GRIM REAPER WARNS OF DRUNKEN-DRIVING DANGERS

It looked like a miniature funeral procession traveling through the streets of Cape Girardeau Wednesday -- a hearse preceded by a police car with its lights flashing.

But instead of going to a cemetery, it stopped on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University. Out of the back of the hearse stepped a skeleton-faced figure clad in a black robe and carrying a sickle. It was the Grim Reaper, the figure of death.

The visit from the Grim Reaper, sponsored by the university's chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), marked the kickoff of the university's recognition of Alcohol Awareness Week, which officially begins next Monday.

The reaper's job was to travel across campus, pointing randomly at students to signify the random way in which alcohol can affect lives. Then, after the reaper pointed, one of his assistants would hand the student a black T-shirt.

"You're dead," the assistant would say as she handed the shirt to the student.

In all, PRSSA handed out about 80 shirts, each emblazoned with a picture of the reaper and a simple message: "If you think alcohol doesn't affect you, you're dead wrong."

The shirts are meant to represent the number of college students who are killed annually in alcohol-related accidents across the state. The random manner in which they are handed out is meant to remind students of the indiscriminate way in which people are victims of drunken driving.

"We're trying to make students aware that people our age are dying in alcohol-related accidents," said Merri Soong, PRSSA president and one of the reaper's assistants.

"It's a wake-up call to say, 'If you're going to drink and drive, you're going to kill other people and kill yourself,'" she said.

Soong said the student organization, which has sponsored Grim Reaper day for seven years, was not telling students not to drink but telling them that if they drink they should drink responsibly.