It is with great overexcitement and an unhealthy amount of zeal that I write to you about something that starts with T and ends with RIPS 2004. Yes my future fellow Dartmouth students, it is indeed TRIPS 2004. And we capitalize it for a reason. TRIPS is the ONE thing almost all Dartmouth students have in common. It is the ONE experience that while so unique for every Dartmouth student is also something almost everyone shares. (Don't be part of this "almost" nonsense. It's not too late to sign up right this second!)
TRIPS began in 1935 as a way to introduce a few Dartmouth students to the Dartmouth Outing Club early in their college careers. Since then, TRIPS has grown into a massive program that involves almost the entire freshman class. It is truly phenomenal because it provides the incoming students with a sense of unity and gives them a shared experience from which they can draw to create lasting friendships -- when your orientation starts, you will have a solid group of anywhere from eight to 15 trippees who will likely be your first best friends at Dartmouth.
The TRIPS experience will address both immediate and long-term needs. The lonely, I-have-no-friends-why-am-I-here feelings synonymous with your first day at college will be promptly overcome as you meet your trip leaders, trippees and the upperclassmen welcoming you to Hanover in front of Robinson Hall. Your long-term needs are also met by the program because, through your trip leaders, you will have an immediate close relationship with upperclassmen who arehappy to answer any and all questions about life at Dartmouth. Your trip leader will become your first mentor at Dartmouth and will always be willing to chat with you long after (even years after) you have returned from your freshmen trip.
Clearly a tremendous part of the TRIPS experience is getting first-year students outside. Dartmouth is fortunate enough to be surrounded by miles and miles of beautiful wilderness, and the Outing Club wants you to appreciate this gift as soon as you arrive on Dartmouth's campus. Even if TRIPS was their first and last outdoor adventure, students hailing from all backgrounds have stepped out of their comfort zones into the New Hampshire wilderness and truly enjoyed the TRIPS experience. There are trips for all levels of outdoorspeople; the fear of overexertion, dirt or a few days without a shower should be no deterrent. Part of the value of TRIPS is that it is indeed outdoors where people are set free from the identities imposed on them by their existence in "the real world."
On your freshman trip, you will start over. During your camp-stove dinner with other trippees and your trip leaders, you can choose to divulge all or nothing about your life. For many of you, it will be the first time since elementary school that you get a fresh start. And we're starting you in the wilderness because it is out there, amongst eleven people you've never met before, that you will be the most free to be whoever you are today, and not what you were pegged as in seventh grade or 10th grade, or second grade. Start over, with us, outside.
The TRIPS program is unique to Dartmouth because it is designed, organized and run entirely by Dartmouth students. There are no "adults" anywhere and, TRIPS is overflowing with energy. Despite Dartmouth's tremendously diverse campus, the one trait I find common to every Dartmouth student is passion. I sincerely believe there are few places in the world where the concentration of passionate individuals is so intensely high. Everyone has something that moves them, that motivates them, that inspires them at Dartmouth and there is no place where this is more evident than the TRIPS program. The number of upperclassmen clamoring for involvement with TRIPS is staggering. This year we accepted 230 trip leaders from a pool of over 450 applicants. For the support crews that welcome trippees in Hanover, at the Lodge and along the trail, 40 people were selected from a pool of over 120.
As these faceless statistics indicate, for a tremendous portion of the Dartmouth community the TRIPS program is not just five days in the woods with your trippees, but also an annual revitalization of the Dartmouth spirit. This spirit is conveyed by trip leaders and crew members to the next generation of Dartmouth in what appear now as meaningless words, but will in a month's time mean "My Dartmouth:" The Salty Dog Rag, Blame it on the Boogie and, of course, The Alma Mater -- all Dartmouth traditions taught and learned while on TRIPS that stay with you during your time at Dartmouth and beyond.
On your freshman trip it is most important to us that, while you may not learn to Salty Dog in triple time or appreciate the goodness of Blame it on the Boogie, that you do find yourself feeling that Dartmouth is your Dartmouth. Because it is. This will be your home for the next four years, your source of the greatest sense of freedom and joy and, perhaps, your greatest inspiration. It is through this institution that we as Dartmouth students have grown out and beyond our wildest limits we set for ourselves somewhere between second and twelfth grade and it is here too that we hope you will do the same.
Those 600 of us involved in TRIPS 2004 cannot wait for you to join us on campus, because there is nothing more wonderful for us to watch than Dartmouth's spell taking hold of you. Soon, you too, as our Alma Mater promises, will have the still north in your hearts, the hill winds in your veins and the granite of New Hampshire in your muscles and your brains.
