Wearers of the Green
Providing a sense of place
IF a good first impression is essential to a positive opinion of a place, then senior Tom Slocum's summer job was crucial to the future success of the class of 1985. As director of freshman trips, Slocum was responsible for introducing a record 840 freshmen or 80 per cent of the entering class to both the College and the rural environment surrounding it.
The freshman trip, an institution at the College since 1935, groups a half-dozen entering students with an upperclass student, a faculty member, or an administrator for a few days of hiking, biking, fishing, or canoeing followed by an evening of good food, speeches, storytelling, singing, and dancing at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. As Slocum describes it, "The purpose behind the trips, besides being an informal introduction to the College and the way other people live in northern New England, is to introduce freshmen to a few of their classmates in situations of some challenge. The trips are almost magical in their capacity for bonding, for turning strangers into friends. The opportunity to live close to nature, if only for three days, can be prologue to a new perspective of space ship earth an important reference for learning and for life."
Over the years, the simple idea of a jaunt in the woods prior to the more formal freshmen-week orientation has developed into a program with a $34,000 budget and a complex orchestration of eight daily departures of more than 100 people heading out in 17 different directions with enough food and supplies for three days. Although assisted by the computer's memory, the logistics of the trips are all overseen by the director, who is appointed by the Dartmouth Outing Club president. Although the position carries a stipend for ten weeks of work during the summer, the rest of the director's labor, beginning in April and ending after fall classes start, is volunteer.
For members of the class of 1985, the trip process began last May, when they received a packet of information about the D.0.C., including an application for freshman trips. The application solicited information about each student's previous outdoor experience, physical condition, the type of trip they would like, and when they could leave. Simultaneously, applications were made available for the 140 leader positions and the notoriously raucous Ravine Lodge and Hanover crews.
As summer arrived, so did the applications by the hundreds. When the cut-off date of July 3 approached and applications were still pouring in, Slocum realized top many '85s wanted to go on the trips. Freshman trips are confined to a very tight time-period. They must start late enough to give the all-volunteer crews a few days rest after summer term, and they must end before the first freshman-week event. The number of people going out each day is limited by the sleeping, feeding, and carrying-load capacities of the Ravine Lodge. As it is, meals at the lodge are served in two sittings and the floor has been known to give at least a few inches during a group-dance to the "Salty Dog Rag." Slocum was faced with the dilemma of denying 100 incoming freshman the opportunity to participate in a freshman trip or adding an additional section mid-week, thereby eliminating the crews' muchneeded mid-trip break.
With the help of D.O.C. executive director Earl Jette, Slocum found an alternative solution a two-day trip with an overnight program at Dartmouth Skiway's Brundage Lodge for those freshmen whose applications arrived late.
Having determined that no freshman would be denied the experience, Slocum began to read applications. As he read each one, he mentally placed the student on a certain trip and section. Reviewing all the application information, Slocum saw there was a need for more biking trips and more moderate hiking trips. Some routes were changed; others were added. Applications were reviewed once more, trips were assigned, and information about when to arrive in Hanover and what to bring was sent to all participants, including the leaders all by early August.
For Slocum, though, much of the work was just beginning. No stranger to the outdoors, he has been walking along mountain trails since he was three. He knew of the D.O.C. long before he knew of Dartmouth and was attracted to the College because of the Outing Club. He is also very familiar with freshman trips, having led one his sophomore year and served as Hanover crew chief last year. Slocum even confessed to lending a hand before his own freshman trip in 1978, through the urging of his brother John, a member of the class of 1980. Becoming director of the trips program was simply a logical extension of Tom Slocum's other work with the D.O.C.
"The Outing Club has been an important part of my life for the last three years, and I wanted to put something back into it."
Just how much Slocum put back in is hard to estimate, but he did admit to working up to 70 hours a week toward the end of August, trying to firm up all the logistical details of putting close to 1,000 people into the backwoods for three days. Slocum, who guesses he has covered three-quarters of the terrain covered by the trips, walked over four of the hiking trails, biked two of the cycling routes, and motorboated over one of the canoe trips. Mostly, though, he spent his time developing and double-checking schedules of who does what when and how it all happens.
Transportation is arranged through the use of one charter bus, one school bus, three passenger vans, a cargo van, and the D.O.C. truck. Speakers, including President McLaughlin and President Emeritus Dickey, songleaders, and fiddlers are scheduled for the programs at the Brundage and Ravine lodges. And, perhaps most important, food is ordered, delivered, and dispensed trip-by-trip into over 120 separate piles. In addition, lodge crews come together and review what to do with 1,600 ears of corn, 1,600 chicken quarters, and countless ounces of Dartmouth-green food coloring.
Finally, by the time the first freshman checked in for his or her trip, the program was so efficiently organized that it could theoretically have run without Slocum's presence. But he wouldn't have enjoyed that. He would have missed the emergency chicken runs, and he would have-missed the opportunity for a good conversation with the freshman whose bicycle had broken, who needed a lift 'to rejoin his group. Mostly, though, Slocum would have missed the opportunity to talk to each group of freshmen at the Ravine Lodge and to tell them in his own reserved way of his love for the- wilderness around Dartmouth and of the importance of spending some time with nature, whether it be with a group of good friends or alone some night just before finals. Luckily for the class of 1985, T.om Slocum was around and working through all eight sections of freshman trips. That is bound to have a lasting impression.
