Travel alerts killing Mexico's summer fun

JULY 12 - OFFICIAL travel warnings about drug cartels and violence are shutting down traditional summer study trips to Mexico by foreign, mainly American, students. Kansas University is the latest to cancel such a trip - 18 students who planned to study in Puebla have been told to stay at home.
The U.S. State Department travel advisory is for all of Mexico but cites in particular extreme violence in northern cities that include Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.
As general practice, most universities do not sanction student travel to any country under State Department travel warnings.
However, the University of Missouri-Kansas City has 21 students studying in Xalapa at present - it is about 150 km east of the canceled Puebla program. University officials required those students to sign a waiver saying they took note of the risks of traveling in Mexico. The University of California and the University of Texas complexes canceled study abroad trips to Mexico earlier this year.

COMMENT: A New York Times article (on June 26) contributed to a growing debate on the government over-reacting to localised trouble spots in countries like Mexico. It quoted a professor at the University of California, San Diego, saying "I would not have considered taking students to Mississippi during the early 1960s or to Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention. But other parts of the U.S. were of course safe for travel. Mexico is that way."
The National Association of Foreign Study Advisers (NAFSA), an organization founded in 1948 to provide professional services for students studying abroad, recently issued a report titled "Developing Response Procedures to U.S. DOS Travel Warnings," to offer advice to institutions interested in developing a review policy in response to travel advisories.
Its long list of recommenadations includes involving a variety of stakeholders at colleges so that everyone has a role in risk management; contacting relevant partners abroad to discuss what risks are of concern, culture, resources and emergency response plans and comparing student activities and program locations to the risks outlined in the Travel Warning.
Some experts argue that that college students should also be seen as independent adults as well as students and that gaining life experience requires that some risks must be taken.