Sweet Home? Alabama!
As of this writing, Natalee Holloway remains missing. Holloway, you will recall, is the Alabama teen who visited Aruba with 130 of her closest friends during a class trip over Memorial Day weekend. The 124 students, along with 7 adult chaperones, were celebrating their graduation from Mountain Brook High School, in an affluent suburb of Birmingham. How affluent? 99% of the student body is white. In Alabama. The other 1% is Asian. The Teacher:Student ratio is 1 to 11. The median household income is $100,000, and the median value of a "housing unit" is $300,000. This in a state where the median income is $40,000.
When the students' plane left on Monday, Holloway was the one child left behind.
Local police and a host of FBI agents have been following up a series of weak leads. This has not stopped Aruban authorities from making 5 arrests in the case. The first two arrests were local men who had recently worked as security guards at the Hotel Allegro, located about 2 blocks from the Holiday Inn where Natalee and her friends stayed. Jeez, if your family is making more than 100 grand, stay at the Allegro! The two men have not officially been charged with anything, but this is no reason to let them go. In Aruba, you see, authorities can hold suspects for nearly four months without filing formal charges. You might as well be at Gitmo. According to police, the two suspects were not seen in Natalee's company, none of her possessions were found among the items police seized after taking them into custody, and suspicious bloodstains found on a mattress were determined to be from a dog.
On Thursday, police arrested the three young men with whom Natalee left a bar at 1:30 Monday morning. They say they dropped her off at her hotel at 2 am. One of them told authorities that as Holloway was getting out of their car, she stumbled and one of them helped her up. Walking to the hotel, she stumbled a second time, and a "dark-colored" man wearing a black T-shirt and carrying a radio helped her. Aruba, if you don't know, is a Dutch protectorate, much as Rwanda used to be. As such, the natives understand the cardinal rule: blame it on the blacks.
But this article is not about the criminal process in Aruba. I know as much about this case as you do, which is to say, nothing. My concern about this case has not been addressed in any of the stories I've read about it.
And that is this:
What kind of parents let their child go on her own to a country whose chief products are drinking and sexual activity?
The first news stories I heard referred to this expedition as a "class trip." While this is true to some degree – the students were all graduating from the same high school – the purpose of the trip was clearly recreational. This is better than pretending that there is some educational value in a trip to Aruba, but not by much. I don't know if the school had anything to do with organizing this expedition, but I sincerely hope not. Mountain Brook High School is a public school – though obviously one with benefits much greater than many private schools – and I don't believe public schools should be involved in the whoring out of our children.
[Note: A story in the Birmingham Post-Herald says graduating seniors "have traveled to the sunny Caribbean paradise of Aruba on senior trips for many years," but that, "the trip, though traditional, is not an official school event." So apparently while Mountain Brook High School is not directly involved in the whoring out of our children, it supports such whoring. This story also refers to "142 recent graduates," but the number I've seen most often is 124 (an easy transposition), so I'm sticking with it. Either number is a significant portion of the 270 total senior class.]
One might consider the vacation as something of a graduation present. Even then, I shudder. I have no problem with commemorating your child's passage from high school with some sort of a celebration. A nice party, perhaps. In my family, even the increasingly traditional gift of a car is considered excessive. But a trip – on your own – to the freaking Caribbean? Come on! The ability to graduate from high school is a base level accomplishment. It means you were able to not screw up enough that you made it through public school. I understand that there are plenty of families at risk in our nation, and that there are plenty of children for whom graduation is a major accomplishment. Not in Mountain Brook, Alabama, where 60% of the teachers have Masters degrees, where average daily class attendance is 97%, and where the dropout rate is 0.37% (vs. 13% for the state.)
Readers might object to my characterizing Natalee as being "on her own." After all, there were adult chaperones on the tour. Yes, there were. 7. For 124 students. Some quick division reveals that to be a ratio of nearly 18 students per chaperone. This is more than one and a half times the ratio of students to teachers at Mountain Brook High School, which, you'll recall, is 11 to 1. In other words, it is more important to provide supervision in the classroom than in a foreign country 1800 miles away.
