Immediately after Christmas Break ends, all anyone can think about are plans for spring break and getting that bikini body.  Going on a crazy spring break trip is a rite of passage in college, and something I think everyone should do at least once. 

When else in your life is it acceptable to blow off responsibility and inhibitions for an entire week? With that in mind, I think a lot of students forget that it does not mean they are invincible for the week.  It’s easy to ignore until you look at the hard facts.

The Good

1. Last year, more than 10,000 high school and college students signed up to spend their spring breaks building houses with Habitat for Humanity.

2. Hurricane Katrina jump-started a big volunteer oriented Spring Break fad. Approximately 35,000 U.S. youth participated in an alternative/service oriented spring break in 2006.

3.  1.5 million students go on spring break every year and collectively feed over one billion dollars into the American economy.

And The Bad

1. On average, college students consume six drinks per week. On spring break, men and women consume at least 10 drinks per day.

2. A report from the American Medical Association says, "More than half of college students know friends who were sexually active with more than one partner during spring break and nearly three out of five women know friends who have had unprotected sex during Spring Break."

3. When teens go abroad for spring break, it’s easy to forget that foreign laws are extremely serious. With that being said, 2,600 Americans are arrested on spring break overseas each year.

4. 60% of students get injured while on spring break.

5. Every year at least one spring breaker dies from falling off a balcony.

So go ahead and have a fun spring break! Just don’t become a statistic - at least not a bad one.