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“How many people in the room have ever killed their three best friends when they were drunk and driving a car?”
With the speaker’s lone hand raised into the air, Mark Sterner faced his stunned audience and told them the tragic story of the night he drove under the influence, and his friends were killed.
On Tuesday, September 9, Mark Sterner arrived at St. Xavier University to share his story with first-year transitions classes in McGuire Hall. From the beginning, Sterner made his point clear that he was going to treat the audience as adults, stating, “I didn’t come here to preach to you, I didn’t come here to tell you what to do. I simply came here today to tell you what happened to me and my friends. You’re old enough to make your own decisions.”
Sterner then shared a homemade video of him and his four friends on the night of the crash, when they were celebrating their last day of Spring Break during their senior year. They had decided that the least drunk of the group would drive them home, having already done a full rotation as to who would be designated driver during the week.
That driver was Sterner.
The car ended up skidding off the road, flipping over, and hitting the treeline of the woods beside the road. Sterner’s friends Aaron (22), Pete (22) and Jim (23) were all killed; Sterner and his fourth friend Darren (21) survived. They were three months away from graduation.
Sterner’s blood alcohol level at the time of the crash was 0.17, over twice the legal limit.
Sterner woke up two weeks after the crash in the hospital, suffering from critical injuries. It was while he was in the hospital that he was informed that his friends were killed, he was read his rights, and he was apprehended. He spent 3 years in prison.
What made Sterner’s presentation as powerful as it was was that he had the students put faces to the scenarios in which he delivered.
They were able to at least glimpse into how horrifying and traumatizing the situation would be had it been one of SXU’s own students that faced this experience, creating an emotional comprehension of Sterner’s story.
When approached with the question of why it was so important to have first years attend the Mark Sterner presentation, Ann Almasi, Associate Director of Residence Operations, shared, “It enables them to think about alcohol and their choices regarding alcohol in an entirely new way. To think about it now in terms of a college setting and how their actions might affect other people and to hear how his actions affected other people, I think it really gets through to college students in a way that they haven’t been exposed to in the past.”
Sterner has traveled nationwide, sharing his story with about 100 schools a year and has spoken to over two million students total.
He has no idea as to whether or not the students he talked to actually listened to his story or if they tried to make better choices in their lives regarding the use of alcohol.
The number one cause of death for college-aged students are motor-vehicle crashes, and approximately 30% if those deaths involve alcohol.
The hope is that by the end of the Sterner presentation students will consider their choices and decide not to drink and drive.
It is only a matter of time until it can become apparent if these statistics can be lowered.
For more information about speakers on campus, be sure to continue to follow the news section of The Xavierite.
Gisselle Lopez
News Editor