaking, not reacting. After a while it started to feel like she really wasn’t there.” A new student was pronounced dead every 15 minutes for the first half of the day, forcing Madison High School students to gain a genuine understanding of the statistic that every 15 minutes, someone is killed in a drunk driving accident. For the remaining hours of the morning, students walked through the halls surrounded by the faces of the “dead” plastered along the lockers accompanied by each student’s date of birth, followed by 3/19/12 – the day each student was murdered.  

1 p.m.: The “walking dead” formed a straight line behind the high school parking lot, where two severely demolished cars had been placed as props with students inside and around them, fake blood splattered across the site of the “accident.” The entire junior and senior class watched a simulated collision in which a student acted as the drunk driver, and others as injured victims and casualties. As the students playing injured screamed in fabricated terror and junior Emily Beaman laid on the pavement, limbs sprawled around her in false fatality, both the audience and the actors become immersed in the scene. Junior Grant Perry, who played the drunk driver, says, “When everyone was screaming like that, for a second I forgot the whole thing was fake.” Junior Meg Calcaterra, cousin of Emily Beaman, had a similar experience, recalling, “Seeing Em lying on the ground like that–with the blood, and the makeup, and everything–it was all so real. It was hard to handle.”

Tuesday, 8 a.m.: The students involved in the program returned to school after having spent the night at a hotel without any form of communication to contact friends or family, sustaining the illusion that they had each truly died. The juniors and seniors filtered into the school gymnasium for an assembly during which a movie, constructed by the students at , was shown of the events of the previous day, including a mock court hearing during which the parents of students who had been “killed” or “injured” testified against Grant Perry, and he was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison for his crime.  At the mention of this sentencing, students gasped, and began to whisper under their breaths, “could that really happen?” and “is that real?” The audience was astonished to learn that this was a realistic sentence for the crime that had been committed, regardless of the convict’s young age.

In the silence that filled the room following the video, three students made their way behind the stage to the microphone, and began reading. Senior Eric Plotskins began, Dear Mom and Dad. Today I died. I never got to tell you …. With shaking voices, each student read the contents of very personal and emotional letters to their parents. Taking a breath, they walked, one by one, out from behind the stage and back to their seats. Each one of their parents then walked to the podium to read similar letters, but began with: Today you died. I never got to tell you ….

 “Reading my letter to my Mom and Dad was one of the hardest things I’ve done,” says Emily Beaman, “It’s horrible to think that this is something real families have to go through.”

The purpose of the program is to instill in students the fact that in these tragedies, as disturbing as they are, are real. In fact, the program at MHS was dedicated to Rachel Eliot a former participant in the Every 15 Minutes program, who was killed in a drunk driving accident in February of 2008. Her mother delivered a heart-wrenching and painfully truthful account of her daughter’s kind, ambitious, and cautious nature, and the story of her untimely and unjust death at the hand of a woman operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.

The terrifying and touching speech instilled in the students of Madison High School the fact that all of the artificial disasters that had occurred over the past day could become a reality at any moment. “It was a pretty scary realization,” says junior Daniela Cleary, “The fact that the most careful people are at risk of being in that kind of accident … I don’t think anybody thought that way before Mrs. Eliot’s speech.”

Whether the students and faculty were willing to admit it or not, the red eyes and sniffling noises erupting from the audience following the assembly, as well as the smoldering embraces given to those who participated in the program, are indicative of the profound impact that Every 15 Minutes had on Madison High School. “At first, when everyone was walking around with painted faces, it was hard to believe, “ admitted junior Becca Johnson, “But when you have to watch people you know, your friends, in a car crash, or read a letter to their mom about being dead, it changes everything.”

Madison High School is merely one of the communities that the Every 15 Minutes program has affected. One by one, the organization is helping to prevent an innocent teenager, like Rachel Eliot, from becoming a statistic.