In the back corner of the Neilsen Center, past mop buckets and parked industrial floor cleaners, a chicken-wire fence encloses the camp closet. Around two dozen grey, blue, and green hiking backpacks obscure the wall directly across from the closet door and, on the ground, lifejackets spill over the top of a variety of plastic bins. The walls to the left and right are equally hidden by sleeping bags rolled into fading red sacks; stacks of pots, pans, and bowls; and hard plastic coolers for drinks and food all organized into neat wooden shelves, some sagging beneath the weight. Students can rent the majority of the equipment stored in the closet for minimal daily fees.
While Houghton has had a camp closet since 1979 when Houghton began adventure programming, more recent policy changes have made the camp closet more student focused. This semester, Robert Smalley, assistant professor of recreation, took on responsibility for overseeing the camp closet, which was previously run by the Wilderness Adventure Program. According to Smalley, “A lot of this equipment was used by young kids all summer long,” when Houghton ran a youth program. These trips typically resulted in equipment damages making some gear unusable, so the end of this program should mean that “the quality of our equipment stays good for longer, and we don’t have to replace it as much.”
Regarding the current equipment, Smalley said he needs to “see what’s usable and what isn’t usable,” but some of it is relatively new. A few years ago a group of students were granted student government money to buy new equipment that “doesn’t go to outside groups at all – it’s just for Houghton students to use.” Additionally, when Houghton sold the Star Lake campus, equipment from their camp closet came here.
Smalley intends to improve renting coordination because some of Houghton’s outdoor recreation classes utilize the equipment. In the past, conflicts have arisen from schedule mismanagement; for example, “sometimes the [canoe] class would start and there’d be no canoes or not enough canoes for a class.”
Equipment is lent to Houghton programs “free of charge as long as they sign things out and then agree to return them in good condition.” Individual Houghton students and non-Houghton groups can also rent for low fees; for a 2-man tent and sleeping bag it costs two dollars per day and $0.50 per day for a sleeping pad. For now, Smalley has chosen not to offer canoes for individual rental and for liability reasons he never rents out climbing ropes, but usually he will lend canoes and trailers to Houghton programs. Junior Matthew Munkittrick said he borrowed “a backpack, tent, and stove for a weekend, and a pair of climbing shoes for a night.”
Smalley said he has been “a bit of a stickler” when it comes to safety but only because he wants to protect the students who use the camp closet gear; college groups need to have someone experienced with the equipment leading. “If the conditions aren’t going to be good, I will tell the people I think you ought to reconsider. Or I might even say I’m not going to give the stuff to you because I don’t want to be part of a dangerous thing…I just would feel terrible.”
Students can contact Smalley to make rental requests, but need to plan ahead as request forms are due at least three days before the desired pickup date. As the brisk autumn nights start to give way to wintry frosts and the fall camping season comes to an end, Smalley said he has had only a trickle of requests. Senior Sean Daigler who had never heard of the camp closet before said, “this is actually a really cool thing” supporting Smalley’s suspicion that “there’s a lot of potential here that hasn’t been tapped in regards to student use.”