The lecture trailed to an end in my Honors Economics class as the door swung inward and the Grim Reaper strode into the room. Walking purposefully to the back of the classroom, he placed a spare chair next to senior Ian Gray and gestured for Mr. Carroll to continue teaching, which he did. A minute later, the Grim Reaper tapped Mr. Gray on the shoulder and led him out of the classroom.
Mr. Gray returned 15 minutes later dressed in black clothes and wearing ghostly facial makeup. For the rest of the day, he didn’t communicate with anyone at Old Rochester Regional High School because he was one of the seniors who was “killed” by a drunk driver. A poster of Mr. Gray with the words “Killed by a Drunk Driver” currently hangs in Mr. Carroll’s room.
The Grim Reaper makes an annual appearance at ORR as part of Every 15 Minutes, the two-day drunk driving awareness program for seniors. The name for the program comes from the statistic that someone dies every 15 minutes in an alcohol-related motor vehicle crash. Seniors participate in the program every spring during the first week of April, long before both the senior prom and graduation ceremony in June. This year, Every 15 Minutes took place on Wednesday, April 4 and Thursday, April 5.
My experience with Every 15 Minutes was slightly untraditional as I was participating in a field trip on April 4 with members of the Advanced Placement English 12 class. We were not in the building during the two presentations of the Every 15 Minutes video and the following address by Tri-Town police officers, so we had to watch the video on Tuesday, April 3, instead. The rest of the student body attended the presentations according to their class schedules.
The presentations lasted roughly 45 minutes and presented the stories of different New England high school and college students who drank, drove, and paid the price in either their life or the lives of others. The police officers who volunteered their time to Every 15 Minutes spoke about their experiences sharing the news of such motor vehicle crashes to parents, friends, and loved ones.
The difficult, emotionally draining part of Every 15 Minutes occurred on Wednesday, April 5. The students who were “killed” spent the night on campus with both school staff and guest speakers for the coming senior assembly. The police officers visited the homes of the participating seniors to tell their parents that their son or daughter died in an alcohol-related motor vehicle crash. Parents and children then each wrote letters to the other that expressed their love, regrets and sorrow at being parted in such a tragic and sudden way.
The next morning, the seniors met in the auditorium for the assembly at 10:00 am. The assembly began with a presentation by a Rhode Island nurse and mother who spoke about her experience with victims of alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes in the emergency room. Her stories were both professional and personal, as she moved the audience by speaking about her son’s best friend’s death during her shift and, not much later, her own son’s death. (This story was also part of the Every 15 Minutes video that the seniors had watched the day before.)
Afterwards, the participants in Every 15 Minutes took to the stage with Tri-Town police officers to perform a skit about the consequences of choosing to drink and drive. Volunteers from this small student population sat with their parents on the stage and took turns reading their letters to their classmates, which made nearly the entire senior class distraught.
Another guest speaker, a 19-year-old girl from Taunton, spoke about her own motor vehicle crash (not related to alcohol, drugs, or distracted driving) and her feelings of guilt after harming another person, imploring the ORR seniors to always be careful while driving, no matter what. To conclude, guidance counselor Donna Perry opened the microphone to all seniors who wanted to share an experience with tragic motor vehicle crashes. When the assembly drew to a close, the seniors ate lunch together before attending their last class of the day.
By Anne Smith