With political unrest throughout Egypt, faculty leaders of the Dialogue of Civilizations program as well as the students participating are questioning whether or not the trip will go through as planned. The Office of International Study Programs (OISP) has policies to determine whether a country is safe to visit, and these policies are legitimate. What is not legitimate are the options students are left with if a trip is cancelled.

On Feb. 1, The Boston Globe published an article about several universities throughout the country pulling out all the stops it took to get students studying abroad out of Egypt, and other parts of Africa as well.

The OISP website states: “If the U.S. State Department issues an official recommendation to evacuate U.S. nationals from a country in which NU offers a program, NU will suspend or cancel the program in that country …”

The website also states, despite the fact that political turmoil is out of students’ control, participants won’t receive a refund on “non-recoverable expenses,” which include, but are not limited to airfare, housing, transportation and administrative fees. If a program is cancelled, the OISP website also states they will do their best to transfer the students to another Northeastern Dialogue of Civilizations program.

It’s potentially a lose-lose situation. Either your trip gets cancelled and you lose hundreds of dollars, or your trip gets redirected to a country you may have no interest in visiting. And if the latter is the case, you are forced to choose between going someplace you don’t want to go or losing your money.

This is certainly a weak point in the award-winning Dialogue of Civilizations programs. (Just last week Northeastern announced that the Dialogue of Civilizations program was recognized as the top Study Abroad program and awarded the 2011 Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education by the Institute of International Education.)

Of course, it’s a pain for everyone involved when a dialogue is cancelled, including the staff at the study abroad office. But the typical college student is broke and is most likely scraping to get by for months in order to pay for his or her time abroad.

OISP needs to offer students some sort of insurance option that will guarantee students’ money is returned if political unrest, natural disasters, or other elements out of their control take over.

Should students decide not to pay extra for an insurance option, it’s their loss. But they should have the option – especially on trips to places like the Middle East where unrest can and will occur at any given moment.