PLATTSBURGH — An open casket rested in the middle of the room, with a message seemingly scrawled in blood: "Reserved for the Next Drunk Driving Victim."

Across the way stood a massive, blood-spattered poster of a wrecked motorcycle that warned, "You Drink, You Ride, You Die."

Nearby, a Clinton Community College student forgot to stop the car, speeding through an intersection and taking his next turn wide, the car hogging both lanes before leaping off the road.

"I want kids to think," explained Brian Beldyga, part of the national Save A Life Tour, which spent a day at Clinton Community College.

He instructed students in operating a multi-million-dollar drinken-driving simulator.

"This simulator shows you how your brain solves these problems if you had been drinking," Beldyga said, "but you get to do it from a sober perspective."

HIGH-TECH LESSONS
As CCC prepares to kick off National College Alcohol Awareness Week, it booked the Save A Life Tour.

"We wanted to bring in something a little bit bigger than the things we had done in the past," said Chrisa O'Connell, student support counselor at CCC.

The tour is considered on of the nation's most advanced high-impact alcohol-awareness programs. It is designed to illustrate the consequences of drinking and driving through simulators that give participants a realistic and sober perspective of the effects of driving while intoxicated.

The multi-media event also features posters, a presenter and video footage.

DECISION SKILLS
"I think there are a lot of myths around the role alcohol plays in college life, and there is also quite a bit of reality around that same role," O'Connell said.

"I think it is the responsibility, in part, of the college to educate students not only on their majors but in areas of life where they will have to make decisions, be responsible and set a foundation for how they behave and can be successful."

She wants the college to hold similar programming on campus on the future.

Sasha Stevens, a CCC student studying criminal justice, stared at a giant poster of a graveyard as another student sat in the simulator.

She wants to be a criminal investigator one day and thought Save A Life was "cool."

"I don't drink and drive," Stevens said.

Beldyga said there's no way to determine the success rate of Save A Life.

He lost someone close to him to drinking and driving and takes his role seriously.

"All you can ask is to reach one person. I hope to God I get one person."

E-mail Stephen Bartlett at: sbartlett@pressrepublican.com