Jeff Millman: A spring break for the real thrill-seekers

Every year, Penn students compete to experience the most hardcore spring break possible. These students often flee the United States to avoid confronting a paternalist penal code and vigilant law enforcement. For some, this means spring break is not much of a break at all: it's simply transplanting their typically rowdy weekend games from campus to Cancun. But for those who typically decline peer-pressurized campus contests like Beirut, spring break inspires a trip to Jamaica complete with consular visits and stomach pumps. For the Penn students that, starting today, think they're going to get crazy: sorry. You didn't try hard enough. The banana republics to which you're flocking expect the faux-spontaneity and uninspired inebriation from your Banana Republic-toting selves. Your vacation is clich‚, as is your conforming to the "ugly American" stereotype. Your trip is touristy and trendy. You're not really rebellious. In the quest for the most extreme vacation, there is one destination that stands above the rest. It's a place where the Aztecs would get Montezuma's Revenge. It's a place that makes Costa Rica look like the pinnacle of modernity. It's a place that cannot be overbooked. It's a place that you all overlooked. Introducing Pitcairn Island. It's Britain's last dependent territory, located halfway between Peru and New Zealand. There is no airport; it takes a minimum of eight days to reach the island. There is no accessible beach, no natural harbor. The sole unpaved road from the lone village to the coast is unusable during frequent torrential downpours. But for the world's most remote community, the possibility for debauchery is endless. Spring break revelers here are out of the law's reach. The island's police, customs and liquor control departments are combined, consisting of one man. Construction is underway for a double-celled jail, but it is not yet operational. Jacqui Christian thus described the island to Britain's The Independent: "There's total freedom, and the whole island is your backyard." This backyard offers the freedom to explore unparalleled romantic opportunities as well. The age of consent here is 12. Unlike the exotic Latin American destinations, English is the official language, so there is no language barrier to flirtation. With a population under 50 (and a labor force of "12 able-bodied men" according to the CIA World Fact Book) visitors can capitalize on the pervasive loneliness on the island and enthusiasm among the natives for new blood (intermarriage is taking its toll). The South Seas have always evoked images of breezy palm trees and merry Polynesian women. The islanders "know no other god but love," wrote 18th-century naturalist Phillibert Commerson. "Every day is consecrated to it, the whole island is its temple, all the women are its idols, all the men its worshippers." Aside from the women, the beauty of Pitcairn Island is that it is the Galapagos Islands for humans. In this petri dish of human relationships, the community must survive with one unreliable telephone, a six-month wait for mail and a small diesel-powered generator which serves as its power plant. In this isolation, there is no safety net. The leading cause of death after old age is falling off cliffs. And that's why all you spring break revelers should go to Pitcairn. There you can fully experience what you seem to crave -- lawlessness. On the island, you can partake in petty arguments and long-running feuds, often punctuated with the casual discharge of a sidearm. To overcome your claustrophobia, you can take advantage of your full liberty as the islanders do, through liberal drug use and alcoholism. Yeah, compared to Pitcairn, your spring break is a cop out on extremism. But the problem is, your lame vacation plans are also a cop out on rationality and responsibility. Penn students regard the state of Mexico as the state of nature, and the same can be said of the other foreign destinations of spring break. It's a zoo there, except nobody is confined. All these students want to be left alone to have intense fun without regrets or a public record (nevermind that your drunken stupor and/or flashing are unknowingly chronicled for the world on the Internet or amateur video). These Penn students rush south of the border to rid themselves of the safety net -- the police and emergency social services -- that is so coveted by those living there. The irony is that as Penn students go south, tens of thousands rush north of the border for the laws and institutions that keep chaos in check and help people when their chemical and romantic fantasies meet human realities. For the immigrants that cross the border to find a better education system in the U.S.: let's hope they don't send their kids to Penn. Otherwise, they'd find that students here aren't so educated after all. Jeff Millman is a senior Philosophy, Politics, and Economics major from Los Angeles, Calif.

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