Welcome to Outdoor Action
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By Steven Schultz
The summer before her freshman year, Katherine Byers was worried. She'd read about how many high school valedictorians and superachievers there were at Princeton, and she wondered how she would ever fit in.
Fortunately, there was a cure for her fears: Hike into the back country of the Shenandoah Mountains and camp with complete strangers until driving rain and Hurricane Fran forced the group to be evacuated.
Now a senior, Byers says, "You'd think all I would remember about the trip was being cold and wet -- but it was fun anyway."
Friends for freshmen
Welcome to Outdoor Action, a program that uses the challenges of outdoor adventure to foster community among students and to ease freshmen into life at Princeton.
While the weather Byers encountered on her trip was far from typical, the experience she came away with exemplifies what the program is all about.
"It gave me a lot more confidence," says Byers. She calls the people she met and the knowledge she gained "a security blanket." "It sounds silly, but when you're 18 years old it's very intimidating to walk into a dining hall here by yourself."
By the time she was safe and dry back on campus, Byers had met nine people who would remain close friends, including her senior year roommate. She had gained an appreciation of the outdoors, which stayed with her as she went on to become an Outdoor Action leader herself. And she had a glimpse of a way of teaching and interacting with people that she believes will shape the way she pursues her chosen career in education.
Ripple effect
The idea for Outdoor Action began in the fall of 1973, when several people in the Dean of Student Life Office organized a small camping trip to Blairstown. The idea was to add a constructive activity to the social scene for freshmen. After a second successful trip the following spring, the University agreed to sponsor a freshman wilderness orientation trip. The first one was in 1974&emdash;25 years ago -- and involved 100 students.
From then on, the program grew rapidly. There have now been a total of 9,423 participants in the freshman trip. For the last seven years, over half of the entire freshman class has participated. This year 607 freshmen went out in 66 groups to different locations. Considering the length of the excursion (six days) and the number of participants, it is the largest wilderness orientation program in the country.
Over its 25 years, Outdoor Action has become much more than a freshman orientation trip. It has added a full schedule of outings throughout the year, including general interest trips, leadership training sessions, alumni trips and now community service programs. In 1996 it joined forces with the Princeton-Blairstown Center, a program that leads summer camps and outdoor adventure programs for inner-city youth. Now community service is an important part of the Outdoor Action mission.
As a social force on campus, the program's effects are immeasurable. Rick Curtis, a member of the Class of 1979 and OA's director since 1981, has been to more than one wedding of people who met during OA trips.
"It's perceived as a recreational program, but its impact is a lot wider than that," says Curtis. "The ripple effect is really profound."
Metaphors for experiences
For Byers, one of the most influential aspects of OA is the way the outings and training programs become a vehicle for teaching about many subjects beyond outdoor activities themselves. For example, she has worked with young inner-city students from Trenton and the Bronx at OA's climbing wall. Located in the Armory, the climbing wall is a 20-foot simulation of a cliff face for practicing rock climbing.
"It's really scary for a lot of kids, but when they get to the top, it's like nothing I've ever seen in a classroom," says Byers. "It's probably the most effective means of education that I've been exposed to."
Says Curtis, "We try to help people create metaphors for the experiences they're having."
He tells of one young girl, about 10 years old, who was gripped with fear on the climbing wall. A group gathered around and encouraged her to make a single move upward, then another and another.
Afterward, the leaders asked if the fear she felt reminded her of any experiences at school. Math class, she replied. And when they asked if she had learned anything in climbing that would help her in math, she said, "I learned that when I'm scared, I just have to try hard, and I can do it."
Extensive training
One reason OA has been able to grow and have such a wide influence is the strength of its training program.
"The manuals and resources available to the leaders and for leader training seem to be way above anyone else's," says Brian Kunz, assistant director of outdoor programs at Dartmouth. Dartmouth's freshman trip program is the oldest in country.
Curtis made the program's first training manual of 20 photocopied pages by cobbling together bits of text from programs such as Outward Bound. He had requests from other schools and groups that wanted to buy the manual for their own programs, but he couldn't sell it because the contents were all borrowed. So he set about writing his own. When an OA alum mentioned the book to her sister at Random House, they agreed to publish it. Since its introduction in 1998, the 374-page manual has sold 20,000 copies.
OA has been the model for many other freshmen orientation programs, including those as Brown, Harvard, Columbia and Penn, as well as for many noncollegiate programs.
OA also distributes its training resources through the extensive website it launched in 1992. People all over the world access the site and send e-mails seeking advice. Curtis recently received an e-mail from an Army captain who wanted to use OA's information on hypothermia for an Army training manual.
Leaders on and off trail
Students interested in becoming trip leaders go through four workshops on subjects from safety and first aid to group dynamics, before taking a five-week training course and then going on a five-day backpacking trip.
Graduates of those sessions then work their way up through a hierarchy of assistant leadership positions until they become primary leaders. The most advanced leaders go on to lead the leadership training courses.
For the freshman trip this year, there were 160 leaders among the 607 participants.
"Their leadership isn't just on the trail; it's here on campus in deciding how things run," says Curtis.
The freshman trip remains a major focus remains of OA. Curtis and the student leaders are always working on ways to make the trip more welcoming, more rewarding. In one tradition, the incoming freshmen line up outside Dillon gym, waiting nervously to meet the upperclass leaders. As they all pour in at once, the leaders break into applause.
"You walk into this huge room," says Curtis, "and there are all these people clapping for you. You think: Wow, I am part of something here."
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