It was an elaborate hoax, but 36 students at El Camino High pulled it off with potentially life-saving consequences.

The result was a soberingly realistic dramatization about the dangers of drinking and driving, delivered with surprising professionalism.
Many juniors and seniors were driven to tears – a few to near hysterics – May 26 when a uniformed police officer arrived in several classrooms to notify them that a fellow student had been killed in a drunken-driving accident.

The officer read a brief eulogy, placed a rose on the deceased student's seat, then left the class members to process their thoughts and emotions for the next hour.

The program, titled "Every 15 Minutes", was designed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Its title refers to the frequency in which a person somewhere in the country dies in an alcohol-related traffic accident.

About 10 a.m., students were called to the athletic stadium, where they learned that their classmates had not died. There, a group of seniors, police officers and firefighters staged a startlingly realistic alcohol-induced fatal car crash. The students who had purportedly died portrayed ghostly apparitions encircling the scene.

Though the deception left some teens temporarily confused and angry, if it makes even one student think twice before getting behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated, it is worth the price, said California Highway Patrol Officer Eric Newbury, who orchestrates the program at local high schools.

“When someone says to me, 'Oh, my God, you're traumatizing my children,' I'm telling them, 'No, what I'm doing is waking them up,' " said Newbury, whose father was killed by a drunken driver.

“If you don't do your job as a parent ... the only thing I can do is either arrest them and take them to jail or scrape them off the ground and tell you, 'I'm so sorry.' "

Standard speeches don't usually get the desired reaction, Newbury said.

“If I sit there and lecture somebody in a nice way, it's going to go in one ear and out the other," he said. "In today's world, where they have all sorts of gore and fantastic things that kids can access on the computer, if you want to compete with that, you have to jar them emotionally.

“I want them to be an emotional wreck. I don't want them to have to live through this for real."

A few teachers chose not to take part in the production. The ones who did monitored the situation closely. Students who appeared overly distraught were taken aside and told the death was not real.

Senior Brittany Bennett, 17, editor of the school newspaper, played one of the alleged deceased and took the role of a reporter at the accident scene.

Bennett said some students gradually began to discover what was happening on their own.

“Some people were comparing notes, text messaging each other, like, 'So-and-so died,' and 'so-and-so died," she said. "The wheels were starting to turn."

The 36 students who participated later attended a retreat at the Carlsbad Inn, where they tried on "beer goggles" that mimicked the sensation of having a .25-blood alcohol level.

Counselor Lori Tauber first approached the school and students about bringing the presentation to El Camino. Tauber's two daughters attend the school.

Tauber said she is aware that drinking and driving is occurring among the student population.

“I just know in my heart this was worth it," she said

i see dead people

this is bullshit, because it makes the assumption that everyone processes death the same way, and it also conflates the issue of grieving with that of prevention tactics, and they're two entirely different - and IMPORTANT - subjects that shouldn't be thrown into the same bag together.

i agree with erin - if i were a parent and i found out my kid's school had done this, i would be livid.