Students who participated in the maze were directed by volunteers who manned each station.

TIFTON, Ga. — The ninth annual Teen Maze, put on every year by the Tift County Commission on Children and Youth, took place Sept. 26 and 27.

The event, which is geared towards ninth graders from Tift County High School and Tiftarea Academy, promotes abstinence and is designed to show students the consequences of being sexually active and how those consequences impact their futures.

TC3Y Director Lillie McIntyre said that the purpose of the maze is to “allow students to experience the consequences of bad choices in a safe setting.”

“Hopefully by having them get pregnant here, getting an STD here and experiencing different pitfalls, they won’t make those choices in real life,” she said.

This was the first year the maze took place at Tift County High School.

The Teen Maze works by having students draw cards out of a bag. These cards tell them what happens and directs them to a station, where they then have to learn about the consequences of whatever choice they drew.

Each student was given a booklet where they kept track of their journey, and at the end of the maze they were given an exit evaluation and the chance to speak with a counselor about their experiences.

The maze experience started off with a group of students at a party. Each participant was given a choice of several wristband colors before going into the party room, and those wristbands determined if they left the party on their own or if they were busted for underage drinking.

If they were “arrested,” they were taken to booking and processed by volunteers from the Tifton Police Department and Tift County Sheriff’s Department. They were then talked to by a judge, who let them know how getting arrested could affect their futures.

Those students who did not get arrested went to the first date station, where they drew a card that told them if they succumbed to pressure and had sex or if they resisted. The maze then began, with each participant following the path the random cards they drew put them on.

Lacey Powell, a student nurse at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College who volunteered during the event, staffed the pregnancy clinic.

Both boys and girls who drew a “pregnancy” card out of the bag had to go through the clinic.

“We have first second and third trimester information,” Powell said. “They put on the pregnancy bellies to see what it feels like, how it feels to gain the weight. They go through each station and see what symptoms they’ll have, how the baby is going to grow and develop. At each station they’ll draw a card and it’ll tell them what is going on.”

Some of those randomly-selected cards show a healthy pregnancy, some don’t. Other cards have the mother being abandoned by her boyfriend, the effects of the pregnancy on grades, and how choices the mother makes affect fetal development.

Students then go to the nursery, where they are given a lifelike doll. They have to practice changing the baby’s diaper and then they go to the Department of Family and Children Services, the child support station and the childcare station.

Will Arnold, an ABAC student nurse, manned the nursery.

“This is where we show students some of the risks of having a newborn baby,” he said. “We show them how to do a diaper change and how to put the baby safely in a car seat. We want them to understand just how much of a responsibility it is to take care of a newborn child.”

One section that some of the participants went through was the sexually-transmitted diseases section, which was staffed by Ashley McDaniel, a RN who works in the infection prevention center at Tift Regional Medical Center.

“This is our STD clinic,” she said. “We spin the wheel so they can see what kind of STD they have and then they go to treatment, depending on which one they get.”

Students could also end up in the HIV/AIDs clinic or at the state mental hospital because of syphilis.

Many students made it to “graduation” even though they had to go through parts of the maze where they had to learn about the consequences of making a bad choice.

Some students, however, had to bypass the graduation ceremony because they dropped out of school. A few even attended their own “funeral.”

Carolyn Slade and Bryant Hill staffed the funeral section of the maze.

Slade has been volunteering at the Teen Maze since its inception, and this year was Hill’s first time volunteering.

“There are three ways a student can “die:” HIV/AIDS, syphilis and during childbirth,” Slade said. “When the student dies, they come over to the funeral home where the pastor reads their eulogy they’ve written.”

The eulogy is a form filled out by the student and lists their name, age, when they died and tells about them, such as their favorite color, their pet’s name, what they want to be when they grow up and something they’ve always wanted to do.

“The pastor, like Bryant, will say the eulogy saying they’ll never have these things,” Slade said. “It makes them think about what they’re giving up when they do die from making the poor choice of having unprotected sex or getting pregnant and dying during childbirth.”

Slade said that when the eulogy is over they go into the graveyard and she talks with them about better choices and encourages them to graduate high school and make good choices.

Slade stressed that every student that goes through their section is immediately passed off to a counselor for a one-on-one as soon as they’re finished.

Students were able to graduate if the cards led them there, even if they had made a poor choice.

Kelley Bedore, director of the Tifton Salvation Army, and Richard Shoniker, health and wellness director at the Tiftarea YMCA, manned the graduation station.

“They get to come and get a certificate, put on a gown and go over with Richard and have their picture made,” Bedore said.

“We tell them congratulations and send them over to get a cupcake,” Shoniker said. “It’s really their day.”