Freshman education major Tara Mrjenovich almost lost a loved one to drunk driving.

Today, Mrjenovich will be wearing a red ribbon to represent the number of people who will be killed by alcohol related accidents over Spring Break.

Travis Matthews, a community adviser in Douglas, as well as several other CAs handed out the Mothers Against Drunk Driving ribbons to residence hall residents Tuesday. Today, 2,019 of them are circulating around campus on student’s bookbags and clothing.

He said having the students wear ribbons to represent the statistic makes it more real for them. It gives them a visualization of how many people will actually be affected, Matthews said.

“Students aren’t going to read a bulletin board,” Matthews said. “These numbers are real and these people are real.”

Matthews said his goal is not to focus only on drunk driving, but all alcohol related deaths.

Douglas CA Leslie Baran said she thinks there is not enough alcohol awareness anywhere.

“Being on a college campus, it’s as much as we can possibly have, but it’s still not enough,” Baran said.

Baran said this was another way to get the word out there.

“Maybe the people we see, we’ll strike a chord with,” Baran said.

Matthews said the idea was inspired from different alcohol-awareness programs he was involved with in high school.

This statistic is based off 105,000 alcohol related deaths a year, which breaks down to 2,019 a week, and 288 a day. These include various cancers, liver disease, alcoholism, brain disorders, motor vehicle crashes, violence, crime, spousal and child abuse, drownings and suicides, according to the MADD Web site.

There are also large red ribbons with statistics and facts located around the residence halls.