One of the most agonizing but exhilarating parts of many teenagers' lives is driver's ed. Learning how to drive can be scary at first, but hopefully students have a driver's ed program that takes any nerves into account when instructing teenagers how to get behind the wheel of a car. But alas, this isn't always the case, and one school in rural Wisconsin went so far as to make a school-wide announcement that students had died in a car crash, when in reality they were safe and sound.
Local NBC affiliate WMTV in Wisconsin reports that students at Brodhead High School in Brodhead, Wisconsin were first told four of their classmates had died, then several minutes later informed by announcements again that the students were not in fact dead. WMTV reports that students were told the initial announcement was part of a safe driving drill.
Understandably, some students were upset after having been deceived about the death of friends and schoolmates. Madison Trombley, a Brodhead student, told WMTV, "A lot of our fellow friends and students actually started crying because they thought these people were actually dead and so I think a lot of them actually called their parents in school too."
The school's principal said that the fake announcement was put on by the student council as a component of the school's ongoing driver safety awareness campaign, according to WMTV.
Another student, Sam Bolen told WMTV, "it wasn't really effective. They were trying to teach using scare tactics which doesn't teach it just makes you not trust the teachers and any of the announcements you're going to get."
The school district's superintendent told WMTV that some parents called to school to complain about the stunt, but the superintendent also said that the experience served as a real-life example of the consequences of reckless driving.
