Red Ribbon Week spooks Hot Springs

It isn’t every day that the Grim Reaper roams the halls of a high school, but last Thursday that is just what happened at Hot Springs to commemorate the end of Red Ribbon Week.

The “Ghost Walk” (as it was so aptly named) was in its first year at Hot Springs and by all accounts it was a powerful and successful exercise.

“You could tell it really had an impact on the students,” school clerk Amy Anderson said. “We’re really hoping this makes kids think about drinking and driving and doing drugs.”

Jim Arnold, a substitute teacher at the school, was the Grim Reaper for the day and he said it was a moving experience, although he did have some humor to go along with his character.

“It was deadly being the Grim Reaper,” he said.

For the event, the Grim Reaper went around the school picking students out of class. The chosen students had their faces painted white and were given a white T-shirt with the word “dead” written in black across the chest.

Once the students were “dead” they weren’t allowed to interact with their classmates or talk for the rest of the day. The one exception was if they were asked a question by a teacher or needed to ask a teacher a question.

Anderson said all of the students were volunteers and that a letter had been sent home to all of the parents explaining what would be happening, in case there were any concerns.

“We didn’t have any negative feedback,” Anderson said. “The community supported the whole project.”

The Grim Reaper went around the school picking out students from 9 a.m. until around 2 p.m. and got a final number of 12 students and one staff member.

While it was certainly spooky for students to see their classmates act lifeless with their faces painted white, the most powerful portion of the event came at a school-wide assembly at 3 p.m.

At the assembly candles were lit on a table to represent all of the “dead” students, the students were then led into the old gymnasium by the Grim Reaper. Once they were inside, the gym teachers, students and parents took turns reading the obituaries of the fallen.

Anderson also read two poems. One was called “Dead at 17” and another was titled “Party Poem.”

The students in the audience were told that they were gathered in the gym this afternoon to mourn the loss of the 13 people.

Audience members were told that each week 133 teens die due to car wrecks and a third of those are alcohol related. They were also given the statistic that every year 3,000 teenagers die, with 85,000 injured and 65,000 seriously due to alcohol and drug related crashes.

Once the statistics were given out to the audience, several obituaries were read. Jocelyn Eurchel read her own obituary and said that she would never be able to spend time with her family or friends again.

However, the most powerful moment came from Sheila Massingale who read her daughter Megan’s obituary.

“I lost my daughter Megan at age 15 when she was coming home from a party in Plains,” she said. Massingale went on to say in the obituary that since she is an EMS responder she got the call and had to see her daughter laying in the ground dead after a night of drinking and doing meth.

During Massingale’s reading the room was so still and quiet and sudden noise would’ve caused even the most hardened football players to jump.

After the obituaries were read the students were told to think about the choices they made and were told that hopefully this had some sort of impact on them.

Before leaving though, Arnold took the microphone to talk about his own personal experiences. He said he has had three siblings commit suicide and for the most part they also had drug and alcohol problems as well.

“There are over 50,000 suicides a year,” he said. “If we take the time to listen we can help each other.”

Anderson said that the whole thing was very powerful and moving, even for the adults, and that she hopes it has an impact on the students as well.

“We love all of our students, so we’re going to do anything we can do to try and keep them safe,” she said.