OCEANSIDE, Calif. — On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.
Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.
A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of driving drunk.
As seniors prepare for graduation parties Friday, school officials in the largely prosperous San Diego suburb are defending themselves against allegations they went too far.
At assemblies in which speakers talked about the dangers of drunken driving, some students held posters that read: "Death is real. Don't play with our emotions."
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Michelle de Gracia, 16, was in physics class when an officer announced her missing classmate David, a popular basketball player, died instantly after being rear-ended by a drunken driver. She felt nauseated but was too frozen to cry. "They got the shock they wanted," she said.
Some of her classmates were hysterical, prompting the teacher to tell them immediately the death was staged.
Others, including many who heard the "news" between classes, were left in the dark until the 26 missing students reappeared hours later to enact a fatal traffic accident.
Carolyn Magos, 15, thought there might have been a gang shooting when she saw clusters of kids crying in the hall.
"You feel betrayed by your teachers and administrators, these people you trust," Magos said. "But then I felt selfish for feeling that way, because, I mean, if it saves one life it's worth it."
Takeoff on Every 15 Minutes
The stunt was a twist on a program called Every 15 Minutes, which was designed in the early 1990s, when someone was killed an average of once every 15 minutes in alcohol-related accidents.
By 2006, the frequency dropped to once every 39 minutes, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which is not associated with the program.
In California, the state highway patrol, local law enforcement agencies and schools use the curriculum authored by the Every 15 Minutes Organization, based in Lehigh Valley, Pa.
Here's how the program normally works: Students chosen to symbolize the dead are pulled out of their classes by someone in a Grim Reaper costume as their obituaries are read aloud.
A few hours later, they reappear in ghoulish makeup to enact a traffic accident at an assembly. Rescue workers whisk "victims" from a mangled car to a hospital or morgue.
The "dead" then spend the night at a hotel isolated from friends and family before returning the next day for an assembly with parents and professional speakers.
At El Camino, the students who were in on the secret shunned the Grim Reaper skit.
"We didn't want kids laughing at it," said Michelle Molin, 17, a junior. "It's like Halloween."
El Camino officials agreed to try to give students the experience of real grief. They defend how they handled the exercise.
"They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized," said guidance counselor Lori Tauber. "That's how they get the message."
