...to give students a demonstration that would hopefully stick.
On May 7, graduating students emerged from the school to see student actors staging a car accident in William E. Hay Composite High School's parking lot, with one student lying half-in the vehicle, through a hole in the windshield, apparently decapitated in the mock accident.
Students witnessed the entire scene from the get-go, as emergency responders arrived, sirens blaring and lights flashing, to extract the survivors from the car, cover the deceased in a blanket, and arrest the drunken impaired driver who had been driving the scenario's vehicle.
The driver this year was “arrested” by RCMP, while the fire department had to cut the roof off the vehicle to extricate a student in the rear of the vehicle whose back had been broken. The front-seat passenger, not wearing a seat belt, killed.
“The professionals treat it like a real crime scene,” Stettler Regional Fire and Rescue deputy chief Etienne Brugman said. “After that, students head inside for a presentation, where a funeral home has set up a coffin.”
The demonstration has been happening yearly for nearly a decade-and-a-half, Brugman estimates, and involves all levels of emergency response and local funeral homes.
While students understand, on a logical level, that drinking and driving is dangerous, it sometimes requires a more visceral scene to stick with them.
Last year's graduation at William E. Hay was without grad-night tragedy, though the death of graduate Andrew Nibourg a week after grad in a collision while the teen was on his way to work plunged the student body, his family and many in the community into mourning.
Joe Thibeau, student services co-ordinator and William E. Hay teacher, said that students are pretty serious about not drinking and driving.
“I think (presentations like this) hits home,” he said. “They take it pretty serious and to heart. It's a great reminder from the community about the perils involved with impaired driving.”
The school does its best to limit the viewing of the presentation to Grade 12 students only, so students don't become numb to the effect of the presentation through years of viewing, Thibeau said.