Beth Twitty, mother of missing teen Natalee Holloway, visited Ball State the week before Spring Break to deliver a message to students about staying safe during the week of debauchery. In the 30-minute speech she touched on: not traveling with strangers, not leaving a drink unattended and not getting in situations where you can't exercise your own free will.
Essentially, ideas and practices were preached that should be obvious to any living and breathing human being with a functioning brain.
But they aren't obvious anymore because we live in a world where we're quick to blame others for our lack of responsibility - and her speech seemed to be heading in the direction of this claim.
Twitty continued to tell students to be responsible while traveling during the week of debauchery - or at any other time - especially when leaving the country. She also said anyone in the jam-packed Cardinal Hall could be like Natalee, and our parents could be like her.
When it finally looked like she was going to drive home the point about taking responsibility for your own actions, she revealed that an organization will do it for you instead.
The program, called "Save Yourself," is a national campaign similar to Ball State's ever-so-popular "Police Yourself" campaign, and it teams up travel agents and hotels to ensure the safety of young adults while they're traveling. So, it's quite not saving yourself; it's really just someone else making sure you're OK for another day.
It's another way for people not to take responsibility for their own well-being. It's not the idea behind the program that I have a problem with - it's the fact that there's another organization being set up to do something we should be doing for ourselves.
During her presentation, Twitty talked about how Aruba wasn't all it appeared to be and that there are a lot more crack houses and prostitution slavery rings than the country likes to let on - because if it was honest, the Aruba tourism industry might die quicker than a Saturday Night Live skit featuring the kid from "Good Burger."
"Save Yourself" will help inform travelers of these travel dangers before they leave and make sure people stay safe, but why must there be an organization to do this for us? You can Google things like "sexy monkeys smoking cigars on a riverboat" and turn up a million results, so why not "the truth about Aruba" or, maybe, "are crack houses prevalent in Aruba?" It really isn't that difficult to research anything now that we're in the Internet Age.
Organizations like these are a cop-out. While the organizers of the campaign mean well, it's just another excuse for poor responsibility and, ultimately, poor parenting. I'm not calling Twitty a poor parent, but it was an incredibly poor decision to let her just-graduated daughter travel to a different country where the legal drinking age is 18 and there weren't enough chaperones for the number of students traveling. What could possibly go wrong?
Taking responsibility for actions - especially bad decisions - is something that shouldn't be practiced just by kids or young adults but by people of all ages. What happened to her daughter wasn't Twitty's fault, but it could have easily been prevented. She needs to take some of the responsibility. And she needs to not only talk with young adults but to share her message with their parents, as well, to alert them to the dangers of trips that seem innocent but obviously aren't.
Twitty shouldn't be informing us about an organization that keeps travelers safe. Instead, she should speak about ways parents and students can keep themselves safe, because a quick search on the Internet and a few phone calls might be enough to caution us on the dangers of foreign soil.
Read More
Three Air Jam teams take home the win
October 12, 2012Nineteen teams shimmied, shook and flipped for a sold out John R. Emens Auditorium on Thursday night during the 25th annual Air Jam.
Bill Clinton Speaks at North Central High School
October 12, 2012Former President's Speech Could Have Effect on State Senate Race
