A NEW BREED OF CHUBBER

The DOC, vigorous but no longer the dominant extracurricular activity, adapts to new student interests and needs

A CABIN stands high on a bare ridge outlined against the sky. Its black form is ragged around the edges and shingles flap in the wind that knifes down the valley. Moss creeps over the mouldering walls now and chipmunks nest under the roof, carefully avoiding the open patches of light which gape through the beams. .

This is Skyline Cabin.

There was a time when this cabin stood solid against the wind and rain. There was a time when it was the most popular cabin in the DOC mountain chain and rare was the weekend that found it empty. Chubbers used to clamber aboard the train as it stopped near the Vermont end of the Ledyard Bridge and in a short time they would jump off at Littleton to hike the rest of the way in. For the lonely chubber who makes the trip now, a superbly wide panorama of mountains still spreads away before him, but no one goes there anymore.

Many things have changed. The weeklong trips to Montreal are no more, and even the frequent four-day cabin trips are growing scarcer during the academic year. Winter Carnival, the child of the DOC, has grown up and left its mother's arms. Now the Winter Carnival Council, a separate organization more closely allied with COSO than the DOC, handles almost the entire weekend. Long since gone are the days when to belong to one or more divisions of the DOC was the zenith of extracurricular aspirations. An honest appraisal of the prestige attaching to the DOC would still rate it as one of the more important clubs on campus, but it is at best only one of the many strong and active organizations that flourish simultaneously in a situation far more pluralistic than it was only 15 years ago. The DOC is altered, maimed here, regenerated there, but very noticeably different.

The causes for this at times imperceptible but never-ending metamorphosis are many. The case of Skyline Cabin is typical in that it is one of several such victims of a change in the pattern of facilities usage. The emerging pattern is easy enough to see. With the tremendous increase in the number of students who own cars and the completion of long stretches of superhighway between Hanover and points south, fewer students go to cabins now. Furthermore, when they do choose a cabin, it is one with particular characteristics such as ready accessibility by road, nearby mountains, a lake for fishing, canoeing or swimming, or proximity to good hunting areas. The cabins near Hanover are in constant use since their proximity eliminates time spent getting there and back, an important factor in today's tightly packed academic schedule. The same factor also explains the steady decrease in the use of shelters during the school year, since they are often at some remove from fast access roads.

In the past quite a few of our cabins have fallen into disuse and some have been totally abandoned because they failed to meet changing student needs and tastes. By the same token, new cabins have been built in areas more in keeping with student requirements and are now in frequent use. Presently a new cabin is being planned in the Cummings Pond area which will satisfy several of the highest priority demands - proximity to Hanover, a mountain, and a pond. It also is in an area of diverse terrain and wildlife.

FACILITIES usage patterns are by no means the only aspect of the DOC in the process of alteration. The administrative changes in the handling of Winter Carnival are typical of a trend which has become progressively more manifest in every organization on campus; that is, the tendency towards increasing professionalism. Rare is the club which ex- ists on a spontaneously amateur level anymore. The institution of heeling has developed far beyond its original psychological functions, analogous to freshman-hazing or pledge-riding. It is now, in nearly every case, mandatory as the most efficient means of raising new organization members to the level of proficiency on which the rest of the organization operates. The dominant feeling about extracurricular activity is that if you cannot do it well it is not worth doing. Good or bad, this professionalism has profound effects on the extracurricular behavior of students. They now give an all-or-nothing response - they either join a club and devote much time to it or they do not join it at all. In turn, this placing of all your eggs in one extra-curricular basket merely reinforces the trend towards professionalism.

Specialization is the second product of professionalism. As certain groups grow more narrowly proficient they split away from the parent organization, as the Winter Carnival Council has done. Geography classes now go on their own specialized field trips, as do geology and biology classes. Specialization can lead to unnecessary separation, as is unfortunately the case with the Ledyard Canoe Club. While still officially under the auspices of the DOC, it maintains a high degree of autonomy and seldom if ever shares in the activities or membership of the DOC. However, specialization can just as readily lead to increased cooperation. The Biology Department now arranges a trip down south every spring vacation in conjunction with the DOC and under the supervision of Jim Schwedland '48, DOC Educational Officer.

But by far the most important factor in the changing environment of the DOC and perhaps fundamental to all those mentioned above is the phenomenal increase in the academic burdens of the average student. During recent years every organization on campus has yelped at the pinch of less free time and they have all groaned over the difficulties in recruiting new members. While our College Board-busting freshmen are no more bookish than their less-endowed predecessors, they simply do not have the time to belong to more than two organizations at the most.

