International Travel May Get More Difficult for UWM Students

The UWM subcommittee for International Travel Safety said on Tuesday that any UWM student or organization traveling internationally through the school may eventually have to follow UWM’s travel safety protocols and purchase insurance for the trip.

There is currently no entity to ensure that all UWM students traveling internationally are following safety guidelines. The Committee for International Travel Safety technically only exists to govern study abroad trips. Committee chairman Larry Kuiper wants to change that.

“Whether it’s the basketball team traveling to Canada or a study abroad trip in Kenya, our biggest concern is the safety of the students,” said Kuiper.

The committee proposed a new policy that would require all students traveling internationally to follow UWM’s guidelines and would require the entire group traveling to fly together and book their flight through UWM’s travel agency Fox World Travel.

An upcoming study abroad trip in Kenya is what prompted the committee to add more safety precautions to the current policy. The committee currently uses the U.S Department of State Travel Advisory and UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Travel Advice websites to decide if a country is safe enough to send students.

“The State Website says that all of Kenya is a mix of level 2 and level 3 safety levels, whereas the UK travel safety website says that only a small portion of Kenya is a level 3,” said Kuiper. “We’re changing it so program heads use the CDC’s website and the States website to gauge the safety of a country, and whatever other source the committee may deem required.”

Travel safety websites categorize a countries safety in levels ranging from one to three, with one being the safest and three being the most dangerous. The Committee said they will not sign off on a trip if students are traveling to a place with a level three safety rating.

 Kuiper said that the biggest change in the policy is that not only doing study abroad trips will be affected. He also said that he thinks there should be a governing body to keep track of any UWM student traveling for school purposes.

“My biggest fear is that we would get a call from a place where something disastrous happened and they would ask us how many UWM students were there and exactly where they were and we wouldn’t know,” said Kuiper.

Mitch Spencer, a sophomore at UWM who is planning a semester abroad in Australia said he thinks the new policy is a good thing.

“I’m honestly pretty scared about going and living in a completely different place for a semester, but the semester abroad program has been really helpful and informative about what safety precautions to take and what resources there are. I think any UWM student traveling for school should have those resources,” said Spencer.

While the proposed policy still has to go through one more round of deliberation and is in the early stages, the committee is confident that it will be passed and implemented within the next two years.