Mark Sterner’s spring break trip turned into a nightmare when three of his friends died in a drunk driving accident. He told his story to University of Denver Greek community students who packed Davis Auditorium last Monday.TheB fraternitiesB andB sororitiesB wereB requiredB toB attendB theB Greek Life-sponsored eventB as part of DU’s efforts to address the problem of binge drinking in college.”I’m not doing this as a probation requirement,” Sterner said. “I only speak to you so that nobody in this audience will have to live the rest of their life with the pain and regret I live with.”Take a look at my friends Aaron, Pete and Jim,” said Sterner as he switched on a video taken on the last night of a six-day vacation on Sanibel Island in Florida. “They could have been any of your friends.”Like a prelude to a bad horror film, the video camera panned on five young men playing games with the alcohol that would eventually lead to their untimely deaths. The audience watched them down glass after glass of hard liquor while loud music played in the background. The young men’s faces slackened into dull expressions over time. The camera panned to the refrigerator stocked full of beer, and then to a table decked with bottles of hard liquor – more omens of the tragedy to come.In the next scene, the audience was jolted suddenly into a car’s interior, the speedometer rising to 100 m.p.h. while the friends whooped and shouted. Is this it? Will this be when three of them die?The suspense increased, but suddenly the young men were dancing with merry abandonment to the music of a band playing in a bar. Some were still drinking.”We had a plan,” said Sterner. “Every previous night we designated someone to be the driver. But on our last night, we all drank.” They chose Sterner to drive.The video ended, and darkness descended on the audience.Next, photographs of a car with a smashed front flashed on the screen. Sterner explained how he crashed the car and how the passengers were strewn for 200 yards. Sterner and his friends were not wearing seat belts, and were catapulted into trees. One was crushed underneath the car. The car was only two miles from the hotel. The police said the car was traveling at 60 m.p.h., and Sterner’s blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit. Three of his friends died, one survived, and Sterner lapsed into a coma.Sterner was charged and convicted of three second degree felonies of DUI manslaughter. Though the maximum sentence was 45 years, he served only three years because his friends’ parents didn’t want him to spend the rest of his life in prison. Sterner has told his story to many audiences. He can do it now without choking up, but he seemed emotional when he recalled waking up in the hospital after two weeks in a coma and seeing his brother sitting in a chair next to his bed.Though his prison sentence is behind him, Sterner said he is still punished daily, wondering where his friends would be now if they had lived. He thinks of the ongoing pain his friends’ parents are experiencing, and of the one friend that survived who refuses to answer Sterner’s telephone calls.Sterner’s parting words to those in the auditorium were: “Take care of your friends. That’s what it’s all about.” He urged students to take a cab home from bars and parties, and not do the “easy” thing like jump into a car with a drunk driver. Otherwise “chances are your family will be burying you,” Sterner said.