Outdoor Odyssey / Wilderness Reflections

Cornell "Outdoor Odyssey" (formerly Wilderness Reflections) is a "student-led" program which nominally provides an optional introductory backcountry experience to incoming Cornell students, but in reality is a financial front and sock puppet for the Cornell Outdoor Education business, who receive the bulk of the funds. Through the student-led masquerade, Outdoor Odyssey has obtained line-item SAFC funding at the $10k level to underwrite "scholarships", which merely serves as an additional transfer of funds from SAFC to COE. Since COE otherwise has surplus capacity during the summers, this arrangement is highly profitable to them -- particularly because, unlike for school-year COE trips, Outdoor Odyssey trips are led by unpaid "volunteers" instead of paid guides.

They succeed even at monetizing volunteerism -- one of their trips gives one the opportunity to spend $300 to contribute 30 hours of "outdoor service."

Other colleges organize similar opportunities for incoming students by truly independent student groups at rates of tens of dollars per student which fund supplies and meal costs. Outdoor Odyssey trips, by comparison, cost similarly to their functionally identical COE trips, that is, hundreds of dollar per participant.

Students can meet other incoming students now on numerous online fora, such as facebook groups, and self-organize their own meet and greet trips at zero expense. Profiteering organizations such as "Outdoor Odyssey" are therefore irrelevant.