I for one am glad to see that you are realizing that in 2005, but for the grace of God, many of us would have or did have terrible things happen to us. Frankly, I was concerned about your flippant remarks earlier. True, if a young person on a student trip truly wants to make an effort to slip a chaperone at 1 or 2 am, it's not too hard. I have heard of people using police tape on doors for middle schoolers, but for the inventive and combative teenager, used to getting his or her way, slipping a watchful eye on the last night out of port would not be too hard.
One night on a student trip, I remember staying up all night on a balcony with two other adult chaperones, watching a man on a slight hill smoking cigarettes--who was just waiting for us to go to sleep. We took turns keeping an eye out like we were on patrol. This was in France. To this day, I am glad he was smoking. I could count his drags, which helped keep me awake on my watch.
What about this makes you think the so called chaperones on this trip had any responsibilty to monitor the kids actions?
see in our trip I don't even think the teachers tried to put any restrictions on us in Rome, no one was punished when we got back home, that's for sure and that course's enrolment skyrocketed because of the annual trip to Rome.......
in Sorrento, we were terrified so the teachers didn't have to say anything, we stayed in of our own accord.....
didn't mean to sound flip but boy you look back and I was a a relatively good two shoes kid, compared to my siblings, [I'd be the one saying shouldn't we be getting back now, won't we get into trouble?]
my parents are just now getting some of the stories, esp involving my brothers and you know, utterly amazing no one got really hurt or in big trouble, sure could have so easily