Drunken night makes for sobering lesson

A home video of five fraternity men plays on the screen. It’s spring break and the men are drinking shots, goofing off and dancing at the bar.

“It was made so we could look back and say, ‘Man, look how stupid we were in college’,” Mark Sterner said. But their video does not portray the event that will forever mark their trip.

Three of the five young men wouldn’t live to see the video. They would never laugh at their own stupid antics. Instead they would be killed by their best friend in an alcohol-related car accident.

Mark Sterner spoke at SMU Tuesday night about his experience drinking and driving , killing his friends and living with that for the rest of his life. He works with Campus Speak, an agency representing college campus speakers who specialize in issues-based lecturers.

The Inter-Fraternity Council sponsored Sterner’s visit to campus.

“IFC felt that Mark would give great insight into the problems of drinking and driving that plagues virtually every college campus,” IFC President Blake Towsley said, “and in turn make students aware of the consequences of their actions.”

The accident occurred on the last night of spring break. Sterner and his friends wanted to hit the bars hard for their final night and no one wanted to be the designated driver.

“Whoever the least drunk person was would drive home – we all agreed,” Sterner said.

The vote was in, Sterner was the least drunk. With less than two miles to their condo, Sterner lost control of the car causing it to swerve off the road and crash.

When the paramedics arrived, three of Sterner’s friends were pronounced dead on the scene. They had blood alcohol levels of .22. Sterner’s was .17.

“At 3 a.m. my mom received a phone call from a nurse saying that I would be lucky to be alive by the time she got there,” Sterner said. “When I woke up three days later everything was white. I couldn’t move, talk. I didn’t know where I was.”

Charged with three counts of DUI manslaughter, Sterner was looking at 45 years in a high-security prison.

“I was going to be the first person in my family to finish college. Now I was the first person in my family to go to jail,” Sterner said.

Sterner served two years in a Florida penitentiary with murderers and rapists as his roommates. He is now on probation and says that there is not a day that goes by he doesn’t think about his friends.

“My thoughts, my dreams, my nightmares – they don’t go away,” Sterner said. “They wake me up at night and that’s my punishment.”

Sterner’s story has reached over 750,000 people.

“Someday I hope to go back to my friends’ parents and say, ‘I know I didn’t save your sons, but I saved other parents from going through the same thing as you’,” Sterner said.

After Sterner stopped speaking, McFarlin Auditorium fell silent except for a few muffled sobs. The reaction was unanimous: Sterner’s story hit way to close to home.

“You look up and see his friends [on the video] with their fraternity letters on and I think that could be anyone,” junior psychology major Rowdy Gaines said. “I could see myself on that screen.”

Drunken night makes for sobering lesson