The seventh grade students of Florence Sawyer School in Bolton have taken a class trip out to the Boston University Sargent Center for Outdoor Education in New Hampshire every September for 20 years, teacher Michael Caligiuri said.
But this year, the students will have to find some other place to go to swim, hike and learn to work together as a team. BU administrators announced in January that on Aug. 31, BU will close the 77-year-old center due to financial strain.
SCOE Director Robert Rubendall said he expects the center’s closure to be detrimental to thousands of middle school students, returning campers, college and corporate groups, senior citizens and local nature lovers.
‘The impact and the ripple effect is going to be substantial,’ he said. ‘There are about 9,000 individuals a year who have contact with us that are going to have to seek somewhere else or go without.’
Caligiuri said the team-building activities in which he and his students participated during their trips to the center were an integral part of his curriculum.
‘The kids get a lot out of that,’ he said. ‘We [the teachers] get to be with them for an intense period for an entire week very early in the year, so we get to know them very well very quickly, so that’s going to be missed.
‘It’s become part of a rite of passage in the middle school years . . . A big tradition in the school,’ Caligiuri said.
Metropolitan College Dean Jay Halfond said BU is in discussions with a third party interested in operating its own programs on the land.
‘BU will retain the land, but another institution might utilize the facility,’ Halfond said.
Caligiuri said BU sent a letter to Florence Sawyer School informing them of the center’s closing. The letter mentioned the possibility of another party taking over the center, and asked for the school’s commitment in sending its students to a new program on the same land.
‘I’m a little nervous because I don’t know if another program would be as good,’ he said.
Halfond said he is looking for a closer facility where BU students could take part in activities similar to those offered at SCOE.
‘I hope that we can continue to have non-classroom-based education experiences . . . in the Boston area,’ he said.
But an alternative site would only be open to internal groups, Halfond said. The hundreds of outside groups that use the center will be left to search for a new retreat on their own.
‘ Caligiuri said he has been exploring alternatives for his seventh grade class, but the search has been difficult.
‘We want the same experience,’ he said. ‘Sargent Center ran such a tight ship, focused on education, focused on the kids.’
Halfond said SCOE’s closing was completely due to financial constraints.
‘The staff at Sargent Center had done an excellent job, and it was a thriving, active, energetic site and people really did enjoy it and benefit by it,’ he said. ‘There was just a question, ‘Are these the priorities of a major urban research university, and how can we justify the cost of having to maintain that facility?” he said.
Although BU ‘has made up its mind’ that it will no longer maintain the center, Rubendall said he thinks the benefit from the center to the BU community is ‘worth 10 times’ the maintenance cost.
‘I think the reasons cited were financial and that it’s not central to the core mission of the institution, which is research,’ he said. ‘I can understand that perspective. However, I think it’s a bit short-sighted. I think the students would say that it’s a very important, if not central, part of their experience at BU.’
College of Communication alumnus Greg Freed started a Facebook group called the Sargent Coalition in an effort to save SCOE after he heard about its imminent closure..
‘We’ve been writing letters to BU’s administration. We’ve been suggesting that people donate on behalf of the center to ensure that it has a financial support system,’ Freed said of the coalition’s efforts.
College of Arts and Sciences freshman Isabella Pietroboni said she traveled to SCOE twice this year with the CAS Honors Program.
She said she was shocked to hear SCOE would close, but understood the reasoning behind the cut.
‘I was really upset. It was so amazing,’ she said. ‘However, I guess if it came between closing the camp for fiscal purposes and getting rid of some financial aid, I’d have to say close the camp.’
She said she thinks that although it is most important that the property remains in use, many local visitors saw BU’s affiliation with the camp as a good reflection on the school.
‘If BU was not to own it, it’s going to have a negative effect.’ Pietroboni said. ‘They’re not going to credit BU with this great camp anymore.’
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