As a Meiklejohn peer advisor, I often remind my students that college is a transformative experience intellectually, socially and emotionally. Learning does not only happen in the classroom – it happens in clubs, dining halls and especially in the wilderness. Yet Brown is failing to provide an outdoor educational experience that allows students to reach their full potential. The time is now for Brown to adopt an action plan for outdoor education so that we can best prepare our students for a lifetime of service to their communities, their nations and the world.
Outdoor education provides a unique outlet for students to learn outside the traditional confines of a university campus and instill in its participants values that are critical to their success in life. In the words of Sir David Attenborough, “If children grow up not knowing about nature and appreciating it, they will not understand it, and if they don't understand it, they won't protect it.” On my recent Brown Outdoor Leadership Training trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, this fact became especially apparent to me while taking in the wondrous beauty of the alpine zone and witnessing its recession as climate change continues to warm our planet and change its landscapes. Furthermore, while Brown often professeses the importance of Indigenous land, simple acknowledgements and moments of silence often ring hollow. The best discussions I have had about land, and what it means to the people who came before us, have been through the firsthand experience of its beauty, utility and, sadly, its steady decline.
Time in nature also presents a cost-effective intervention to reduce stress and improve student mental health outcomes. That, of course, is in addition to the intangible benefits of increased self-confidence as students learn to master knots, cook for themselves on camp stoves and lead others in the wilderness. Something unique about the outdoors is the ability to connect with people simply because they are people. This is quite different from connections we make on campus which are often circumstantial from shared classes and activities.
Today, the two major campus groups operating in the outdoor education space are the Brown Outing Club, which plans various outdoor trips throughout the school year, and BOLT, Brown’s pre-orientation backpacking trip for sophomores, transfers and resumed education students. Each year, BOC operates a community gear room, plans dozens of trips and takes hundreds of students on a variety of outings ranging from whitewater rafting to picnics at India Point Park. BOC’s mission is simple: to get students outdoors, no matter their background or their ability to pay. BOLT, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive five-day backpacking program that brings over 100 students and 30 leaders into the wilderness. Here students learn practical outdoor skills such as knots, backcountry cooking and tarping, as well as intangible leadership skills and a newfound community for students adjusting to sophomore year or a completely new campus.
As the Treasurer of the Brown Outing Club (BOC) and a BOLT leader, I have seen first hand the transformational impact of these programs, yet I know there is still work to be done.
Despite our efforts, BOC has a number of challenges and unmet needs. Namely, demand for our trips far exceeds availability and the lack of University support to rent department vans also means that we are limited to utilizing volunteer drivers at a high liability or using rental cars at a high cost.
Meanwhile, BOLT has plenty of room to grow at scale. While over 100 students heading to the wilderness might seem like a big number, it’s far smaller than peer programs such as the Harvard First-Year Outdoor Program’s 400 students and Princeton Outdoor Action’s 640 students. There are also a number of financial barriers to participation in BOLT such as the $450 participation fee, and the fact that BOLT leaders, despite putting in more than 180 hours of training, are the only group of pre-orientation leaders that aren’t compensated. This is a huge burden since BOLT conflicts with Bruno Leader and Community Coordinator duties, making the choice to lead peers on this transformational trip an especially difficult one.
To move Brown in line with our peers, the University must adopt a comprehensive outdoor education action plan to increase access, funding and diversity of trips and participants. This starts by establishing a working group within the Division of Campus Life to address the issues that I’ve laid out and raise funds to support expanded programming. The current system also means that each outdoor group operates within its own silo, creating redundancies like separate BOC and BOLT gear rooms. It is imperative that this group think of ways to share resources and support student efforts to increase outdoor programming. Finally, while Brown is primarily an undergraduate institution, we must not leave our graduate and medical students behind. Through coordinated efforts, Brown is ideally situated to truly become an outdoorsy school — a place where learning happens both within and outside of the classroom.
‘Tas Rahman ’26 can be reached at tasawwar_rahman@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Tas Rahman is a staff columnist at the Brown Daily Herald writing about issues in higher education. When he's not coding or studying biochemistry, you can find him hiking and enjoying the great outdoors.
