UNIVERSITY'S SADD CHAPTER STAGES MOCK DRUNKEN-DRIVING ACCIDENT

Students from Southeast Missouri State University stood in stunned silence Wednesday as emergency crews worked feverishly at the noon hour to free four students trapped in a vehicle that had crashed into a tree near Academic Hall.

Three of the students were determined to be suffering from serious injuries. The fourth student was pronounced dead at the scene.

Nearby, signs had been prominently posted to warn curious on-lookers. "THIS IS NOT REAL," the signs read.

The accident, a drunken-driving docu-drama, was staged by members of Students Against Driving Drunk (S.A.D.D.) and the Cape Girardeau Safe Communities Program as a way to help college students see what happens in crashes that involve alcohol.

"We try not to refer to them as drunk driving accidents but as crashes," said Donna Boardman, Assistant Coordinator of Cape Girardeau Safe Communities.

"When a person has made the decision to get behind the wheel after drinking, it is not an accident. An accident is not something we can control, and we can control drinking and driving," she said.

The docu-drama, which is generally staged at a prominent corner on campus during a busy time of the school day, began shortly before noon at the corner of Pacific and Normal, near the language arts building and Academic Hall.

Members of the Cape Girardeau Police Department, the university's Department of Public Safety, the Cape Girardeau Fire Department and the Cape County Ambulance Service participated in the fourth year of the docu-drama on campus.

Wendy Turner, president of the university's S.A.D.D. chapter, said Wednesday that the docu-drama always gets a mixed reaction from students who watch it. Some students, who have lost friends or family members in drunk driving crashes, are moved to tears, while others say that it will never happen to them, she said.

Turner said that drinking and driving remains a large problem for college students.

"People are talking in class about going out and drinking and then driving home. I always say, `Can't you find somebody who will drive without drinking?' But they say that everybody wants to drink," she said.

In a related matter, the Cape Girardeau Police Department announced Wednesday that they will be conducting sobriety checkpoints this weekend, stopping cars and looking for impaired drivers.

Chief Rick Hetzel said Wednesday that the checkpoints are part of his department's efforts to combat the DWI problem which is responsible for 32,000 traffic crashes nationally each year.

"More than 40 percent of all fatal vehicle crashes involve alcohol, and the chance of being involved in an alcohol related traffic crash increases during weekend nights," Hetzel said.