Outdoor Action scales back spring, fall break trips as costs continue to rise

In the face of rising costs and accumulating debts from past budget shortfalls, the Outdoor Action program has had to scale back many of its programs this year.

While Outdoor Action's popular freshman pre-orientation trips — which drew more than half of this year's freshman class — will continue to operate, the program has cancelled most of its trips during the academic year, including its break trips.

Outdoor Action's financial difficulties may also have an indirect effect on the freshman trips, some OA leaders said. The lack of school year trips may make it more difficult to find qualified students to train leaders of freshman trips, they said.

Rising costs have made the school year trips financially unsustainable, said Rick Curtis '79, director of OA Unlike the freshman trips, which pay for themselves, the price participants pay for going on trips during the year is substantially lower than the true cost of the trip, he said.

A typical Fall Break trip would cost participants $95, while this year's freshman trip cost $395, Curtis said. The actual costs for the two are similar, he added.

"What you charge for a trip doesn't cover the costs of training leaders, the costs of paying for there to be a program director, all those sorts of things," Curtis said. "Overall, the cost of doing that kind of stuff continues to go up."

Raising the cost of the school year trips to cover their actual costs is not a viable option, Curtis said. "If you charged $200 to go on a trip over Fall Break, then people just wouldn't sign up," he said.

Curtis added that it would also run against the idea of creating opportunities for everyone.

"From a philosophical standpoint, it is wanting to have a program that anybody at Princeton can participate in, not just people of a particular socioeconomic group," he said.

OA's inability to get more outside funding has compounded its financial troubles.

University support for the program, adjusted for inflation, has remained constant every year since OA has been in existence. The number of participants in the Frosh Trip, however, has increased from 100 in 1974 to 603 this year.

Though the program has submitted a request for more funding to the University Priorities Committee, that request is unlikely to be approved because of a tight University budget, said Janet Dickerson, vice president for campus life.

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"Frankly, there's so many competing requests that I'm not sure that that will really generate any income for Outdoor Action," Dickerson said.

Efforts to raise endowment funds, which would generate additional revenue for the program without going through the regular University budget process, have also stalled.

OA leaders organized a fund-raising campaign last year in response to the program's financial difficulties, but they had to cancel it because of endowment fundraising rules.

The program's authority to raise endowment funds lapsed with the conclusion of the University's 250th anniversary campaign and has not been renewed.

"It's kind of tough because we have this whole plan and organization for starting to raise money," said Laura Schwedes '03, co-chair of OA's leader training committee. "Everybody was excited for it, and it all got diffused."

Before the lapse, the program had only raised $250,000 in endowment funds toward a goal of $2 million, Curtis said.

OA's latest proposal to raise endowment funds is now under study and will receive consideration again in the spring, said Brian McDonald '83, vice president of development.

Whether the proposal is approved will depend on many factors, the most important of which is an overall evaluation of University fund-raising priorities, McDonald said.

"We want to think about Outdoor Action as part of the entirety of campus life," McDonald said.

The lack of academic year trips may give potential leader trainers fewer opportunities to gain experience, some involved in the program said.

"They're very important especially in terms of getting leaders who are more experienced," Schwedes said. "It really does a whole lot, more than Frosh Trip does."

A safety consultant brought in by OA echoed the same concerns, Curtis said.

In response, OA will be running an advanced leader training trip, he said. However, the trip — which runs only twice a year — may not provide as much flexibility for potential leader trainers to lead their own trips.