Hundreds of juniors and seniors watched the crash scene for Shattered Dreams, March 3. The scene was part of a dramatization to remind students of the dangers of drinking and driving.

“I think it’s a good cause and it shows awareness for how drunk driving can be like the results and what happened after a stupid decision and you’d be like “hey I’ll be fine” and then a few minutes later you and everyone else is dead,” senior Clayton Wachsmann said. “It really shows how the rest of your life can kind of be either not happening or ruined.”

Wachsmann was one of the victims students witnessed as students filed out to see a head-on collision between a truck and a car. There were bodies on the hood of the truck, sprawled out in the grass, and laying in the vehicles. When the police and ambulance arrived on scene, the EMTs immediately used the Jaws of Life to get the people in the cars, while the police officers sobriety tested junior Jon Wolski and arrested him when he failed the test. Wachsmann was taken to the hospital where he found he was paralyzed from the accident. Other students died at the hospital and at the scene.

“I thought it would be a very good experience just to make awareness about alcohol and what it can do when your intoxicated while driving and all the bad things that can happen,” RRADD member Melissa Phung said. “That’s like real life stuff that happens almost every day and every weekend especially since spring break is coming up.”

In addition to the crash scene, a Grim Reaper appeared in classrooms to pull students out of class every 15 minutes as part of the living dead. Fifteen minute intervals were chosen to represent the statistic that says a teenager dies every 15 minutes in an alcohol-related accident. These students had their faces painted in gray make-up and were not allowed to speak or be on their phones for the rest of the day. When the Grip Reaper appeared, a RRADD member read an obituary to the class. As the students “died” their obituaries were placed on Twitter and the Raider Rumbler website.  The parents of the students were also notified that their child had died.

“Hopefully, it’s a really big impact because it’s supposed to be so realistic and just to see the presence of people not being there and kind of feel that it could happen because anybody can die any day,” junior Casey Tarvin. “So if it can affect one or two people I think that it changes so many lives because the statistic is that people die from drunk driving every 15 minutes.”

RRADD hosts Shattered Dreams each year with the expanded version that includes a crash scene every other year. Senior TJ Wolski was one of the students nominated to participate in the crash scene to raise awareness for drunk driving.

“It’s pretty cool experience,” Wolski said. “But it’s realizing what could happen, I could die and my brother could actually get arrested and I’m really protective over him. I could lose my best friend and that kind of sucks.”

The crash scene included police, firefighters and EMTs helping the crash victims. RRADD and Shattered Dreams volunteers decided to participate because they wanted to show that a single decision can impact someone’s entire life.

“If we can narrow it down just from our influence alone I think that will be really good for the school and just really good to not have the absence of a student and save lives,” Tarvin said.