No easy answers in Perugia
At first, the e-mails from my friend’s daughter were about settling into Ireland.
Then came her opinions of Guinness. The taste of whiskey. The journeys out of Dublin. Those of us on Erica’s mailing list shook our heads and smiled. She is an American college student abroad, a 20-year-old - young, yes, but still an adult - living on her own, far out of reach. And she’s just fine.
It’s a different story in Perugia, where another American college student, 20-year-old Amanda Knox from the University of Washington, is being held in the Nov. 1 slaying of her British roommate.
More than 200,000 American college students study abroad each year, exploring new cultures, asserting their independence and running wild.
But when things go wrong, the university that sent them can only do so much.
The UW has some 300 students in Italy this semester - all at the school’s Rome Center, save for three at the University for Foreign Students in Perugia. Other UW students are studying in Latin America, China, Scandinavia, France and England. (Exact numbers weren’t available Monday.)
On the day UW officials learned that Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher, had been killed, they called Knox to see what she needed, said UW media-relations director Norm Arkans. Beyond that, the school could do little more.
“They’re young adults and we’re in touch with them when need be,” Arkans said. “But that’s part of the experience. They go to a place, they’re enrolled in university and they’re pretty much on their own, as they would be in Seattle.”
Indeed, such crimes occur stateside. Last month in Boston, a Wellesley student allegedly broke into her ex-boyfriend’s dorm room at MIT and stabbed him seven times. But as we watch the Knox case slowly unfold from an ocean away, I wonder: Do schools need to monitor their students more closely, or do we just accept that some will be so overwhelmed or unleashed by their new life, that they head down the darkest alleys?
Before UW students leave Seattle, the university holds orientation sessions to discuss the laws and mores of other countries, Arkans said.
“But I don’t think there’s anything to prepare them for what’s going on in Perugia,” he added.
After Knox arrived in Italy last month, her life outside of class grew quickly. She found a roommate, a boyfriend, a job.
Then came Nov. 1.
“This is one of the things that everyone at study-abroad programs has sleepless nights over,” said Lee Frankel, executive director of Academic Study Abroad, a private company that arranges programs like UW’s. Academic Study Abroad has on-site staff in daily contact with students, not only to care for them but answer to parents.
“It’s easy to say that these kids are adults,” Frankel said. “But there are plenty of kids who don’t do well.”
Maybe UW should re-evaluate the schools it partners with, Frankel said, but even that can’t control what students do.
“There’s always going to be some kid who does something stupid,” he said. “And there’s no way around that.”
Nicole Brodeur’s column appears Tuesday and Friday.
Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.
She sent love with the Cheez-Its.