A recent graduate of Beloit College has gone missing in the Middle East. College spokesman Ron Nief says 23-year-old Taylor Luck of Chicago was working for an English-language newspaper, The Jordan Times , when he disappeared on vacation in Lebanon. “He was an adventurous person but a very responsible person,” says Nief. “He may have been pursuing a story.”
Luck, a 2007 graduate who spoke Arabic, and another American journalist, 27 year-old Holli Chmela, arrived in Lebanon from Jordan on September 29, and have not been heard from since last Wednesday, according to the U.S. embassy in Beirut. The embassy said the two reportedly left Beirut for the northern port of Tripoli, a city where militants and Islamic fundamentalists are active, and where there has been sectarian fighting and bombings in recent months.
Nief says many on campus are waiting for word. “Faculty remember him, and there are students here still who were classmates of his. Our concern is really with with his family and his friends.”