And not just any country. An island nation devoted to spending most of the say mostly undressed mostly drinking. Oh, there may have been some scuba diving, but even with their endurance, few teens can send as much time diving as drinking. Nor would they want to. Natalee has been described as a naïve girl who hasn't dated a lot and doesn't party a lot. By her family. Even if this is true, sending her off to the Caribbean with a hundred randy teens and a fistful of chaperones seems the equivalent of throwing a baby into the deep end of the pool to teach it to swim.
Are parents held hostage to such a degree by their own children that they are forced to lavish such gifts upon them? Or even worse, do parents feel so bad about themselves that they feel this sort of need to buy affection from their own offspring? It boggles the mind.
And if you are such a parent who feels a) bound, or b) guilty enough to provide such pleasures, is it that much of an effort to research your child's travel plans?
Aruba is a small island in the Caribbean. Good start. This conjures up such images of the Bahamas, Jamaica, maybe the Cayman or Virgin Islands, perhaps St. Barts or Antigua. Aruba is nowhere near all that. Aruba is 25 miles from Venezuela. South America is clearly visible from the island. And when we think of Venezuela, what do we think about? Failing economy, domestic instability, drug trafficking. To quote the CIA World Factbook: "large quantities of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana transit the country from Colombia bound for US and Europe; significant narcotics-related money-laundering activity; increasing signs of drug-related activities by Colombian insurgents."
Which doesn't mean that Aruba is not safe. The rate of crime against tourists is relatively low, and violent crime against tourists is very uncommon. But it does mean that you should think twice – and then twice more – and then just STOP – before leaving a club at closing time with three strangers. Being in a foreign country, especially in these heady times, is like being in a horror movie. Don't leave the group!
Would that her loving parents had given her that message two weeks ago.
*****
Note: Natalee Holloway's senior quote in the Mountain Brook yearbook comes from the Lynyrd Skynyrd song "Freebird:" "If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me? For I must be traveling on now, there's too many places I haven't seen." Take that as you will.
*****
This entire tragedy could have been avoided if Natalee had been wearing her forget-me-not panties.
These panties use an embedded microchip and the cutting edge technology of the sensatech system to monitor the wearer's position (globally, not physically), as well as such biometric measurements as her heart rate and body temperature. They're sold individually or in packs of 7, for daily protection.
If Natalee had worn forget-me-not panties, we'd know where she was today. Or at least where her panties were.
[Warning: forget-me-not panties are marketed through contagiousmedia.org.]
When the students' plane left on Monday, Holloway was the one child left behind.
Local police and a host of FBI agents have been following up a series of weak leads. This has not stopped Aruban authorities from making 5 arrests in the case. The first two arrests were local men who had recently worked as security guards at the Hotel Allegro, located about 2 blocks from the Holiday Inn where Natalee and her friends stayed. Jeez, if your family is making more than 100 grand, stay at the Allegro! The two men have not officially been charged with anything, but this is no reason to let them go. In Aruba, you see, authorities can hold suspects for nearly four months without filing formal charges. You might as well be at Gitmo. According to police, the two suspects were not seen in Natalee's company, none of her possessions were found among the items police seized after taking them into custody, and suspicious bloodstains found on a mattress were determined to be from a dog.
On Thursday, police arrested the three young men with whom Natalee left a bar at 1:30 Monday morning. They say they dropped her off at her hotel at 2 am. One of them told authorities that as Holloway was getting out of their car, she stumbled and one of them helped her up. Walking to the hotel, she stumbled a second time, and a "dark-colored" man wearing a black T-shirt and carrying a radio helped her. Aruba, if you don't know, is a Dutch protectorate, much as Rwanda used to be. As such, the natives understand the cardinal rule: blame it on the blacks.
But this article is not about the criminal process in Aruba. I know as much about this case as you do, which is to say, nothing. My concern about this case has not been addressed in any of the stories I've read about it.
And that is this:
What kind of parents let their child go on her own to a country whose chief products are drinking and sexual activity?
The first news stories I heard referred to this expedition as a "class trip." While this is true to some degree – the students were all graduating from the same high school – the purpose of the trip was clearly recreational. This is better than pretending that there is some educational value in a trip to Aruba, but not by much. I don't know if the school had anything to do with organizing this expedition, but I sincerely hope not. Mountain Brook High School is a public school – though obviously one with benefits much greater than many private schools – and I don't believe public schools should be involved in the whoring out of our children.
