Colleges warning students about travel to Mexico

PHOENIX - The State Department and universities around the country are warning college students headed to Mexico for spring break of a surge in drug-related murder and mayhem south of the border.

"We're not necessarily telling students not to go, but we're going to certainly alert them," said Tom Dougan, vice president for student affairs at the University of Rhode Island. "There have been Americans kidnapped, and if you go, you need to be very aware and very alert to this fact."

More than 100,000 college- and high school-age Americans travel to Mexican resort areas during spring break each year. Much of the drug violence has occurred in border towns, and tourists have generally not been targeted. But there have been killings in the spring-break resorts of Acapulco and Cancun, well away from the border.

The University of Arizona in Tucson is urging its 37,000 students not to go to Mexico. Other universities - including Pennsylvania State University, Notre Dame, and the University of Colorado - said they would call students' attention to the travel warning issued Feb. 20 by the State Department.

The department stopped short of warning students not to go to Mexico, but advised them to avoid areas of prostitution and drug-dealing and take common-sense precautions.

"Sage advice," said Tom Mangan, of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "We have had documented violence, attacks, killings, shoot-outs with the drug cartels involving not only the military but law enforcement personnel. It is indiscriminate violence, and certainly innocent people have been caught up in that collateral damage."

Mexico's drug cartels are waging a bloody fight among themselves for smuggling routes and against government forces, carrying out massacres and dumping beheaded bodies in the streets. More than 6,000 people were killed in the violence last year.

Some students said the warnings are unlikely to deter them. University of Arizona sophomore Daniel Wallace said he was not worried about the violence. "It's relaxing, it's warm, I'm a big fan of the beach and the drinking age is lower," he said. "It's a fun place to go."