I wonder if "safety" is a dog whistle for something else. Or will the admin reverse its decision if every student gets a satellite phone, or goes with a team of professional trained guides?
I've yet to run into any issues going on trips as a gay couple in crew, its solidly not bad. Much more of a collegiate atmosphere than Boy Scouts too, and no uniform requirements or competitions either!
I’m also not sure what equipment has been purchased over the years, but reforming as an unassociated group would mean losing that. Also their ability to reserve rooms on campus for meetings, have a table at the “Involvement Fair” where incoming students can scope out all the clubs, no office space or storage in the student union building (not sure if PSOC has this or not, but many clubs do), etc.
Given what PSU is demanding here maybe BSA would be a more useful parent organization, I just can’t believe they even need to consider it. Going hiking in central PA is not a complicated endeavor. You can drive 15 minutes off of campus and you’re out in the woods with poor cell coverage, that’s just how things are.
A Venture crew would not be accessible to many juniors, most seniors, or (almost) any graduate students.
Maybe there is no equivalent in US Scouting.
* Venture Scouting (aged 14-21),
* Exploring (aged 10-20) [0],
* and Sea Scouting (aged 14-20) [1]
However, there are plenty of university students that would be too old to take advantage of programs that had an upper age limit of 25.