Outward Bound for Outward Bound

It's a funny feeling to be part of a dying program. This fall I was a member of the last group at Dartmouth to participate in the College's 11-week course run by Outward Bound, a world-wide organization that seeks to educate through interaction with the wilderness. We knew that Outward Bound's contract with the College was up for renewal in June but we were stunned to find out mid-quarter that the course was being terminated with us. "There was no student input," admits Robert Mac Arthur 111 '64, director of the Outward Bound Center at Dartmouth. "It was an economic decision." While I mourn the course's demise at Dartmouth, I do understand some of the reasons why. It is one of those rare occasions when it's possible to say with certainty, "There is a change in the attitude of the student body."

Outward Bound came to Dartmouth in the winter of 1969. By 1974 it had developed into the "Living/Learning" term, a program of experiential learning that combined cooperative housing and cooking with physically challenging outdoor activities, a service project, and an academic core course. When L/L passed away this fall, it left a legacy of more than 350 graduates.

Outward Bound has plans to expand its weekend workshops, which have already touched 700 Dartmouth stu- dents this year. But L/L is gone. Larry Burnett '84, who did the course in the spring of his freshman year, spoke for a number of us when he commented, with a wry smile, "It's tragic and it's a reflection of the times."

Student interest has certainly waned in recent years. In the late seventies, students had to sign up one to two years in advance. Last summer enrollment was down to five students for ten spaces. It is not just Outward Bound that has felt these shifts. Friends in the Dartmouth Outing Club tell me attendance for meetings and even hikes is lower than in the past three years.

Why? Is Dartmouth attracting a different kind of student, one less interested in the out-of-doors and possibly more individualistic? Are students these days trying to "maximize" their chances for success by studying longer hours, in hopes of high marks and a good job? Whatever the explanation, says Mac Arthur, Dartmouth students are "increasingly reluctant to take risks

not physically, but with their time, their grades, and sometimes their social lives." Even visitors have noticed the trend: "People are so uptight about time here," I heard a transfer student from Smith say recently.

Uptight is an apt description. Sometimes I've felt like a hamster on a treadmill, dashing to classes, making appointments to meet friends for meals, running to extracurricular activities. And I'm not alone. Virtually everybody on this campus carries a Green Key Day-by-Day calendar. I had hopes this fall of slowing down and trying something different. Also, after being away from school for six months, I was looking for a way to ease back in without climbing back on the treadmill. I signed up for Outward Bound. The idea of doing the Living/Learning term had tempted and scared me since freshman year. It seemed like an excellent way to integrate academics with the out-of-doors, group living, and exploring limits. When people heard that I was going to do L/L, they reacted in every way imaginable. Mark thought it was great. Sue, who had done the L/L term, said I would gain a lot from the experience. Elizabeth, who had no desire to go anywhere near an Outward Bound program, told me I was going to die.

Well, I didn't die. In fact I was challenged to lead a more vigorous and varied existence than usual. One of my favorite Outward Bound concepts is confronting one's weaknesses. Don't always take the easy way out. Push yourself and see where you go. "The Outward Bound challenge" we called it. I pushed and was pushed. I did things I never would have done on my own. The result was that I felt less like a hamster, more like a person.

I will admit, though, to some ambivalence about the quarter. There were times I grew weary of the rigorous expeditions and the groupiness. Worse, our L/L term seemed a compromise of the original goals. Only half of our group took classes; the other half worked for pay. Also, the group dynamics were skewed because we were composed of two couples and four unattached people.

Looking back, I feel somewhat like the grandmother who tells her grand children she walked five miles to school each day and was better for it. I think the term was good for me. If I benefitted from it so could more Dartmouth students.

Living/Learning is not the only Tucker Foundation small-group, alternative living, or service project that has been discontinued. It is only the most recent. Jersey City internships, in which students lived in a group house and worked in inner-city schools for a small stipend, are gone, and so are Upper Valley service internships, where students lived on a working farm in Lebanon, N.H. Jane Blansfield '84, who heads the Interracial Concerns Committee and taught in Jersey City, challenged the administration's argument that limited student interest makes the programs less valuable. "I see a potential for conformity and homogeneity of opinion, since students will no longer be so readily exposed to different ways of life and thought," she said. "People could leave this college without developing a tolerance for difference." Dean of the College Edward Shanahan hopes not: "Homogeneity," he says, "occurs when people who are diverse don't talk to each other. One of the things we're hoping is that through the new Outward Bound activities, students who are different can learn to listen to one another so that an appreciation of diversity is something that goes with them off-campus." Shanahan sees the re-structuring of Outward Bound as taking a different approach but having the same goals. "The benefit," he said, "is that we'll be able to bring it to more students."

That doesn't quiet the grandmother in me. But maybe the ghost of Living/ Learning will come back someday to haunt future generations of Dartmouth students. That seems to be happening with NROTC. But that's another story.