Blame to Share in Bus Attack

Assault, robbery and rape can happen anywhere, but that knowledge should not lead to negligence or complacency among organizers of tours, especially student tours, to foreign countries.

There are plenty of fingers being pointed as a result of Friday’s bandit assault in rural southern Guatemala on a bus carrying 13 students and three faculty members from St. Mary’s College in Maryland. Five young women were raped, others robbed over a 90-minute period. The Guatemalan government, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Embassy may share at least some responsibility in that they failed to warn sufficiently. The road the students took was known to be bandit-ridden; a bus had reportedly been robbed the previous day. Violence has surged all over Guatemala. But the last warning from the State Department had come months ago.

Had this been a busload of adult tourists, perhaps the finger pointing could stop there. But colleges hold a larger responsibility to students and their parents. For a St. Mary’s professor to say that danger is part of the human experience is no defense. To say that previous tours went unharmed is not enough.

The St. Mary’s students went to Guatemala voluntarily but with no individual say over the bus trip and no reason to believe that they should check locally before climbing aboard. By putting its umbrella over the journey, the college also extended an implicit promise of care for the students’ safety. Had a meteor fallen on the bus, the school’s sorrow could be free of guilt. But an attack by bandits in a region experiencing a surge in ambush robberies carries much lower odds.

Study projects abroad have great value, and all travel implies some risk. But ignorance of local common knowledge is not a risk that school tours should find acceptable.