5 March 2010 Alcohol-fueled tourism trumps reality every year

5 March 2010 Alcohol-fueled tourism trumps reality every year


Texas police warn spring breakers: Stay out of Mexico border towns

4 MARCH 2010

In the past, students were urged to be careful in Mexico, but this year "we decided to step it up," a spokeswoman said.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Texas Department of Public Safety: Mexican border cities a "bad idea" for spring break

It is the agency's first specific advisory against travel, spokeswoman says

State Department renewed a travel alert to Mexico last month

Alert noted a rapid growth in violent crimes in areas along the U.S.-Mexico border

(CNN) -- The Texas Department of Public Safety took the unprecedented step Thursday of telling college students not to visit Mexican border cities during spring break because they are just too dangerous.

Several universities issued similar warnings last year, but this was the first time the Texas law enforcement agency had issued the specific advisory against travel, said spokeswoman Tela Mange. In the past, she said, Texas authorities had just urged students to be careful.



Today is the final day of class before spring break at ETSU. My history class had normal attendance, a few empty seats that have often been empty on Friday. My CSI class is taught by at TA who takes roll every session. She walked in this morning, announced that she would be showing a video related to the class material, and that she would not be taking roll. Fully ¾ of the class stood up and left. Frankly, I was embarrassed. I moved to a better seat and watched the video. It was germane to the course and it was interesting.

Those students, who left, bolted as if they had planes holding at the gate for them to arrive. I don’t know how many of them actually had plans to travel to their homes, how many simply get a week with no classes while they work or carry on with their normal lives. I certainly don’t know how many of them are traveling to some week-long Bacchanalia on our seacoasts or in some Latin American resort. I suspect that some of them will seek out a place with television cameras, poorly enforced alcohol codes, and other students willing to risk their lives to benefit of MTV’s ratings.

I never went on spring break. I never felt entitled to spring break. I don’t like crowds and I really don’t like drunken crowds.

For some reason, I don’t believe that it is necessary to spend a week binge drinking after two months of school. For some reason, I don’t think that liquor laws should be relaxed to allow under-age binge drinking even if such month long parties make or break the local economy. I don’t believe that the presence of television crews and marketing teams from every major brewer and distiller is good for a community or the mobs that flock to it in hopes of getting drunk, laid, and on television,

I also don’t believe that high school graduates should be packed off on package trips to Mexico or Caribbean islands to engage in binge drinking and partying after they are handed their diplomas.

For some reasons, all of which involve money; we’ve decided that allowing our young to travel to nations where they can legally drink to the point of oblivion is alright. We now have travel companies that solicit high school students for such trips. Parents, who should know better, allow their children to make such trips, often pay for the trips. Never mind the damage to their young livers. There is also the risk of accidental injury – while drunk; drowning – while drunk; accidental pregnancy – while drunk; and STD’s, physical altercations, kidnappings, rapes, and murders. The travel agencies never mention such possibilities and the trips are, for the most part, entirely un-chaperoned. Not that all young people need to be chaperoned or protected from industry marketing teams or from their own lack of experience or stupidity. But enough do.

Every so often we hear about nice young students who fail to come back from such trips. The ones we hear about are almost always blonde females, “good girls” who never drank or engaged in risky behavior. Of course they didn’t. That’s why they wanted to make the trip, so that they could. They were almost always last seen in the company of young men and intoxicated. And they never show up alive.

But it must be OK. The MTV network says it is OK to party like drunken idiots. So too, say the liquor and beer distributors and the resort owners. After all, most of them go home safely. Most of them don’t wind up as free anatomy demonstrators on videos sold late at night. And it is almost impossible to fix a percentage who acquire STD’s or hepatitis.

They’re not my children or kin. I’m not responsible for their behavior or its consequences. I won’t know the ones who get kidnapped and never come home. But I will get tired of hearing about them on the news night after night. I will get tired of their parents crying, demanding our government take some action, and wondering why it happened to their child.

Here’s the thing. The government took action – recall those age requirements for drinking alcohol. You sort of helped your kid circumvent them. It happened to your child because you sent them off to some place that makes all its revenue on alcohol and motels, where the cops don’t get too involved as long as the mob stays off the main streets and on the party island or beaches. I’m sort of sorry for your loss. But it isn’t as if you haven’t been warned year after year.

18 year old high school graduates don’t need to go to the Caribbean. They need to go to the library and read until they learn all the things they will need to find and hold a job that doesn’t involve ordering sandwiches by picture. College students don’t need televised bacchanalia. They need to catch up on their sleep by not passing out.

I’m going to sleep an hour later each morning for the next week.

Shabbat shalom!