A sobering look at prom safety

Every 15 Minutes. The Safe Sober Prom Program. Safe & Sober. These are all names for national campaigns like Carlmont’s own Sober Prom to discourage teens from driving while drunk on prom night.

Prom is the obvious target for this type of campaign because so many students share the experience of prom. About half of a school will participate in this one activity that could turn potentially dangerous for students who choose to partake in illicit activities before, during or after. Finding an effective way to encourage them to do it safely — or, better yet, not at all — makes sense.

This year’s Sober Prom was spectacular. Police car after police car, fire truck after fire truck came with sirens blaring. Even a coroner’s van and a helicopter descended upon the scene as more than 700 juniors and seniors watched from the sidelines. It was unreal, but that was kind of the point.

My first Sober Prom was last year at Carlmont. It was a much smaller demonstration: just a beat-up car in the quad. This year, there was a full two-car crash simulation in which we watched our peers in the aftermath that ended up killing two of our classmates. The paramedics and police came in droves and the jaws of life ripped the top off one of the cars. The next day, we held a funeral in the gym for one of the students who was “dead” on site and another who had flatlined. Their parents even showed up to make emotional speeches and cry for their lost children. They ended the event by uploading a high-quality video of the whole ordeal onto YouTube so we could relive it as we pleased.

We saw our classmate get zipped into a body bag, then watched his friends, dressed in black tie, solemnly parade around the gym with his (fake) casket. It was unmistakably uncomfortable. The rationale was that loss is not supposed to be comfortable, but watching the parents of our (not actually dead) classmates cry (for real) didn’t seem to make sense.

We had been required to miss important class time — less than a month before AP testing — to watch the demonstrations. We were also expected to find our own way to make up the work. Suffice it to say the teachers weren’t hugely supportive of the event, and simply going back to class after seemed like a letdown.

More confusingly, Sober Prom’s message didn’t stay on the theme of drunk driving throughout the whole event. For most of the second day they talked about “making good choices” overall rather than homing in on choices we make in risky situations. No one quite knew what exactly we were being asked to do. Was this even about sobriety?

After that, we debated on whether he whole event was worth it. We worried about how expensive it must have been to get a helicopter to land on the softball field, while some of our classes don’t even have enough textbooks for everyone.

There was clearly a decision made for this year’s Sober Prom to be much bigger than last year’s. Perhaps it was to burn it into our brains forever; but the result felt a little too over the top to be relatable, and that’s for what it was likely to be remembered.

As if to prove that point, the next day the “dead” students came back to school and things went back to normal. It was smoothed over.

In the moment, the general consensus seemed like it may not have made the intended impact. As cool as it looked it looked, it was pretty hard to be convinced of its effectiveness.

However, prom night gave me an opportunity to reassess.

At one of the after-parties, one boy (let’s call him “Scott”) stepped up and took away another student’s keys (“Andrew”) when Scott suspected Andrew was about to drive under the influence. Eventually, everyone got involved while Scott held Andrew’s keys. There was a heated back-and-forth in the entryway, including the words: “This is what Sober Prom was teaching us.” Still, after about an hour, the party deemed Andrew sober enough to drive and he left.

Maybe everyone was overreacting. Maybe that interaction would have happened anyway. Maybe the school’s Sober Prom campaign was what pushed Scott in a way that saved Andrew’s life.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to credit Sober Prom. Sober Prom’s message was aimed at the wrong person.

Sober Prom’s point was to stop us from driving under the influence. As if we did not know that when you’re tired or inebriated at 3 a.m., and you’ve got to get home, you need to use better judgment. It’s a mistake to expect teens who are drunk or high to make any well-reasoned decisions about themselves, let alone ones that put lives on the line.

Sober Prom focused too much on the Andrews in high school: people who might do dumb things when they’re drunk. Perhaps it would have been more effective to appeal to the more conscientious Scotts in high school; in the end it was Scott who stepped in and helped Andrew.

Teens are famously tribal. When friends are in danger, it’s not just about their judgment — it’s about everyone’s judgment. Neither a Scott nor an Andrew is likely to see themselves as part of a disaster like Sober Prom portrayed, but maybe they could imagine their friends in one.

Sober Prom played on our emotions by ripping open wrecked cars and showing us tragic pictures of our (fake dead) friends. But teens don’t need their emotions played with for a message to resonate; they need advice on how to be supportive and look out for their friends. We need the tools to talk to our friends because it’s hard to say, “Hey, maybe you drank too much. Let me call you an Uber,” or “I’ll help you explain to your parents. You’ll need to spend the night here.”

I’m not saying that we should teach teens to be responsible “adults” for the people around them. I’m saying more lives might be saved if we are taught how to think about each other and use the rampant peer pressure in high school for good.

Instead, Sober Prom used intense violence and emotion to communicate its message. Even anecdotally, it’s hard to say if the expense or the inconvenience was worth it. Maybe Andrew really was the one person that got saved by Sober Prom, but we’ll never know and I have my doubts.

We need programs that help teens avoid the real consequences of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, not just make them aware. The fact that Sober Prom exists is a testament to the adults who care about our safety. Perhaps our safe prom night proved that at least some of us got the message. But when we think about how to help teens stay safe in the future, I have to ask: how much will be due to helicopters and crying parents, and how much will be due to friends like Scott?

Talia Fine is a junior at Carlmont High School in Belmont. Student News appears in the weekend edition. You can email Student News at news@smdailyjournal.com.