Student Tour Group ‘Pimps Spring Break’ to Excessive Drinking

It’s only November, but student travel groups are already revving up for spring break, including one e-mail contest to "Pimp My Spring Break" in Cancun, Mexico. A tour company called StudentCity.com is encouraging college students to post photos and stories about why they deserve to have their spring break "pimped" or upgraded to five-star luxury by the company. So far, over 200 students have entered, and some of the photos already posted feature scantily clad young women and students with beer bongs and tequila bottles in their hands. THE BLOTTER RECOMMENDS Accused Child Sex Ring Boss Back in Cancun Teen Rape Victim Wants Others to Know About ‘Senior Week’ in Cancun Click Here to Check Out Who’s Blowing Hot, Cool and Smoke on the Brian Ross Homepage Winners whose trips to Cancun are "pimped" will receive free airfare for themselves and a friend, champagne in the room and almost unlimited alcohol at parties such as Cancun’s infamous "Booze Cruise."  Tour companies offering similar "all you can drink" trips to places like Cancun, where the legal drinking age is 18, advertise on many college campuses to the dismay of groups trying to combat binge and underage drinking at colleges.  Colleges and universities are "not looking for this, and they’re turning a blind eye to it,"  according to Susan Foster, the Vice President of Policy, Research and Analysis at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. "They’re not taking full responsibility to accept the problem," she says. Studentcity.com even has "campus reps," college students who recruit other students to sign up for spring break trips in return for a free trip. Repeated calls to StudentCity.com by ABC News have not been returned.  Officials in Mexico say they have tried to crack down on American college tours that feature unlimited alcohol, but a 20/20 investigation earlier this year found the problem continues. On one of the excursions, an ABC News producer saw students on a "Booze Cruise" greeted with a speech by the very adult cruise operator that "what happens in Cancun, stays in Cancun."  What proceeded afterward was five hours of unlimited alcohol, sexual games and obscenities, and a wet t-shirt contest featuring drunk topless college-age girls.  Such advertising may end up running afoul with the government however. In the Federal Trade Commission’s newest study of alcohol advertising and marketing practices, spring break promotions will be included as a category.  Foster says that many universities say that if students want these groups on campus, they have that right. "They may raise the free speech issue. These people have a right to advertise. These people have a right to try to promote their product or their service, and we shouldn’t be interfering in that," she says. But Foster adds, "We need to think more carefully as a society and as college and university presidents about the extent to which we will tolerate advertising and promotional activities that are clearly harmful and dangerous."