Red River Excursion Highlights Outing Club’s Inclusive Mission
By Kelsey Donk, Staff Writer
Sammy Jolly K'15, and Tommy Kackson K'15 discuss the Red River outing in the Trowbridge Lounge
Last Tuesday night, Sammy Jolly (K’15) and Tommy Jackson (K’15) gathered with their computers in the Trowbridge Hall lounge to discuss an upcoming trip to Kentucky. They’ve been meeting like this often lately to plan a spring break trip with 22 members of the Kalamazoo College Outing Club to Stanton, Kentucky for a ten-day rock climbing and backpacking trip.
The trip to Red River Gorge is part of a series of travel opportunities through the Kalamazoo College Outing Club. The club holds several excursions every year at little or no charge to students in order to provide all Kalamazoo College community members with the ability to experience the outdoors.
On the Red River Gorge trip, students will spend half of their time learning how to rock climb and the other half backpacking. The club will be split into two groups and will divide their time doing each activity. They will meet at a pizza shop in the middle of the trip to switch gear and gather as a complete group.
According to the Red River Gorge sponsors (Sammy Jolly and Tommy Jackson), the price for students is $130, thanks to a generous donation from StuComm. ”For this particular trip, we decided to ask for a pretty large sum of money because that’s the only way to make it a viable option for people,” Jolly said, “We want it to be open to people with limited availability to funds and to people who have a lot of availability.”
In fact, a major goal of the Outing Club is to build community throughout campus. The club is open to all K students, even students without experience in intense outdoor activities. “There aren’t really leaders, so everybody steps it up at a certain point in time,” she said. The Outing Club meetings are Fridays at 4:15 in the Harmon Lounge and are open to all K College students.
