The Williams Outing Club (WOC) will run fewer ski buses to Jiminy Peak during Winter Study this academic year due to a reduced budget and higher operating costs.
To support the ski and snowboard PE classes offered at Jiminy Peak, WOC runs free buses to Jiminy five days a week during Winter Study. In response to increased bus costs, the WOC board has decided to cut three days of bus service this year, two during the first week of Winter Study, before PE classes begin, and one during dead week, after Winter Study has concluded.
Like other Registered Student Organizations (RSOs), WOC receives its budget from the Facilitators for Allocating Student Taxes (FAST). FAST initially allocated $20,000 to WOC for this academic year — down from $32,000 last year and $40,000 during the 2023–24 academic year — but the group successfully appealed for a final budget of $34,000.
Though WOC’s budget is slightly higher this year, the costs associated with operating buses have increased sharply. “We found out that this year, the price of buses from the company that we contract with, which is the same company that all of campus uses, went up by 20 percent per bus,” WOC Co-President Sam Drescher ’26 said in an interview with the Record.
Even before the price increase, providing buses was a significant financial burden for WOC. “Winter Study buses are about a third of the outing club’s budget,” WOC Treasurers Remy Perry ’27 and Lily Muhlbaum ’27 wrote in an email to the Record.
Drescher said that the choice was between cuts to buses or other programming. “We had to choose to either cut buses down 20 percent or slice from other parts of our budget to make up for it,” he said. “We didn’t want to offer fewer PE classes, and we definitely didn’t want to cut down on our financial aid that allows people to get lift passes for Jiminy.”
Along with changes to the bus schedule, WOC plans to make additional cuts to its other Winter Study programming. “We’re also taking out a lot of money from our equipment budget, and we’re asking people to pitch in a little bit more for an ice climbing trip in Winter Study,” Drescher said.
The WOC Board opted to make cuts to Winter Study programming because allocations to other areas were previously targets for cuts. “Between two years ago and last year, our budget was also really sliced by FAST, and so we basically have already pared down our fall and spring programming to the absolute bare bones,” Drescher said.
“WOC Board really wants to emphasize the fact that we spend so much of our budget on Winter Study buses, and we feel like this is a real service to the campus community that RSOs shouldn’t be expected to provide,” Drescher added. “We’re really eager to work with other people to help figure out how Winter Study buses can happen without it taking up such a huge portion of our budget because there’s so much more programming we would love to provide.”
