College Suspends Mexico School Abroad

On Nov. 6, the College announced its decision to suspend its school abroad in Xalapa, Mexico. The program, which was based at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, will not accept students from next semester onward, unless the decision to suspend the school is reversed. The suspension of the Mexico program eliminates the only Spanish language C.V. Starr School Abroad Latin American location in the Northern Hemisphere.

Acting Dean of International Programs Paul Monod cited low enrollment as the primary reason for closing the program. Only one student opted to study abroad in Mexico this academic year, and the program has seen an average of only 2.7 students per semester over the past eight semesters. For comparison, the Middlebury C.V. Starr School in Argentina sees an average of 18.375 students per semester and the school in Chile has an average of 15.5 students per semester. The College has decided that the few students who choose to study in Mexico are not enough to sustain the costs of the program.

Monod suggested that reports of drug-related violence in the region might have contributed to the program’s unpopularity.

“It's unfortunate to have to close any site abroad, but Mexico was a special case,” said Monod.  “Reports of drug violence in that country have saturated the media in the United States, which seems to have discouraged students from applying for the program.  There was no sign that this situation was going to change; in fact, it appears to have worsened in the last year or so.”

The Middlebury School Abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico was closed last year after reports of violence prompted the U.S. government to issue a travel warning, but the Xalapa program remained open as it was deemed safer.

Alan Sanders ’13.5, the only current student who studied abroad in Xalapa last spring, said that there was not significant violence in the area.

“There were police patrols, and that was the extent of the violence that I saw,” Sanders noted. “There were a couple of shootings while I was there but they were very much in isolated areas of the city that the school was not anywhere close to.”

While Spanish language students still have plenty of options in considering studying abroad locations — the College has programs in Spain, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay — there are certain drawbacks to eliminating the Mexico location. Mexico was the only Spanish-speaking Latin American country available to students at the College who wished to study abroad in the Northern Hemisphere. Universities in the Southern Hemisphere follow a different academic calendar, with the fall semester beginning at the beginning of August and the spring semester ending in the middle of July.

For students at the College who have summer obligations and jobs back in the states, this calendar rules out locations like Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.  Students in the international and global studies or international politics and economics majors, who are encouraged to focus on a specific region and are required to study abroad, now must travel to the Southern Hemisphere and adhere to that calendar if they choose to focus in Latin American studies.

Students studying Spanish and Latin American cultures still have many options available to them, and the Office of International Programs maintains that the there was nothing unique about the curriculum offered at Unversidad Veracruzana in Xalapa.

As an international and global studies major with a focus in anthropology, Sanders disagreed.

“The archeology program is really good, because they’re right in the middle of where the Olmec civilization used to be,” said Sanders. “So there’s a lot of archeological dig sites around the city and it’s a very culturally rich part of the world. So they have a lot of opportunities for anthropologists.”

Sanders expressed his disappointment upon hearing the news of the program’s suspension.

“I think that Mexico has such a vibrant culture that is misrepresented in the media in the United States,” Sanders added. “We share a 2,000 mile border and it’s so important to our politics, I think its really important that Middlebury students get past the rhetoric that is involved in political discussions around Mexico, and that’s really only accessible through living there. “