Along with sunny beaches and shiny waters, popular spring break locations like Cancun, Mexico and the Bahamas offer a lower drinking age. This alone is enough to attract some students to spend their week off outside the United States.“Everyone on the island was so carefree,” junior Matt Smith* said about his vacation to the Bahamas last year. “Getting alcohol was so easy it was a joke. The bars basically sold to anyone who wanted it. I was 15 at the time, and they didn’t even blink when I ordered.”

While certain rules may be more relaxed outside of America, tourists lose all constitutional rights when they leave the country. “The good news and the bad news is that students on spring break will be treated under the laws of wherever they are. A lot of them go there so they can, for example, drink. Then, they find out that they don’t have American constitutional rights and that’s the bad news,” Lee Lonzo, assistant principal and attorney, said. “You can’t have it both ways. The kids who get arrested down there have big problems.”
“What you have to understand is that the ground rules under which people are going to respond to will be based on their country’s laws and practices,” Athletics Director Bruce Wolf said. “In many cases, it is anything but what you would expect here in America.”
At any location outside of the United States, Americans lose their right to a phone call, the right to consult a lawyer and the right to remain silent when arrested.
“My experience is that Americans go (out of the country) and they drink until they throw up and they hurt themselves. Then they are publicly intoxicated, which is different from drinking; it’s OK to drink down there; it’s not OK to throw up in the swimming pool,” Lonzo said. “They get arrested and they find out they don’t have American rights, and then they’re in some jail, and they don’t even get a phone call, and they lost their plane ride home. In Cancun, you could be in jail for years, literally. It’s not
Carmel; you have no rights.”

“Any kid who goes (outside the country), and with their parents’ permission, drinks responsibly and doesn’t have other obligations like athletics probably is not going to get into any trouble,” Lonzo said. However, student athletes who drink could face consequences with their teams.

“The risk outweighs the few days of what they think they really want to enjoy,” Wolf said. “The athletic behavior code doesn’t say you aren’t supposed to drink, use drugs, etc. just while you are in the town of Carmel; it says all of the time while you are an athlete. Where you are doesn’t change the consequences you can face as an athlete under our athletic behavior code.”

“(In other countries), they don’t care if you’re 16, 14, 12 years old, male, female, if your parents are there, if your parents aren’t there or if you are a U.S. citizen; it’s all irrelevant,” Lonzo said. “(Students) could literally ruin their life for what they think is one week of actions with no consequences, and that is hardly the case.”