[Note: A story in the Birmingham Post-Herald says graduating seniors "have traveled to the sunny Caribbean paradise of Aruba on senior trips for many years," but that, "the trip, though traditional, is not an official school event." So apparently while Mountain Brook High School is not directly involved in the whoring out of our children, it supports such whoring. This story also refers to "142 recent graduates," but the number I've seen most often is 124 (an easy transposition), so I'm sticking with it. Either number is a significant portion of the 270 total senior class.]
One might consider the vacation as something of a graduation present. Even then, I shudder. I have no problem with commemorating your child's passage from high school with some sort of a celebration. A nice party, perhaps. In my family, even the increasingly traditional gift of a car is considered excessive. But a trip – on your own – to the freaking Caribbean? Come on! The ability to graduate from high school is a base level accomplishment. It means you were able to not screw up enough that you made it through public school. I understand that there are plenty of families at risk in our nation, and that there are plenty of children for whom graduation is a major accomplishment. Not in Mountain Brook, Alabama, where 60% of the teachers have Masters degrees, where average daily class attendance is 97%, and where the dropout rate is 0.37% (vs. 13% for the state.)
Readers might object to my characterizing Natalee as being "on her own." After all, there were adult chaperones on the tour. Yes, there were. 7. For 124 students. Some quick division reveals that to be a ratio of nearly 18 students per chaperone. This is more than one and a half times the ratio of students to teachers at Mountain Brook High School, which, you'll recall, is 11 to 1. In other words, it is more important to provide supervision in the classroom than in a foreign country 1800 miles away.
And not just any country. An island nation devoted to spending most of the say mostly undressed mostly drinking. Oh, there may have been some scuba diving, but even with their endurance, few teens can send as much time diving as drinking. Nor would they want to. Natalee has been described as a naïve girl who hasn't dated a lot and doesn't party a lot. By her family. Even if this is true, sending her off to the Caribbean with a hundred randy teens and a fistful of chaperones seems the equivalent of throwing a baby into the deep end of the pool to teach it to swim.
Are parents held hostage to such a degree by their own children that they are forced to lavish such gifts upon them? Or even worse, do parents feel so bad about themselves that they feel this sort of need to buy affection from their own offspring? It boggles the mind.
And if you are such a parent who feels a) bound, or b) guilty enough to provide such pleasures, is it that much of an effort to research your child's travel plans?
Aruba is a small island in the Caribbean. Good start. This conjures up such images of the Bahamas, Jamaica, maybe the Cayman or Virgin Islands, perhaps St. Barts or Antigua. Aruba is nowhere near all that. Aruba is 25 miles from Venezuela. South America is clearly visible from the island. And when we think of Venezuela, what do we think about? Failing economy, domestic instability, drug trafficking. To quote the CIA World Factbook: "large quantities of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana transit the country from Colombia bound for US and Europe; significant narcotics-related money-laundering activity; increasing signs of drug-related activities by Colombian insurgents."
Which doesn't mean that Aruba is not safe. The rate of crime against tourists is relatively low, and violent crime against tourists is very uncommon. But it does mean that you should think twice – and then twice more – and then just STOP – before leaving a club at closing time with three strangers. Being in a foreign country, especially in these heady times, is like being in a horror movie. Don't leave the group!
Would that her loving parents had given her that message two weeks ago.
*****
Note: Natalee Holloway's senior quote in the Mountain Brook yearbook comes from the Lynyrd Skynyrd song "Freebird:" "If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me? For I must be traveling on now, there's too many places I haven't seen." Take that as you will.
*****
This entire tragedy could have been avoided if Natalee had been wearing her forget-me-not panties.
These panties use an embedded microchip and the cutting edge technology of the sensatech system to monitor the wearer's position (globally, not physically), as well as such biometric measurements as her heart rate and body temperature. They're sold individually or in packs of 7, for daily protection.
If Natalee had worn forget-me-not panties, we'd know where she was today. Or at least where her panties were.
[Warning: forget-me-not panties are marketed through contagiousmedia.org.]
posted by John Bliss at
8:48 AM
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