GALWAY—Today, February 6, is White Out Day in Galway High School. Students who are members of SADD are wearing black, some are wearing white face make up, and they are using only a white board and marker to communicate. The students are doing this to remind everyone the terrible impact that drunk driving and destructive decisions can have.

Autumn Antos, a junior, wrote about what her experience on White Out Day…

Today has been interesting…and much harder than I thought. I can go long periods of time being quiet because sometimes it’s nice to view things in a different way. It makes me more attentive. But not being able to ask questions in chemistry and math is really difficult. Writing things out becomes tedious and it’s much easier to just give up and say nothing at all. Thank God I have my best friend Cheyenne doing this with me though because we can mouth words to each other and have good conversations without using words. I guess that goes a long with really knowing each other though. For a day, I like doing this, and although I slipped once, I’m not giving up on it. I know I can make it through the day. Thinking about a lot of teenagers who lose their lives because of their destructive decisions makes it easier. They won’t ever have a chance to talk again, and I can somewhat experience this. I know though that once I’m home today, I’ll be talking again. I guess through this I’m learning that things that may seem like small decisions can hugely affect your life. You may say your last words without even knowing they’re your last. Make the decisions for yourself that will help you accomplish what you want in life. I would do this again because I think the message is strong.

Cheyenne McElhiney, also a junior, wrote about her day as well…

Today has been interesting, to say the least. I have found that it is really hard to go without talking for an entire school day. It’s frustrating because I wanted to successfully make it through one school day without talking, but unfortunately people think it’s funny to make you slip up and talk. I wish I could say I didn’t talk, but I have and that upsets me. I’m still continuing to not talk though. No one will break me for good. I feel like when you can’t talk, you find you have more to say. I also feel like if I was in a bad mood, this not talking thing would go way more smoothly. Overall though I think it was definitely an experience to try and not talk. I find that every day there is so much to say, and it’s so much harder to express yourself without talking. I definitely would not like going speechless for the rest of my life. Other than friends laughing at me for how hard it is not to talk, I hope this does make an impact to my friends to not drink and drive. That is the real message here.