Safety
Rutgers Study Abroad constantly monitors the safety and security of our programs and program locations. We discuss with our staff and colleagues in our program locations any safety concerns or measures as they arise. We monitor the U.S. State Department guidelines for Americans abroad. We subscribe to a variety of independent security agencies for further information. We watch the media. We converse with our experts here at Rutgers University. Should something occur in a particular location abroad, Rutgers Study Abroad will address that as necessary in that location. We treat each location individually and specifically; we do not make blanket decisions or recommendations for all of our programs. If you have particular safety concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us with questions.

The Media
You should use a wide variety of sources to learn about what life is like in your host country and city. CNN and other news channels are a common source of information about world events; however, television should not be your only resource. Quite often, news reports give us a very distorted perspective about what is going on abroad. This is largely because U.S. television news spends most of its time reporting on U.S. events. There are only a few minutes or even seconds in which to summarize what is going on in the rest of the world; thus, what you see is typically the most extreme or dramatic examples of world events. And you see these pictures repeatedly. Television news does not report on the fact that most people in other countries are living their lives contentedly just as you are. On the other hand, take a few moments to really look at and listen to the headlines for events happening in U.S. cities. Imagine that you are from another country and do not know much about U.S. geography, politics, etc. What would you think about people who live in the United States? We have been told by many people abroad that the U.S. seems like a very violent country. How our perceptions of other places are shaped by the media is worthy of reflection.