The sap is rising on campuses nationwide, as evidenced by "brahsome" plans of impending debauchery and the giggly expectation of blackouts yet to be wistfully forgotten.
The month of March is upon us. As spring peeks out from the freezing blasts of an unusually cold winter, few signs point as clearly to the shifting seasons as the hallowed traditions of college spring break.
The State Department, though, wants you to keep your sloppy seconds and unfair fights out of the Mexican resort towns that have perfected the art of shamelessly catering to college spring breakers. An alert sent out Feb. 20 by the U.S. government warns of a heightened danger for revelers making the boozy trek to Mexico this year.
Our neighbors to the south have been experiencing a bit of an issue controlling violence among drug gangs recently, with over a thousand killings reported so far this year. The gangs are by far the most powerful entity in Mexican society now, especially along border towns vital to the smuggling trade.
However, no college kids really party in Ciudad Juarez - if Señor Frog somehow wound up there, he wouldn't last fifteen minutes before catching a bullet to the back of his amphibious head. The travel warning makes clear that the greatest danger is concentrated in these northern regions, but the timing of the government-issued notice speaks directly to college kids making final travel plans for coastal areas still considered much safer destinations.
College presidents are chiming in too, with the University of Arizona directly "urging" students to stay away from Mexico alongside less dire warnings from universities scattered from Colorado to Pennsylvania.
The compound effect is a broad coalition of authority figures wagging a massive finger in the faces of scores of affluent would-be tourists.
Keeping spring breakers inside American borders keeps their money in our economy and out of the Mexican economy, a double blow to our neighbor nation struggling mightily with funding the front lines of our drug wars.
The American government has not been on the best of terms with the Mexican political structure for quite a while now; this unease culminated in the murky saga of the two border patrol agents paroled by former President George W. Bush in the waning moments of his power.
A travel alert may be simply about the safety of American citizens, but it could also be a pointed attack on the one aspect of the Mexican economy that provided vital dollars to a nation on the verge of a massive civil war.
Equating the relative safety of resort areas protected by Mexican authorities directly to the urban epicenters of gang warfare is akin to comparing a trip to South Beach with an afternoon in Liberty City. Spring breakers are not going to "exercise caution in unfamiliar areas and be aware of their surroundings at all times," whether in Cancun or Clearwater.
So keep those plans to go to Cozumel - just pack a .44-caliber Magnum alongside that box of Magnums.
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears on Tuesdays.
