Do you want to travel to a foreign country and not learn the language or culture? Do you not want to help others? Do you want to spend six months sculpting the perfect beach body only to see it ruined in a matter of days? Do you want to pay for a trip you can't afford by getting a new credit card and racking up $1,600 of debt? Do you want to consume unsafe amounts of alcohol? Do you want to increase your chances of skin cancer and get second degree burns from not wearing sunscreen? Do you want to meet only like minded people with a certain "morally casual" attitude?
If you answered yes to the above questions then I have the proposition for you: Traditional Spring Break.
Now that I have your attention I want to talk about the side of spring break that rarely gets discussed.
Each year thousands of college students from cold and dreary places just like Bowdoin decide they want to take a break from their so-very-hard lives of studying, sports, and partying. They descend on exotic resorts in places like Florida, Mexico, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.
I'm sure everyone knows how fun and exciting these trips can be, but what we sheltered spring break minions often overlook is how much violence the resort experience actually does to the local populations of these locales.
Last year when I went to Cancún I actually took a day and traveled away via scooter from the resort district and saw Cancún Centro. I was absolutely shocked with the levels of poverty I witnessed in those neighborhoods. In a matter of about two miles, the lavish hotels and nightclubs where gross excess is the word of the day turned into the third-world ghetto that you only see on those "Save the Children" commercials.
The infrastructure was absolutely dilapidated or non-existent in Cancún Centro. There was trash in the streets, clean water was a luxury, the roads were in disrepair, nearly every house or business had barred windows, and I rarely saw a car that was from this millennium.
These are things that us Americans rarely see or even believe exist. My friends and I were so enchanted with the resort experience that we didn't stop to ask where the bartenders and waitresses went when their shifts were over or where our water went when we flushed the toilet.
After doing some research, I found out that the resort staffers take home barely enough to stay above the poverty line (which, by the way, is nearly incomprehensible to everyone here at Bowdoin).
I also found out that at most of these resorts the raw sewage is flushed out through an underwater pipe directly into the Caribbean about 300 yards from shore. Think about that next time you catch a gnarly gulp of Caribbean water.
We also don't see how privileged we are as Americans. We go to another country and expect "them" to speak English. Why don't the Mexican resort staffers respond to us with a line like, "you're in Mexico now, speak Spanish?"
It's because our tourism dollars keeps the fragile economies of places like Cancún afloat.
This is problematic in itself because while we spend thousands of dollars in these tourist spots, only a few pennies of those dollars actually filter their way down to the local communities.
Most of the money is cycled back to the United States and into the coffers of the rich corporations that own and operate most of the hotels and clubs that make up these resort locales. We are sold, and often willingly so, a sterilized version of what Mexican or Jamaican culture is actually about.
I know it's unsettling to be implicated in perpetuating a cycle of poverty and inequality but it's the other side of the "fun in the sun" that spring breakers don't see and often don't care to see. Well, on that note, have a safe and fun spring break wherever that may be. I hear Acapulco is the place to be this year.