An undergraduate student organization dedicated to the outdoors has been forced to end their historic tradition of taking students camping in the wilderness due to safety concerns from their college.
Penn State’s Outing Club has been officially barred from organizing and running outdoor trips for the semester, as a result of safety concerns by university administrators. According to a release posted on the club’s official website, the activities engaged in by the Outing Club have exceeded the acceptable level of risk for university organizations.
“The Penn State Outing Club will no longer be organizing and running outdoor student-led trips starting next semester,” the release reads. “This is a result of an assessment of risk management by the University that determined that the types of activities in which PSOC engages are above the University’s threshold of acceptable risk for recognized student organizations.”
The irony of this surprising decision was not lost on a number of individuals who expressed their outrage at the outcome, especially since the university allows students to play contact sports such as football and rugby.
“They should probably, also cancel football if they are so concerned with student safety,” said Garret Clark, in a post on the organization’s Facebook page.
Another student noted the hypocrisy of such a decision being rooted in student safety, remarking that there was a “far greater chance of being injured playing football [than the] outdoor running that this club does.”
The Outing Club was not alone in being disbanded by the university for student safety concerns. Penn State’s Caving Club was also notified that they would no longer be able to host student events at the conclusion of the semester, a decision that the university claims is rooted in ensuring student safety.
While Penn State has tried to mask this issue as being related to the nature of the activities that students engage in on these trips, a number of organization leaders have claimed that the university is merely seizing an opportunity to limit extracurricular student activities in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
Since the news of the convicted serial child rapist broke in 2011, “Penn State’s just been clamping down really hard on the nature of activities,” said Michael Lacey, president of the Penn State Caving Club.
