There’s nothing like a little public humiliation to really drive a lesson home, as demonstrated Thursday morning, May 19, by students and staff at Mount Si School. “Oh! That’s unfortunate,” Highway Patrolman Mike Cheek chuckled as he tallies up the imaginary victims of senior Kasey Channita’s impaired drive around the Mount Si Stadium football field. “Another couple, three, four… four small children,” he said.
As senior Evanne Webster dragged another traffic cone/victim on her drive, Cheek told her “It’s OK, just keep going, I’m sure the medical experts can help.”
It was more reassurance than Channita and fellow senior Evanne Webster got from the assembled student body watching them during this exercise. Cheers and jeers filled the stands, and they got progressively louder as Assistant Principal Beth Castle, by popular demand, was asked to navigate the course, too.
The students and administrator were part of a first at Mount Si and in Washington state, a live demonstration of the effects that distractions and alcohol can have on one’s driving ability. Driving a golf cart loaned from Mount Si Golf Course, each participant maneuvered a set course once with no distractions, once while receiving and replying to text messages and phone calls, and once wearing Fatal Vision goggles that simulate the experience of being intoxicated. They were timed for each lap, and every traffic cone they hit was counted as an error.
Sitting alongside them for each lap was Trooper J. P. McAliffe, who was actually there to help the drivers, but still had to joke that “I’ll have my Taser out, and I’ll have it activated as they’re going through the course.”
As the students finished the course, they were each congratulated, but the officers pretended to handcuff Castle. The crowd went wild.
The comedy of it really helped event organizer Megan McCulley deliver her message, the one she’s been promoting this entire week before prom.
“It’s Think and Drive Week,” said the junior, and member of the ASB student relations committee. “It’s to get the students to make the right decision on prom night.”
Think and Drive events have happened throughout the week, directly aimed at the students going to prom this Saturday, May 21.
“We have prom pals, too… when the fifth graders from all the elementary schools are assigned to a senior and they each write them a letter, asking them ‘please don’t drink and drive, we want you to live!'” said McCulley. “It’s really sweet.”
It’s also dead serious. Before the driving trials began, Trooper Steve Luce listed some alarming statistics for the students: Every day, 15 teenagers in the U.S. are killed, and 60 percent of those deaths are alcohol related, “and there’s a DUI death every 50 minutes,” he added.
Once the exercise finished, Trooper Cheek tells the student body, “Look to your left, and look to your right. These are the people you’ll be graduating with. You don’t want them out on the road with any drunk drivers.”
Snoqualmie Police partnered with the Highway Patrol to put on the exercise, and were excited to be a part of it.
“It takes that whole community contributing,” said Officer Nigel Draveling.
Captain Steve McCulley, father of Megan, said the Highway Patrol was hoping to win a grant to purchase the equipment for this program and bring it to more schools, too.
