This year’s total number of student applications to be Dartmouth Outing Club First-Year Trip leaders and Croo members decreased from last year’s applicant pool, director Peety Kaur ’15 and assistant director Sam Parker ’15 said. Kaur attributed the drop in applications to the new academic calendar and the date on which sophomore summer ends, which prevents all sophomores on campus during the summer from participating as a member of a Croo and limits the number of sections in which a sophomore could participate as a leader.
This year saw 575 Trip leader applications, compared to last year’s 618, while Croo applications decreased from 200 to 154, Kaur said. The numbers represent respective decreases of approximately seven and 23 percent from the previous year.
Despite a drop in the number of applications from last year, Kaur and Parker said that new information sessions and various outreach efforts for potential applicants has attracted a strong group from which to select next year’s Trip leaders and Croo members.
Last year, there were no information sessions for potential Trip leaders, Kaur said. She added that this year the Trips directorate emphasized outreach efforts in particular, including information sessions and email reminders about application release dates and deadlines. The information sessions covered a range of topics ranging from the application process itself to how to improve individual applications.
Parker said that the sessions encouraged a wider range of students to apply who may not have in the past, emphasizing that anyone can be a Trip leader.
The majority of those in attendance at the information sessions were first-year students, Kaur said, and feedback from attendees was largely positive.
The Trips directorated organized a panel comprised of former Trip leaders and Croo members two weeks before the applications were released, and the speakers were encouraged to speak candidly about their experiences as Trips volunteers, Kaur said.
The directorate also collaborated with RWIT to create a one-page guide outlining how applicants could write a standout Trips application, Kaur said, which included detailed steps and tips for writing responses to application’s essay questions.
“One of our biggest goals for this year was to not self-select who can or can’t apply for the program simply because they haven’t heard about it or didn’t know the application was out,” Parker said. “We did a lot of outreach this year to target as many campus and student groups as we could, and I think we were really successful in doing that.”
Kaur went on to say that many of the groups they reached out to had never been contacted by the DOC before and responded positively to the outreach, passing along information to their respective members and blitz lists.
The reading and scoring process for applicants has just begun, so details regarding the increased diversity of students applying to be Trips leaders are not yet available, Kaur said. She said, however, that blitzes from individual applicants who asked for more information or confirmed that the increased outreach convinced them to apply is encouraging.
“In terms of transparency and outreach, we did everything we could,” Parker said. “That being said, I don’t think this process is perfect and I think Trips can and does improve itself every year. There’s a lot of room for increased diversity in all respects... Part of that’s related to the schedule, part’s related to the trips we offer. There’s a lot more room, but I think this year we did the best we could with our team and our time.”
Dru Falco ’18, who applied to be a Trip leader this year, said that the information sessions were very helpful in terms of presenting what the overall experience as a leader was like, as well as the goals of the Trips program as a whole.
The sessions also emphasized that the program offers something for everyone, regardless of past experience or previous training, she said.
“I love being outdoors, but I’m not a super outdoorsy person so I was worried that I wouldn’t be qualified for Trips, or that I wouldn’t adjust, or that they wouldn’t want me because I wouldn’t know what I was doing,” Falco said. “They made me feel better that I didn’t have so much experience. They made me want to apply, and they made me really excited.”
The information session also clarified the roles of Trip Leaders and Croo members and the differences between them, Falco said. She said that she also thought that attendance at the sessions was made up of a diverse crowd.
“I’d say that they definitely included people who weren’t just in the DOC,” she said.
