Death, destruction, consequences – all staged. The reality it reflects – all too real.
Every year, Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) hosts a simulated prom night car accident. The focus of this assembly is to highlight the effects of driving while distracted, intoxicated, or both. It’s a live play, a plot and accident—full costume and rehearsal. The Kent County Police Department, Plainfield Fire Department, AeroMed, Life Ambulance, or Rockford Ambulance, the Kent County Prosecutor’s office, and the students of SADD join together to make the mock accident possible. This year, the event was held on April 30th for the junior class; yet, many are unaware of the major behind-the-scenes work that goes into organizing it.
District student resource officer, Deputy Mike Allen, helped run the show for four years, but he is far from a one-man band.
“We partner with the Sheriff’s office, so I have some other partners who will come. Plainfield Fire Department, Life ambulance, sometimes Rockford ambulance, and sometimes Aero Med,” Allen said. “Then the Kent County prosecutor’s office will send a representative from their office to run the mock trial. It’s a lot of working parts and a lot of different emergency services put it all together.”
The most rigorous part of the whole assembly is not the makeup or the crash itself; it’s who participates in the process.
“I think the biggest challenge is you have to try to find the right people that are gonna be doing it,” Allen said. “Our first meeting, you’ve got to find the person who wants to be the deceased, and then you’ve got to get their family members who are willing to speak. The hardest part of the whole thing is getting that deceased student and their family members on board to do it. It may just be a demonstration for the students or for the people who are involved in it, but their parents are essentially holding the memorial service for their child.”
The students of SADD are the keystone to the assembly, everything falls back to them.
“We meet with the students from SADD,” Allen said. “So they’re the ones who kind of pick what the topic is gonna be and what our team is dealing with at this time.”
It takes months to bring all the moving parts together. Every department has an important job to contribute.
“We’ve been planning this since about January. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into it. The Plainfield fire department handles a lot of the legwork for it. We have a few meetings every once in a while, and it takes two to three months to get everything together,” Allen said.
Senior Rachel Haagsma is a four-year SADD member. She started acting in the assembly last year and played the role of the intoxicated driver getting arrested this year. Haagsma vividly remembers the process of preparing.
“We go and see how the cars are set up, and then we get our makeup done. We have a special makeup artist who comes from the fire department, and she just does all of our special blood and stuff like that,” Haagsma said. “It’s pretty easy, and it’s pretty fun.”
Allison Hosmer is a firefighter and the makeup artist for the assembly. The work is very tedious and takes a large amount of time to complete every victim’s makeup in the simulation.
“It normally takes about an hour and a half to two hours to prep everybody,” Hosmer said. “We work with modeling wax and stage makeup, and then we have to make sure that everybody has injuries that coincide with where they’re sitting in the car.”
The makeup used is normal stage makeup and other homemade remedies. Hosmer uses all sorts of techniques and palettes to give the victims a gory look.
“I used Mayron stage makeup, and I had a little kit that I put together. I’ve done YouTube research, so there’s some common household stuff that you can use,” Hosmer said. “I use my makeup kits and I use brushes and everything like that, but you kind of put it together like a theater setup would be, but gory.”
Hosmer not only does makeup, but she is also a highly trained firefighter. She prioritizes the effect of this assembly as much as making sure the makeup looks fantastic.
“I think that it kind of is a nice reminder that one fun night right before you graduate is gonna have a big impact on the rest of your life. It kind of makes you think twice, and it makes you prioritize safety,” Hosmer said. “Think about taking precautions or maybe changing the ways that you previously did something. This is kind of a reality check without it actually happening to someone that you know and love.”
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