Her personality as reflected in the FB photos: Take a look for yourself. The pancake make-up is always on, even when she is just sitting around the kitchen with female family members. She is never just one of the girls. The eyes tend to be confrontational. The attitude of friends is one of determined and saintly patience.
IMO, i wouldn't assume her family to be one of the debutante crowd, i didn't think they would be that rich.
Well-to-do, though. V-Tech, Volvo, "her own apartment," Metallica tickets for nine people, Swarovski necklaces ...
Not to mention her brother hasn't had arranged friendships and seems to be doing fine in NY with what he likes.
How do you know? Among wealthier people, young friendships are frequently arranged. Consider play dates, for example. Or it can be more subtle, such as the family joining certain country clubs, or vacationing at certain resorts ...
If Morgan was close enough with her parents to pick out and outfit ...
Was she overly dependent on her parents?
... and have her father balance her checkbook online, i see no reason for her to hide having a boyfriend.
We just don't know. Maybe she had been seeing someone who really upset her parents somehow. Only one of the "9" actually showed up that night. Could this guy have scared the other "8" off, too? We just don't know.
Both Morgan and her brother seem to be well rounded from what we've heard.
Where did you read that MH's brother was "well-rounded"?
You seem to like to stick up for her friends..
A friendship should include a sense of loyalty & commitment. For whatever reasons, the people she was with were not her friends. "Friendifying" them, and then accusing them of being "bad friends" is unfair.
Let's imagine the scenario: for the sake of your parents, you agree to attend a concert with some girl whom you knew in middle school. She manages to get herself into some sort of terrible mess, and (as usual) to drag you down with her ... Something has happened that is so horrible that you can't believe it's true: she is just
gone, maybe murdered, and everyone is now suspicious of you! How would you feel? Would you think that all was fair?
Could you explain what they actually are doing to help find her?
How would we really know?
And also why they wouldn't use the buddy system that night and let their friend who is an attractive female wander off alone inside a huge arena?
Sometimes young women just use each other as "transportation": too scared to walk into a bar/concert/party alone, they pretend to be "friends" and then ditch the others at the first opportunity to pick up a guy.
The only excuses her friends could give that they didn't look out for Morgan is that they are the ones who are self absorbed, or too intoxicated, or just plain didn't care about her. What would you have done differently?
They were all adult women. MH should have been more responsible for herself, and used some common sense. Disturbing her companions just as the main part of the show was starting was totally inconsiderate. Plus, she could have asked for help from a security guard or even a police officer to at least help her put through a call to her parents. Her parents surely would not have minded sending a taxi to pick her up immediately --- no matter what the cost.
As for her not caring about her car, it does happen, there was a girl in my college who would let her friends take her car without her present. (the car was a beater, and usually people aren't as trusting, however many people are very trusting it seems and don't mind their friends using their cars).
Sometimes people resent a gift.
As far as the "9" teen pals go, once kids get to college things change, including their friends and those who they were so close with in high school are suddenly not always so close anymore. Not the case with everyone, however it does happen sometimes.
Also, some of those "friendships" just weren't meant to be. Not good to sentimentalize friendship.
I don't see political connections as we're not dealing with the children of politicians and millionaires here.
You don't have to be a millionaire or a politician to have influence. The Harringtons have been on national TV; yet Kellie "Wednesday" Hall (whose case is somewhat similar) has barely been mentioned in newsprint. The Harringtons have some type of pull, and they are likely well-to-do. Doubtless other parents perceived them as the "right sort" of people.
My main point was that the "friends" were not really friends; rather they were just acquaintances. How do we define friendship? My definition would include loyalty and commitment; however, as stated before, most college students abuse the word "friend" to mean anyone else who is in the same age bracket.
MH seems to have no real friends; however, she may
not be unusual in that regard. The college which I attended has had over the years a reputation for an exciting social scene (but serious academics, too); but people who attended other colleges have described to me college experiences of intense loneliness, savage competition, or rampant drug abuse; best not sentimentalize college.
Not to digress from the main topic, but college in general is not the wholesome experience which it is cracked up to be. In the Middle Ages, universities were developed so that scholars could live in communities based on the noble aim of advancing knowledge. Today, 18-year-olds are shipped away to these "dorms" for what purpose? With decreasing academic standards has come waves of violence, including an epidemic of rape (even at my alma mater, which used to be as sweet and innocent as Mayberry); to sum up the situation, we have lost site of our goal: advancing knowledge.
Sometimes people (esp. professional psychology-types) have these rigid constructs of how life is supposed to be, and they try to force people to fit those constructs. Could MH's parents have believed that all college girls must have big social lives? They may have felt very disappointed in MH's apparent failure, but who were they comparing her to? Marilyn Monroe? Madonna? Paris Hilton? Even
they have probably spent many Saturday nights alone watching TV. Life can be strange sometimes; maybe MH's academic program was too much pressure, maybe she was afraid that she would never fit in as an elementary school teacher, maybe she was intensely bored.
MH does seem to have an artistic streak, and a seeming mania for being the center of attention: Tamfish mentioned the red dress, when everyone else wore white. She comes across more like a theatre major than a future school teacher. Maybe she wanted to try her luck in drama, but her parents forced her towards a more reliable & lucrative government job. Her brother seems a theatrical type, too. Some possibility exists that she has staged this "disappearance" as a punishment for what she saw as her parents' efforts to control her. Is she hiding in NYC with help from her brother? Or is she holed up in the Key West vacation condo of some very rich VTech student's family? We can only hope so.
