Founded in the 1880s by Congregationalist ministers and for decades a feeder for New England’s toniest prep schools, Camp Dudley is steeped in its own, unique traditions. Among them, it may be surprising to learn, is a pioneering, prevenient commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
In 2019, the boys’ camp, which is located on Lake Champlain in the Essex County town of Westport, launched a program with SUNY Potsdam and the Adirondack Diversity Initiative that reaffirms that commitment.
Called the Alternative Spring Break, the program offers urban students enrolled in upstate universities a chance to become immersed in the natural world of the Adirondacks.
“We were told by many students that they get sold on the Adirondacks, on its waterways and topography, but when they get here, they don’t see any of that,” said Tiffany Rea-Fisher, the executive director of the Adirondack Diversity Initiative (ADI). “They don’t come with cars, they have no idea where these elusive trailheads are to be found and how they would get to them.”
That uncomfortable realization fed discussions between Clifton Harcum, the director of SUNY Potsdam’s Center of Diversity, and Matt Storey, Camp Dudley’s current director. Those conversations, in turn, led to the Alternative Spring Break.
In March, 2022, 23 SUNY Potsdam students travelled to Camp Dudley, where they would spend their spring break, hiking, camping out in a lean-to and tapping maple trees, among other things.
Rea-Fisher became Adirondack Diversity Initiative’s executive director in 2023 and among the many tasks that she assigned herself, she said at annual meeting of the Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA), held this year at Fort Ticonderoga on July 25, was to evaluate the programs that were already in place.
“I was really scrutinizing these programs, and as I researched Camp Dudley, I kept thinking to myself, ‘this place cannot be as good as it seems,’ so I kept digging. I toured the campus, and I found the intentionality, the passion, the levels of empathy and sympathy and the worldliness of this organization so palpable that I just fell deeply in love,” said Rea-Fisher.
According to Rea-Fisher, Dudley’s qualities are exemplified by Dave Langston, the camp’s Director of Development and the staff member charged with organizing the camp’s portion of Alternative Spring Break.
“Many of these kids have no idea what the North Country is like in winter, so it has been an eye-opening experience for them to move through the woods on snowshoes or slog through a creek and up the side of the mountain to get that view from the summit,” said Langston, who first came to Dudley in 1967 as a camper. “It’s been such a treat for us to be able to work with them.”
Rea-Fisher said Dudley has also hosted another collaborative project designed to introduce minority groups to the Adirondacks, the Emerging Stewards program.
She recalled one multi-generational family in particular who spent a weekend at Camp Dudley.
“I asked a seven-year-old girl what she enjoyed most about her stay and she said, ‘it’s so quiet here; I never hear any gunshots,’” said Rea-Fisher.
“Not that that’s every black person’s home environment; I want to be clear about that,” said Rea-Fisher. “But hers was, and here she was given the chance to experience a place where there was no room for the things that no seven-year-old girl should experience.”
Those types of Adirondack experiences shared by visiting families or the students on Alternative Spring Break “can shape expectations of what is possible, where you can go, what you can do,” said Rea-Fisher.
“They allow people to see themselves in environments they hadn’t imagined,” she said.
According to Rea-Fisher, when work is meant to be “hyper-local, but national and global at the same time, its fruits may not be seen in your lifetime.”
People engaged in that type of work, “need partners – partners also doing that type of work, partners who will give you hope,” she said.
“There is so much collective action in the Adirondacks that enables me to feel both pride and hope,” said Rea-Fisher.
Camp Dudley is certainly among those partners, she said.
Alternative Spring Break was conceived as a movable program, one that would take students to different places every year. “We’re now in our fourth year at Dudley. Dave, you’re not getting rid of us,” said Rea-Fisher.
