After a three year run as a Spring term community service day, the DarCorps program will be moved to replace the 'ShmenCorps service day during freshman orientation this fall.
DarCorps -- which stands for Dartmouth Community OutReach ProjectS -- began in 1997 and has traditionally involved several hundred students in a wide variety of volunteer projects throughout the Upper Valley. It has been the inspiration for similar programs at many other Ivy League schools.
This fall only members of the Class of 2004 will be allowed to participate as volunteers, although upperclassmen will continue to plan and supervise the event.
It is currently unclear as to whether or not there will be DarCorps for upperclassmen to participate in during the 2000-2001 school year.
Amanda Young '01 and Zoe McLaren '00, the cochairs of last spring's event, both said they hope the event will be continued for years to come.
"I think its an important event during the spring for a lot of people," including both student volunteers and the members of the community that are helped by the event, Young said.
Acting Dean of the Tucker Foundation Robert Binswanger said there were a variety of reasons for the decision not to hold a service day for upperclassmen this year.
The Tucker Foundation wants to encourage long term and in-depth commitment to volunteer experience, Binswanger said, and not just the sort of one-time experience that does not make much of an impact either on the community or the volunteer him or herself.
"The purpose of the DarCorps experience was to introduce students to voluntary service, not to be a token commitment," Binswanger said. "We believe in more intensive and continuous voluntary effort."
Binswanger said he felt that the time, energy and effort that people put into organizing DarCorps could be better directed towards involving more students in regular volunteer activity, noting that 250 students participated last spring, just half the number who participated during the events first run in 1997.
"We have just limited resources and we are trying to put it in the places that will be ... most significant for students," he said.
But McLaren said the point of event was to introduce people to the volunteer opportunities available at Dartmouth as well as to provide a lot of help to a lot of organization in a single day.
"Maybe we didn't focus on that enough," she said.
McLaren also suggested that the change results from the arrival of Binswanger after former Tucker Dean Scott Brown -- under whose leadership the DarCorps programs began -- resigned at the end of last year, as well as Binswanger's interim status.
Young, who also chaired 'ShmenCorps last fall and is in charge of the group organizing this fall's event agreed, saying she expects the decision will be made once the new dean is put in place.
Another major roadblock to a spring DarCorps event this year was a lack of people willing to chair the event, which has traditionally been run entirely by students, Binswanger said.
By the time the decision was made in February to move the service day, no plans had been made, nor had any fund-raising been completed for the event, which has cost as much as $10,000 in the past.
Binswanger also pointed out the complexity of organizing an event that involves so many people and different organizations.
Anyone who has worked on the project has found it a tremendous administrative ordeal, he said. Since the event usually takes place on a Saturday, when many places where volunteers are needed are closed, even finding places to send all the student volunteers is difficult, he said.
In the past, volunteers have participated in a very wide range of activities, from clearing overgrowth threatening the pond at an elementary school to playing bingo at area retirement homes.
Since the invention of DarCorps in 1997, similar programs have sprung up across New Hampshire and at many other Ivy League schools. In addition, the College event was recognized during the fall of 1997 by New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen.
Last weekend, six other Ivy universities held large-scale community service days modeled on DarCorps during the first IvyCorps.
The day was recognized at Dartmouth by a community dinner and discussion in the Collis Commonground.
