USC will cancel Thailand trip amid unrest

The recent collapse of the Thai government and the blockade of its two airports by anti-government protestors have prompted Student Affairs to cancel an alternative winter break to the beleaguered nation and USC administrators are monitoring the status of one student who is studying there.

“After reviewing and talking to colleagues in the Provost office, we thought it was prudent to not send our 20 or so students there because it is not safe, simply put,” said Vice President of Student Affairs Michael L. Jackson.

Melissa Gaeke, director of the USC Volunteer Center, said Student Affairs chose to cancel the trip after a U.S. State Department alert urged Americans to avoid traveling to the country. The school’s overseas insurance carrier also advised them not to go forward with the trip.

“The country itself is not letting people leave or come in; there is general turmoil,” Jackson said.

Conflict between the ruling People Power Party came to a climax last week when the People’s Alliance for Democracy stormed Thailand’s two civilian airports, Suvarnabhumi international airport and Don Muang airport, to put pressure on the courts to disband the government.

The protestors are expected to vacate the airports after the country’s supreme court disbanded the current government on charges of election fraud.

The court ruling ousted the current prime minister and banned senior members of the People Power Party from politics for five years.

“Due to the unpredictable nature of political unrest, it was the university’s decision to avoid placing any student in a potentially unsafe environment,” Gaeke said.

The students participating in the alternative winter break were scheduled teach English to Burmese refugees at an orphanage in the northern town of Mae Hong Song.

Over the next week Student Affairs will look into alternative options for the students, Gaeke said.

This is not the first time Student Affairs has canceled overseas trips. In the past, trips to Israel and Africa have been canceled or postponed because of unrest in those regions, Jackson said.

“I really feel bad because I know the students really looked forward to it,” he said.

A Marshall student currently studying abroad at the Thammasat University in Bangkok is expected to finish his studies and return to the United States in a few weeks, after the semester ends, said Sean O’Connell, the director of the International Business Program at the Marshall School of Business.

“If nothing changes I would say there is not that much of a risk, but you never know what is going to happen,” he said.

Thammasat University assistant professor Somchai Supattarakul warned O’Connell in an email last week that students should “avoid being near Suvarnabhumi, Don Muang Airports and the Government House,” but said other areas of Bangkok are safe.

“To this point there have not been any tourists targeted. They believe this is an internal struggle only,” O’Connell wrote in the e-mail.

Administrators are still planning to go ahead with a study abroad trip for seven Marshall students to Thammasat next semester, he wrote.

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