During the Student Government Association’s (SGA) annual “State of Association” address, all four class presidents spoke about SGA’s goal to provide students with the opportunity to go on more off-campus trips.

“We believe it’s a good idea to get off campus every now and again,” senior class president Dylan Guss said during the event.

 The Class Affairs Council (CAC), comprised of the president and vice president of each class, organized three day trips during the semester: two for sporting events (a football game at Cornell and a basketball game at Syracuse) and one to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

 “The CAC is something that didn’t exist three years ago,” Vice President of the Class Council of 2014 Lindsey Skerker said. “We meet once a week before the Senate meeting to talk about what’s going on with the our respective classes. We wanted the classes to really be able to intermingle. This initiative took off with the idea for a fan bus to the Cornell football game.”

 Students witnessed the team’s first win of the season, with a 41-20 victory over their rivals during this fan bus trip to Cornell. On the way back, Skerker remembered students expressing their interest in organizing trips for more away games, for every sport from hockey to lacrosse to soccer.

 “Going forward, we want to try for one or two fan buses a semester for away games,” Skerker said. Both the CAC and SGA want to set the tone for school spirit and get the Colgate community more involved in athletics. If we make it really easy, there’s no reason not to go. It’s free, and everyone is doing the planning for you.”

The bus for the Cooperstown trip left on November 9 at 11:00 a.m., carrying 25 to 30 students.

“Not only did I feel it was appropriate for me to be in attendance, but I’m also a huge baseball fan,” sophomore class president Adam Basciano said. “I’d never actually visited Cooperstown before. The whole group enjoyed a nice lunch once we got there, and then some of my buddies and I took to the streets of the village. We spent the afternoon shopping and exploring the history that surrounded us, talking baseball with the shop owners.”

At the beginning of November, Syracuse’s athletic department reached out to Skerker and Center for Leadership and Student Involvement (CLSI) about potential interest in a fan bus to the men’s basketball game, which served as the last off-campus trip of the semester.

“They played in the Carrier Dome, which seats around 50,000. We’re only used to 100-200 spectators, if that,” Skerker said. “It was such a great game, made that much better by the support for our athletes from our own students.”

In addition to continuing to organize fan buses, the CAC is hoping to organize a senior trip to the Brewery Ommegang, located near Cooperstown. This initiative, therefore, encourages students to both interact with members of all classes and to explore the little-known destinations upstate New York has to offer.

Contact Kendall Murtha at [email protected].