With the Outing Club

Directors in Class of 1940 Have Known Last Four Years as Period of Transition and Philosophizing for D.O.C.

WITH THIS MONTH the administration of the Class of 1940 in the D.O.C. comes to an end; perhaps, then, this is the time for a review and a prognostication.

The character of all undergraduate organizations shifts and changes with each Board of Directors—which is an annual change—and some sort of difference is noted when the stockholders make a complete turn-over every four years. Certainly the D.O.C. shows different trends, different emphases as its personnel shifts.

For instance, when the Class of '40 entered, the period of out-and-out "chubbers" in the Outing Club was just coming to an end. And, for the last four years, we have had what might be called an era of "out-of-doors philosophers." The emphasis has been primarily, in other words, on the purposes of the D.0.C., and how to make the Club best serve these purposes.

We have seen a time of change, therefore. Change in constitutional set-up, and change in thought and activity. It's what is popularly known as a period of transition. Now (to digress for a minute), I believe that any period during the D.O.C.'s history has been one of transition; indeed, when the time comes that there is no transition, the Club will have desiccated to the point of death. For as long as the D.O.C. is striving to change to the better, it realizes its imperfections. And when the time comes (as it never should) that the members feel there is no room for improvement, then hardening of the D.O.C. arteries will set in.

It is true, to a certain extent, that the D.O.C. never lets itself alone for a long enough time to find out whether an instituted change will work out. But, in reality, that makes little difference. For it is the vitality of spirit that counts: the desire for action, the wish for a better Club. All in all, the work that one college generation has done will, if it is sound work and good policy, continue with rather more enduring quality than we can hope for most of our college experience. The overlapping of classes assumes a carry-over of the benefits any particular administration has made.

Then (to get back where I started) the "transitional" difference between the last four years and any other four years in the D.O.C. annals is that this recent period is more patently and obviously one of philosophizing and transition.

Just three years ago the constitution of the D.O.C. was amended to create the present three-way division into Carnival, Winter Sports, and Cabin and Trail, thus relieving the last named body of the topheavy burden of running the other two functions.

Then, last spring, new changes were made by changing Cabin and Trail to a junior-senior honorary body, by electing the Cabin and Trail chairman alone, and allowing him to appoint his directors, and, finally, by changing the D.O.C. membership drive from a high-pressure sales affair to a voluntary one.

Also, within the last three years, two new departments have been created which deal with all three divisions, and which must function separately. These are the Membership Committee and the Publicity Committee—both functioning directly under the D.O.C.'s supreme body, the Executive Committee.

Technically, therefore, there have been many important changes. Indeed, the D.0.C., necessarily, has assumed in these changes, some aspects of bureaucracy. But the size of the Club, its physical plant, diversity of activities, and the members' diversity of desire, has meant that more efficiency must be created.

The problem has been (and always will be) to achieve the requisite efficiency without sacrificing the essential joie de vivre of the Club; without destroying the purposes for which the D.O.C. was founded. Such a balance is difficult to maintain—and it has been the realization of that difficulty which has produced this epoch of philosophers.

But, because technical change has been going on, because philosophizing has been rife, that is no reason to believe that the past four years have been rather sterile, and definitely "office-ridden." For some, for the natural-born office-chubbers and D.O.C. philosophers, it probably has been indoor work—but progressive and interesting work, and distinctly in the tradition if not the habitual locale of the Outing Club. The majority of Club members will always find the D.O.C. on the trail or in the ski-lodge rather than over a copy of the By-Laws in Robinson Hall.

Perhaps, being a part of this era of philosophers, I am prejudiced, but I feel that philosophizing in the D.O.C.—that is, examining the way the Club is going and trying to discover how and where it should go-that sort of thing is good, indeed, necessary for the breadth and depth of the interest of the members.

In any final sense it is impossible to judge whether the changes enumerated above have been for the better. But, in general, it seems that no major mistakes have been made. The membership policy (administered brilliantly by Mort McGinley '41), for instance, has shown an excellent return, equal to the former years, and will, it is believed, greatly increase goodwill. The three-way division was an outand-out necessity, and though requiring constant ironings out, has proven a remarkably apt solution to a very difficult situation. How the other changes will work in the long run is not to be prophesied at present; but past experience shows that these changes are but logical results of the whole trend of the D.O.C. in recent years.

And it is at this point in the game that 1940 steps out. The Class of '41 has the chance of finding answers to things we couldn't stay around long enough to find out. And it will, as all administrations have, make its own shifts in emphasis, perhaps its own changes.

At the date of publication only a limited number of next year's directorate have been announced. The next issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE will have the remainder of the list. And, incidentally, the June article will be written by the next publicity director of the D.0.C., inheritor of the breathless race to get the copy on the editor's desk the 15th of every month. I sincerely hope he has a fast pen, fast legs, and a good pair of lungs.—And so—farewell.