Freshman Camp
Each fall from 1936–42 and 1946–54, the College held a four-day camp for incoming freshman at Pilot Knob on the east shore of Lake George.
Freshman camps sponsored by college Christian Associations had begun at the University of Pennsylvania shortly after the First World War and had soon spread to many other institutions. Frank Bailey Jr. ’31, president of Union’s Christian Association, worked to introduce the idea until illness forced him to withdraw from college. One of his successors, Robert D. Everest ’37, revived the proposal in 1935 and carried it through. The Christian Association sponsored the camp for the first three years, after which the College assumed full responsibility. Track coach Wilford Ketz served as faculty director from the beginning, sharing the work with his wife, Mabel Ketz. A faculty board chose a different student leader each year.
The intention of the camp was to provide a better means of building freshman class spirit and solidarity than the old class fights with the sophomores. Its success was limited by the fact that, as a voluntary program for which participants had to pay a fee, it never enrolled all freshmen (only 61 of 259 in 1936, 125 of 396 in 1946, nearly 200 of 300 by the 1950s) and consequently a separate Freshman Orientation had to be held afterward on the campus.
Buses transported students to the camp, where, by 1939, the program included talks by faculty members and student leaders as well as singing, swimming, sports, physical examinations, and climbing nearby Buck Mountain. Rushing was prohibited but fraternity representatives were allowed to come on visitors’ day.
The camp belonged to the Schenectady YMCA, which was willing to rent it to the College because the regular camping season had ended. At times, additional facilities of the Boy Scouts and the Schenectady Rotary Club were also used. Students slept in tents, faculty in a lodge, and all ate in a mess hall.
Several factors brought Freshman camp to an end after the fall of 1954. Attendance, though still much less than complete, had reached the facility’s capacity, but the rent was increasing. Ketz, Coordinator of Student Activities since 1947, had just been appointed Director of Athletics and wanted to be relieved of responsibility for the camp, while the faculty favored a unified orientation with more intellectual content.
Condensed from Wayne Somers, compiler and editor, Encyclopedia of Union College History (Schenectady: Union College Press, 2003), page 317.
Image courtesy of Union College, Schaffer Library Special Collections and Archives, Photograph Collection