We're all annoyed about this "missing rich white girl" news story trend. Not only does coverage of these events pull airtime, paper space, and Web headlines away from legitimate news (and believe me, we have plenty of that), spread unnecessary paranoia (Shark attacks, anyone?), but it sadly has reminded those of us on DailyKos that racism and classism are all too present in a society that's supposedly "over all that."
But I'm glad that Natalee Holloway is getting coverage. And here's why.
I'm not from Alabama; I'm from the bluest county in New Jersey. Nevertheless, I've been able to see disturbing parallels between Natalee's affluent suburban upbringing in Mountain Brook, AL, and the environment where I was raised. Namely, this is the questionable new practice of "senior trips." It's a big concern in my area of central New Jersey, a very high-income region where the public schools are rich and the private schools are richer. Every year there are "senior trips" that pop up. Sometimes these are sponsored, at least in part, by the school -- educational trips, maybe, or excursions to Disney World or a national park. But then there are the ones that the schools don't sponsor, the inherently elite events where students' families have to pay their own way and low-income classmates are frequently left out. And the schools don't just
not sponsor them, they often send out letters to parents emphasizing that they
refuse to sponsor them.
Why? It's become more and more common in affluent suburbs for these parent-organized senior trips to go not to Yellowstone or Universal Studios, but to popular "spring break" locations -- namely, countries where the drinking age is well below 21. It's alarming that parents are sponsoring these, and it's even more alarming that they think their kids will "behave."
I am not much older than Natalee Holloway -- older enough so that I could read the news about her and understand that she was putting herself in serious danger by going out that late and (supposedly) drinking, but close enough in age to be aware that if I were eighteen and in a country where drinking was legal at my age, I would've done the same thing. I would've partied. Nightlife is everywhere on Aruba. It's legal. Everyone's doing it. The streets are populated. What kind of crime goes on in resort towns? Your friends are there. It's safe, right? As we all know now, absolutely not.
So let's hope that this "missing rich white girl" story actually does some good. Let's hope that it makes parents think before they buy into their 17-year-old's pleas to let him/her go on the trip to Bermuda because "everyone's going." These trips are blatant invitations for high schoolers to drink, and very few of them will have the foresight not to buy into the temptations that will literally be handed to them if they go. (Come on, they're 18. I'm a good kid and I would've partied hard.) We can pray (or the equivalent of praying) for Natalee and her family, but we can also pray that affluent parents around the country are getting the message: Sending your kid on one of these expensive, exotic "senior trips" is just plain stupid.