Every 15 Minutes

In 15 minutes from now, you’ll be finished reading this piece of this edition and move on with your day. In 15 minutes from now, you’ll still be thinking about this piece.

In 15 minutes from now, another high school-aged teenager will tragically die due to a car accident via a drunk driver or texting while driving.

On Thursday afternoon, Carlisle High School students received a rude awakening as the “Every 15 Minutes” program came into the Warren County town and touched a lot of hearts.

The Every 15 Minutes program is a national coalition designed to bring awareness to high school students that drinking or texting while being behind the wheel could bring severe consequences.

Take Carlisle senior Corbin Clark for example.

His plans are to attend Simpson College next year, major in accounting and play on the football team.

Instead, he played the role of operating a car while intoxicated and killed two young girls.

Clark’s morning was a normal one. His afternoon – anything but ordinary.

After being the one who “killed” the two girls, he was arrested and taken into custody. After that, he was transported to the Warren County Courthouse in Indianola where he was booked, had his fair trial, and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Luckily, this was all fake, but the emotions shown from the student body and others impacted made it all seemed like it was happening for real.

And, sadly, it does happen for real. However, an event like this, can allow for prevention like this to happen.

“We want to make sure something like this never happens,” said Carlisle Principal Mike Anthony. “The timeliness of this event is huge with prom coming up this week.”

Every 15 Minutes is a year-round project, but the most impact is brought onto during the most important weeks of a school year – homecoming and prom.

Those two events are the prime events for high school students to go out and party. Whether alcohol is involved or not, students do stupid things. Those stupid things lead to bad results, and those bad results could change lives of those forever.

Seeing the stunned look on all faces from freshmen to seniors resounded all over the crowd as they stood behind the police tape. Tears were shed as some saw their best friends being put onto a body board, taken into ambulances and even one being put in handcuffs escorted by police into an official car.

The students, however, had no idea that the crash was going to be part of the day.

They thought there was going to be an assembly at the end of the day honoring all those students who were pulled out of classes representing the every 15 minutes a student dies in a car accident. Some took that concept seriously, too.

As a police officer walks into a classroom representing as the Grim Reaper, another Carlisle officer, or a chaplain within the department, announce a random name in the classroom representing he or she has passed.

For example, Turner Maryfield was one of the very last to be taken by the Grim Reaper. He was only 17, and as students heard his obituary, written by his parents prior to the afternoon, tears filled some faces as disbelief ran across the others, including Turner’s himself.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said as he walked away from his peers by the police. “I didn’t think I would get chosen.”

He wasn’t the only one who got selected. As each one of them were taken away from classes, shock hit their faces just as a car would collide with another in a crash.

Students stay at the school overnight as they are “dead” and cannot have contact with the outside world for 24 hours.

The event swept intense emotions among Wildcat students throughout the day.

Carlisle student Tyler Millard summed it up very well: “Because of this event, I will never drink or text while driving ever again. I won’t even think twice about it.”