OU study abroad officials said they will continue to send students to Mexico despite the U.S. State Department’s recent travel alert.

The Education Abroad and International Student Services office has students who are interested in studying in Mexico for next fall and spring, and there are no plans to cease sending them, Karen Elmore, associate director of Study Abroad, said in an e-mail.

Violence has increased in the past few months near the U.S.-Mexico border because of conflicts between Mexican drug cartels and security services, according to an alert on the department’s Web site.

Mexican authorities in Juarez report that more than 1,800 people have been killed in the city, located near El Paso, Texas, since January 2008.

None of OU’s partner universities, however, are located close to the border region and the office wouldn’t send students to a violent area, Elmore said.

She said advising students against studying in Mexico because of the violence around the border wouldn’t be a reasonable approach.

“That would be like telling international students they shouldn’t come to study in Oklahoma because there is a gang war in Los Angeles,” Elmore said.

There have been times, however, when international students reconsidered studying in Oklahoma because of other states’ violence, she said.

“I remember after September 11 (2001), the parents of some incoming exchange students didn’t want them to come to Oklahoma because there had been a terrorist attack in New York City,” Elmore said. “Some Oklahomans found this amusing, talking about how far away we are from NYC and what a ridiculous fear that was for the parents to even mention.”

The study abroad program has canceled exchange programs before because it was uncomfortable sending students to certain countries, she said. The office canceled a trip to China in 2003 because of the SARS outbreak.

The violence happening in Mexico may not be worse than violence in some U.S. states, but people in the U.S. don’t really have a context to understand the violence, said Charles Kenney, political science professor.

Students in Mexico should be aware of their surroundings just like a student going to New York or Washington, D.C., said Kenney, who studies Latin American politics.

Mexico sees a constant level of violence, which can sometimes get out of hand, he said, but the situation is the same in most countries and Mexico is no more violent or dangerous than other Latin American countries.

But some parents and students are still concerned.

Elmore said the study abroad office has received phone calls this semester on the issue and she tries to reassure parents of the safety.

“If the question is ‘Is it safe for my son, daughter, sister to study in Mexico?’ our response is usually, ‘We cannot guarantee safety here in Norman, Oklahoma, but we do not send students to destinations that we consider dangerous,” she said.

Elmore said the office doesn’t expect the violence to affect students but they have experienced emergencies with students studying abroad before.

OU had students in Madrid and surrounding areas during Spain’s 2004 train bombings, she said.

“That morning I was checking early morning international news and e-mails, saw what had happened and rushed to campus so I could begin contacting students by phone,” Elmore said. “Our partner universities were already on top of the situation, of course, and I called them first.”

She said the study abroad office follow the OU international emergency procedure, which states the director of Education Abroad and International Student Services will assign a crisis coordinator to regularly update the director about the evolving situation.

Kenney said students should discuss the area of interest with the study abroad office and learn as much about the culture before going and students shouldn’t worry about going to Mexico.