THE DOC has been hit harder than other organizations by the students' dwindling spare time. Originally the Dartmouth Outing Club was conceived in a desperate effort to render if not enjoyable, at least palatable the winters in Hanover's sub-arctic climate. It soon became obvious that by taking advantage of Dartmouth's location instead of bemoaning it, the long tedious hours spent crying in the wilderness could be put to better use. In short, from its inception the DOC operated on a leisure-time basis. As leisure time has progressively diminished, the DOC has had to adapt itself, as any living organism must in the face of a changing environment. Far from courting extinction, the DOC in a new and different way is as vibrantly healthy as it ever was in the past.

The philosophy which guides and animates the DOC today is the "multiple use" concept of student time. Based on a firm belief that the out-of-doors can be instructive, it attempts to link a student's vocation with his avocation. "Vocation" in this context applies to all of a student's academic endeavors at Dartmouth (a semantic extension which seems warranted by the countless number of times that students have been exhorted to remember that their business here is learning). Avocation, the DOC hopes, is any interest that the student may develop in one of the many aspects of DOC activity indoors and out.

One of the most obvious examples of the multiple-use-of-time concept translated into reality is the DOC Ski School. Every Dartmouth student if he fails to earn an A on his physical performance test is obliged to take physical education courses until he can or until he finishes his sophomore year. The DCAC had handled various physical recreation courses including a spiritless attempt to run a skiing program. However, they were underequipped and unprepared to do an efficient job. After the war the DOC stepped in to offer its experience, manpower, and talent resources. This year 750 men are enrolled, under student instructors, which makes a total of nearly one-third of the undergraduate body involved in educational ski "rec" during the winter months.

Jim Schwedland, formally titled DOC Educational Officer but better known by other and quainter appellations, the most printable of which is "Schwed," also plays a large role in the multiple-use-of-time concept. Buried in the bowels of Robinson Hall is a spacious workshop which two years ago was greatly enlarged to encompass all sorts of woods-craft operations from snowshoe-building to reloading arms. One of the most rewarding uses to which these facilities are put is the training of the physical recreation classes which Schwed runs there and also in conjunction with the DCAC. Canoeing, forest fire suppression, high-power rifle shooting, biological exploration of a nearby quaking bog, known as the Bottomless Pit, mapping, orienteering, and animal tracking were some of the areas covered this fall by Jim Schwedland's classes. Both the DOC Ski School, run by George Ostler, and Schwed's physical recreation classes are a perfect combination of vocation and avocation for all concerned and save the student many hours he could not otherwise afford to spend.

The previously mentioned trips down south arranged by Jim Schwedland and the Biology Department are another happy meeting of academic fields and individual interests. The strong first-aid instruction program run during the fall and spring is another case in which interest areas meet academic discipline on equal ground. Often pre-med students never receive any first-aid instruction other than that arranged by the DOC. The program also facilitates the meeting of interns or young doctors and undergraduate students interested in medicine.

But the relation between interests and academic endeavors can be drawn even closer. Prof. Herbert West once suggested that mountaineering might prove a rich source for future writers, and it is perhaps not mere coincidence that the president of the Mountaineering Club is an amateur writer. A rock collection made on DOC and geology class trips served as the basis for a Doctor's thesis recently and not long ago the research for a senior thesis written on the phenomenon of ice lenses was done by a student who spent the winter between Great Bear and Summit Cabins on Mt. Moosilauke.

WHILE the DOC can serve as the vehicle for the acquisition of empirical data, it also serves education in a far more general way. For those who concede that the process of creativity is a matter of dialectics, it will readily be seen that the out-of-doors, the things observed there and the situations experienced there, serve as a ready antithesis to the theories gleaned from books and classrooms. It is by no means an exaggeration to say that the DOC opens the door for a great deal of creative thought among students, and that while this aspect of its function could never be fixed and aimed at, it exists nonetheless. John Rand '38, Executive Director of the DOC, is well aware of the fact and cites it as a prime reason for attempting to get as many men outdoors as possible. "They approach education from a recreational point of view," John suggests.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the DOC's function in the life of the College is at the same time the hardest to analyze. It has to do with a man's character. Accomplishments in this field are hard to measure much less explain, and an attempt to discuss them can be no more than an approximation of reality. Yet there is some truth in asserting that with the mastering of certain skills, whether in skiing or fire-building, there develops a certain self-reliance, and that a man who trudges into Hanover after a 50-mile, full-pack hike knows something about self challenge and what it feels like to meet it. Any heeler who has failed to remember the matches on a Cabin and Trail hike can tell you something he has learned about responsibility.

