By Claire Gunning
This year, the Every 15 Minutes video was played during morning office hours on May 11 in the small theater to show students the potential effects of drinking and driving.
Every 15 Minutes is a program where chosen students are taken out of class every 15 minutes to represent how often someone dies in the United States due to an alcohol-related traffic collision. Every other year, the class, which has now been disbanded in the 2015 school year, along with Vice Principal Deborah Hofreiter and Mira Costa School Resource Officer John Loy, holds a live enactment of a drunk driving crash on campus. On the off years, a video is played that was made from the live enactment. This year, the video from 2013 was shown by Hofreiter solely.
“I think, if nothing else, this makes students realize what the implications of drinking and driving or getting in a car with someone else who has been drinking and driving can be,” Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale said.
The video shown from 2013 includes a scene acted by students who are at a party where there is underage drinking. The party in the video was followed by a staged car accident caused by a student driver under the influence. The film includes hospital scenarios and portrays people in fatal situations and in trouble with law enforcement.
“In the past, I have worked with members of administration as well as members of PACE to create a selection of kids to participate,” Loy said. “We try to get a broad range of students in order for them to have the ability to touch as many people out of all of the Costa students as possible.”
According to Loy, the school is still undecided on who will organize and star in the Every 15 Minutes live enactment that will take place in the 2016-2017 school year. Because the PACE class was disbanded, student involvement is still unclear.
“Every 15 Minutes was one of the most interesting things I’ve done in high school because it put things in perspective for me and created a whole new way of looking at things,” Every 15 Minutes video participant senior Cole Keefer said. “You can always look at facts and statistics, but it is completely different to experiencing what death would be like, and it adds a whole new emotional aspect to it.”
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