October 14, 2005
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Students swerve ‘drunk’ at Soberfest

Corin Salnave
The Advocate

Students were given a chance to experience drunk driving while sober last Tuesday in the main mall.

It was primarily young men driving a golf cart through the obstacle course of orange traffic cones while wearing safety goggles transformed to impair their vision dramatically.
It must have worked, though no one felt like they were actually driving drunk.

One man felt his vision while intoxicated was much better than it was while wearing the “beer goggles.”

Unfortunately, they were only able to isolate one of the senses affected by alcohol, but even so, it seemed to have an impact. Driving extremely slowly was every participant’s way to handle the drunk driving situation.

“Of course I felt drunk. I felt nauseous. I thought I was gonna throw up while I was driving,” said one driver, Shady Wasin.

Nick Beacock said, “It was a good experience. I felt disoriented, but not drunk.”
Natalie Bushlen had a hard time trying to drive with drunk goggles on. “From those goggles I seriously feel like I just woke up the next morning,” she said. “I feel hung-over.”
Each time a cone was knocked over, the woman running the show would scream “Ow” and quickly replace the fallen cones.

Students unaware of their surroundings were walking though the course area and provided a slightly more realistic tint to the occasion.

An assistant was a passenger for each driver, to be sure that no one ran off with a golf cart and to help reduce the possibility of carnage.

There were billboards with information as well as small plastic models of healthy and diseased livers and students who volunteered to be golf cart drivers received mini computer disks with information on blood alcohol levels.

In addition to the festivities, hamburgers, hotdogs and many sides were served near the area during the hour-long event.

 
Volume 41, Issue 4