Alcohol is a powerful thing — and so can be a young person’s sense of invulnerability. When combined, they can yield some pretty horrible results.

Inarguably, the worst of these results is the death of an innocent person like Kelly Laughery. The young woman, while a sophomore at Iowa State, was struck and killed Dec. 3, 2005, by a vehicle driven by Shanda Munn, a former ISU student, who was drunk.

In Thursday and Friday issues of The Daily last week, many of you likely read about this tragedy. If you did, you would have first read the vivid description of the night’s events and viewed the timeline of the accident, paired with a powerful follow-up piece in which Munn opened up about her mistake and how she is, admirably, now trying to keep other people  from making the same choices she did.    

But a third part to this story — what I would argue is the most important part, both for the ISU community as a whole and especially those students who have or have at least considered driving drunk — is missing: the part about Laughery and the great promise her life held.

The part about how, as the Web site tribute to her states, “She was the glue that held her friends together. They all seemed to gravitate toward her and could count on her for support, encouragement and for some humor in their day.”

The part about how, during her senior year of high school, she logged more than 900 hours of community service for AmeriCorps, committing her attention and energy tirelessly in support of the 4-H pledge, “Make the world a better place.” In recognition of her dedication, she received the Christina Hixon Scholarship from Iowa State.

The part about how Kelly “made the most [of] every day… was energetic, enthusiastic about life, giving and loving, with a smile that would light up a room… and was always encouraging others to do their best and to be involved.”

Taken together, these parts paint a picture of a young woman who was undoubtedly primed to go forth from Iowa State to positively influence those around her — this is the picture we need to see.

We need to see this because, like it or not, we are all would-be drunk drivers. Whether 21 or younger, as college students we can all get our hands on alcohol, can all get behind the wheel of our car or a friend’s, and can all make the same mistake as Munn.

Like those with Munn that night, we can all also be enablers of drunk driving, allowing our friends to put themselves and others in danger because we foolishly worry about getting into a fight with them or are perhaps too drunk to recognize what’s going on.

Reading and thinking about the lives of the individual victims of drunk driving, however, is what can make us think twice before getting into the car ourselves or shrugging it off when another does.

Knowing that, according to the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention [CDC], some 11,773 people — or 32 people a day — died in alcohol-related crashes in 2008 can help us keep this thought in our minds.

Recognizing that, also according to the CDC, more than 1.4 million people driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics were arrested last year is helpful, given that self-interested individuals might fear losing their licenses or going to jail.

But this may not be enough. As the CDC reminds, there were an estimated 159 million incidents of self-reported alcohol-impaired driving in 2008, meaning that less than 1 percent of drivers under the influence of alcohol or narcotics are actually arrested.

Therefore, it is the act of reminding ourselves of the ultimate consequence, taking another’s life and extinguishing all the possibilities that it held, that is likely the most effective method to not make a life-threatening mistake.

If Munn had given one second’s thought to the type of tragedy that drunk driving does not often, but can always, cause — the loss of a life like Laughery’s — and the unparalleled weight of lifelong guilt that such a tragedy should always create, perhaps we wouldn’t be reading about and remembering this horrible crime today.

As hard as it is when something this horrible happens, we need to read the full, sad story — the story of what was lost. The awareness of the full consequences of a harmful action provides the best chance to prevent these tragedies from happening.

Steve Adams is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Annapolis, Md.