(AgapePress) - Concerns are being raised about the behavior of U.S. college students studying in other countries. A recent New York Times report cites college officials who say American students in foreign study programs are "exporting drunkenness, misconduct, and other trouble to an unprecedented degree."Examples of reported misbehavior on the part of American college scholars include students tossing trash out of their dorm room windows onto passersby in Amsterdam, getting into a knife and stick fight with locals in Spain, and getting arrested in Central America for drug possession. And one U.S. citizen says she can add her own embarrassed eye-witness accounts to the list of American students outrages. Linda Clouse and her husband spend about five months a year living in a condo surrounded by a university campus in Florence, Italy. She has not been impressed with the behavior of American students attending there because, she says, "They're not using good manners. They're pushy and loud and sometimes inebriated. I would like to have people in other countries think of us in a more positive way that that."Clouse, a former high school English teacher, says American students who routinely get drunk or engage in sexually immoral behavior are only part of the problem. Many, she notes, are also sloppy, dirty, obnoxious, and tend to try to impose their lifestyles on the native Florentine culture. And lest anyone suggest that the Italian climate or the Florentine atmosphere is to blame, Clouse says she seriously doubts the conduct of these young Americans studying abroad in would be any different in any other foreign country. The Wisconsin native says she and her husband frequently hear comments about U.S. citizens "in general as being very self-centered and not having a great deal of consideration for their neighbors." Blaming these attitudes on a loss of moral focus that she finds increasingly common among Americans, the former teacher says, "I think we've lost sight of what the true meaning of freedom is, and that is the kind of thing that I observe in the students we see in Florence."Clouse says she would like to see all U.S. colleges and universities that offer study programs abroad require students to take a class that teaches proper public behavior.
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