Spring Break Should Break
By Sally Bishai (03/14/06)
Yes, it's true.
I am TOTALLY against Spring Break!
This call to immorality and debauchery actually began as time off for Easter, but I guess most people don't realize that. They certainly don't take their precious holiday time to go to Church, I can tell you that.
Why? Because most Spring Breaks don't even coincide with Easter these days!
Sadly, this usually-week-long holiday has run to "Girls Gone Wild" and drinking games. To designer drinks and 8-hour clubbing marathons.
Channels such as E! and MTV only make the phenomenon worse, as they broadcast all sorts of images of buff young men drinking straight from the keg, or show the unseemly wrigglings of unattractive blondes in ill-fitting string bikinis.
I've also noticed that several girls (in various interviews and news spots) have mentioned they were in Daytona or South Beach or wherever with their boyfriends for their holiday, and explained away that what could only be described as an improper and terrifying spate of "rutting" on the dance-floor--with one or more other girls--as just a case of "a bunch of us having fun, no pressure, our boyfriends think it's funny!" or "it's our Spring Break! Why not?" and "College is about experimenting, isn't it? What better time to experiment?!" (A statistic I heard on the radio as I drove back from MY spring break actually cited that 75% of girls in their Spring Break had sexual relations with one or more persons that they had met that week! More experimentation, I guess..)
I can't tell you how ill-causing this line of reasoning is.
If college is about experimenting, then why don't they try "bankrobbing" or "murder" on for size?
Unfortunately, such things as immorality (aka "sleeping or messing with someone you're not married to," whether hetero or homosexual), drinking, smoking, drugs, gambling, and even gluttony are no longer on par with the aforementioned sins.
A teenager who has straight A's but plays Beer Pong every weekend is still described as "a good kid."
Don't know about you, but I would much prefer an academic flunkie with morals (the Arabic word "akhlaq" is really the best way to put it) to the teen champion of drinking games.. even if he does end up as the valedictorian of his class.
I know what you're thinking... "Sally, if you feel so strongly, why not move back to your own country?" Hmm. Because this IS my own country! (Not that Egypt isn't, because it is, too.) I was born in the States, first off, and secondly, I've come across Egyptians who are 100x more naughty than anything I've mentioned here.
So it's not a cultural thing, though one could get away with such things much easier in America than, say, Egypt.
You may also be thinking that I'm a religious fanatic, and I kind of am, I guess, but Southern Baptists aren't the only people who long for a cleaner society! Furthermore, lots of protestants, Copts, Christians, and others may have an issue with things I'm saying, so don't attribute it to religion, either.
At any rate, enough goings-on for now, but here's hoping that God will sanitize the less-than-clean minds of the current generation of kids, so many of whom seem to have been born sans moral compass.
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