Behind all these vague abstractions, however, life goes on in Robinson Hall in much the same way it always has. The large new conference room has not changed the tone of Cabin and Trail meetings, which are still as raw and raucous as ever. Though he graces a different wall, the elk still looks on in benumbed amazement with an expression of mild disgust. A 1 Merrill, coach of the Dartmouth ski team, still works innumerable hours at his desk or downstairs in the ski room, and John Rand can be seen at any time of day or night on his way to or from a committee meeting or in his office just talking with a student. The asocial Nimrods of Bait and Bullet still are infrequently seen, since they spend most of their time in the woods, but several Cabin and Trail feeds have been stocked with venison brought down by Bait and Bullet-rifles.

Yet there are signs of change even here at the ground level. Winter Sports this year is expanding and revitalizing itself in a complete revamping of its format. Previously Winter Sports was little more than a work detail assigned to pack slopes, set up slaloms, clear cross-country trails, and arrange meets, all of which can be 100% drudgery most of the time. This year under the dynamic leadership of Ron Riley '65, Winter Sports activities have been expanded to include "apres ski" parties featuring the distaff counterparts of Winter Sports from various girls' schools, intramural ski races every Wednesday, garnished with a keg, and hopefully a charter flight to Aspen, Colorado, over the spring vacation. Ron's effort to transform Winter Sports into a closely knit, professional "moving maroon" has met with success. At last count there were sixty new heelers anxiously awaiting admission, which is sure to set some sort of record. This year the Freshman Trip, under the supervision of Jack Hosmer, hit an all-time high for the number of people accommodated. In two separate four-day trips last fall a total of 330 freshmen were exposed to the north woods.

EVEN in the citadels of Cabin and Trail, the last stronghold of anti-professionalism, anti-specialization, and all-around fun, new things are afoot. The plans for a new high-priority cabin near Cummings Pond in Lyme have already been mentioned. But the newest development in Cabin and Trail this year has been the renaissance of ski touring. Springing from the nostalgic reminiscences of several old-timers here in Han- over and gaining intensity from the interest Al Merrill showed on his return from the Innsbruck Olympics, ski touring is once again an important phase of DOC activity. At least 15 pairs of cross-country skis have already been cut down from old Alpines in Schwed's underground domain and every day more are in the vices.

Ski touring is particularly well suited to the demands of today's students in that it saves wasted hours waiting in ski-lift lines, costs little, and offers an active sport which you do not have to go far from Hanover to enjoy. Al Merrill asserts that the terrain around Hanover is some of the best ski-touring country in the world.

The rebirth of ski touring has followed fast on the heels of the renaissance in snowshoeing. Three years ago the DOC did not own a single pair of snowshoes. This year there are 24 pairs for rent and Schwed has supervised the construction of 15 pairs at last count. During the past few years snowshoe hikes have been run on almost every section of DOC trail and the number of people showing an interest in winter hiking is steadily on the increase. Interest has been great enough to warrant the establishment of the annual Snowshoe Obstacle Race held every year during Carnival on the Baker Library lawn.

The role of the DOC in campus life has been and is still in the process of being modified, but the vitality of the organization remains the same. Faced with a changing environment, the DOC has evolved with it, often leading the way for the better use of present facilities under new configurations of time and interest patterns. While the means have changed, the end has not. The Dartmouth Outing Club still aims at getting as many people as possible into the out-of-doors.

Mountain climbing is an activity that hasgrowing appeal for DOC men today.

Traditional activities still in full swingare (from top) intercollegiate parties,white-water canoeing, Bait and Bullet,and Woodsman's Weekend each spring.

Traditional activities still in full swingare (from top) intercollegiate parties,white-water canoeing, Bait and Bullet,and Woodsman's Weekend each spring.

Traditional activities still in full swingare (from top) intercollegiate parties,white-water canoeing, Bait and Bullet,and Woodsman's Weekend each spring.

Traditional activities still in full swingare (from top) intercollegiate parties,white-water canoeing, Bait and Bullet,and Woodsman's Weekend each spring.

Jim Schwedland '48 (r), educational officer of the DOC, with students on awinter-term natural history trip to the Bottomless Pit, a bog near Hanover.

Ski touring, such as this trip to Fred Harris Cabin, is popular today.

John Rand '38 (l), graduate director, and Bob Owens '65, student president,in one of the club rooms of the DOC's expanded facilities in Robinson Hall.

Students in ski "rec" classes travel to Dartmouth Skiway daily by bus.