Sober up during Alcohol Awareness Week
Stick figures have invaded USU campus – but they aren’t just any stick figures.
Each person on a popsicle stick represents one American who dies each year in alcohol-related car accidents – 17,000 deaths each year or about one every one-half hour.
“There’s a big number of people who die each year, and we needed to make people aware of it,” said Tom Cowley, a junior accounting major and one of the twelve USU students who helped put the stick figures all over campus.
The students organized the project for their NHR 3110 class to make students and community members aware of the dangers of drunken driving, said Emily Dance, who helped organize the project.
“Students need to be aware of drunk driving so they can protect themselves and wear a seat belt and make sure their friends don’t drive drunk,” she said.
The project has been being planned since January when Doug Cook, a senior studying mechanical engineering, came up with the idea.
The students needed to do a community service project that would incorporate the organizational skills they learned in their class.
Cook said he wanted to send a safety message to people who consume alcohol and to encourage lawmakers to form a database that would keep track of driving-under-the-influence convictions.
“I read a newspaper article and got to thinking the laws weren’t strict enough on drunk driving,” Cook said. “Hopefully this project will influence people that do drink and send a message to legislatures to make a DUI database so all the courts would have access to it.”
The popsicle-stick people were put together by local high-school and junior-high students in various health, driver’s education and psychology classes, Cowley said.
“We wanted the whole community to be involved, and this was a way to make high-school students aware of it,” he said. “If we save one life, it will be successful.”
In addition to the stick people, a car representing what could happen in a drunken driving accident is on display on the south side of the TSC.
The students placed the stick figures around campus on Monday in conjunction with the Student Health and Wellness Center and National Alcohol Awareness month. They have spent over 200 hours on the project, Cook said.
“We’ve had a lot of people come up and ask us what it’s for, and they are amazed at how many deaths there are,” said Dance, a junior economics major. “We decided that probably the best way to make people aware of how many people die is to put that many people around campus.
“People need to wear their seat belts and be designated drivers.”
About 41 percent of all car fatalities in the United States are alcohol related, Cowley said, and about three in every 10 Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some time in their lives.
The center is sponsoring an alcohol screening Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Students can complete a questionnaire to find out if their alcohol consumption puts them at risk, Cowley said.
“[The questionaire] is making sure you’re not putting yourself in danger by consuming too much,” he said. “It’s very important for students to know because they are making decisions now that will affect the rest of their lives.”
Students can meet with counselors after the screening to talk about ways to drink responsibly, Cowley said.
Cook said he hopes the project will teach the community about the dangers of driving drunk.
“From the number of people who have stopped and asked us what we are doing, we hope it does some good,” he said.
-kcartwright@cc.usu.edu
High school students Cory Boheme, Donovan Peters and Ty Miller help place stick men on the Quad Monday afternoon. The 8,500 papers represent the more than 17,000 people killed each year by drunk drivers. (Photos by Cory Hill)