Not scared. They were angry.
June 12, 2008 - Students at El Camino High School were in shock when they learned that several of their classmates had been killed in car accidents over the weekend. The announcement by a highway patrol officers was utterly convincing. It was also a hoax.
School authorities have been defending the demonstration every since. Students were preparing for graduation, an emotional time anyway, and the timing couldn't be worse. The school had counselors on hand and planned to reveal the missing students were alive several hours later.
The stunt was a twist on a program called Every 15 Minutes, which was designed in the early 1990s, when someone was killed an average of once every 15 minutes in alcohol-related accidents. Even the Executive Director of Every 15 Minutes, didn't endorse the hoax. Others, however, thought the demonstration made the point.
Wendy Reynolds, a former prosecutor who spoke at El Camino High about her experience being orphaned by a drunk driver, said most students would benefit.TT - At last count, there were 273 online stories about the stunt, including the London Daily Telegraph and newspapers in Australia.
"I think we save lives if one kid makes a better choice every time he gets in a car," she said. Perondi said the program students got the message. "We did this in earnest," he said. "This was not done to be a prankster."
Few bothered to explain the program was presented last month or to link to the Centers for Disease Control and their information about drunk driving. The scare story would have been a good opportunity to explore the statistics collected at Alchohol Alert that show California leads the nation in drunk driving deaths. In Wisconsin alcohol is involved in more than 1/3 of all fatal traffic crashes. Even a casual search of Google or Yahoo yields thousands of state statistics on drunk driving fatalities.
It was a missed opportunity for the media to carry a campaign to graduating students across the country.
