What follows is a short description of the roles of the people who will be on the committee through to October.

The Club Captain has a wide-ranging role, with responsibilities ranging from organizing and introducing guest speakers for club meetings, chairing committee meetings, organizing Freshers, the Gear Sale and Clubs Day, keeping an eye on other committee members, and generally ensuring the club runs smoothly. Basically, the role is equivalent to the Prime Minister, although Darren’s a bit less bossy than Jenny (well, most of the time anyway)!

This year, the President’s and Club Captain’s roles are being shared. Specific duties of the President include applying for Hillary Commission funding, providing advice, ideas and support to committee members, suggesting improvements to the way things are done and keeping documents such as the club manual and club guides up to date. Basically, the President is supposed to provide overall direction for the club.

Unlike Winston Peters, our Treasurer actually looks after finances rather than spending time sniping at the media other politicians and the public! The responsibilities of the Treasurer include collecting and banking money from membership subscriptions and trip costs and paying receiving money for bribes (how did that get in here?!), gear purchases and petrol for car drivers, amongst other things. The job also involves maintaining the accounts in good order, ensuring the club is living within its means and providing reports to committee meetings.

The Secretary’s jobs include the collection and delivery to the relevant committee members of mail, taking minutes at committee meetings and generally being responsible for the records of the club. Other tasks include preparing the affiliation to the Student’s Association, which can involve seemingly endless chasing of other committee members for the relevant pieces of paper, answering general club mail and ensuring committee members know the dates of meetings.

Keeping a database of all the members’ names and addresses (Big Brother is watching you!) and promotion of the club to students, especially those groups not well represented in the club, such as Arts students. This is where the labels for your newsletters come from.

Publicize forthcoming events and tramping trips by means of posters and notices on the club notice board and around campus, email and possibly the club web page, in order to ensure that as many people as possible are aware of what’s happening in the club.

The role of the Trips Officer is to plan a programme of tramping and climbing trips to cater for a wide range of people, from those who want short cruisy trips with gourmet cooking and soaking in hot pools to those who desire to tackle the snow-clad peaks of the Southern Alps. This involves announcing the coming weekend’s trips at meetings, arranging for someone who knows the area to give a short talk (and maybe show a few slides) about the trips in question and arranging for people to lead trips. The trip programme is not ‘set in stone’, if you have ideas about a trip which you would like to see happen, please don’t hesitate to see Rene about it.

The Instruction Officer is responsible for organizing useful instruction courses for club members such as river crossing (an essential skill for tramping in the New Zealand bush) and rock climbing in the first term, snow skills courses in the second and third terms and First Aid in the second term. All these are designed to help make tramping and climbing safer and more enjoyable (and to stop parents worrying too much about letting their darling offspring loose in the wopwops!) Further tasks include arranging for the training of instructors for these courses (especially snowcraft) and looking out for potential new courses the club could offer, such as avalanche safety.

Like all activities, there is an element of risk in tramping and climbing. The Safety Officer is here to ensure that tramping trips and other activities are conducted as safely as possible. This is done by ensuring that all trips have a base contact, that party members have the necessary skills and that essential equipment is carried. The Safety Officer has the power to prevent a person from going on a trip if it is thought that he/she does not have the necessary skills, and to prevent a trip from running if conditions are poor, the party is inexperienced etc. Again, this helps your parents sleep at night.

Welcome to CUTC! This guide explains how the club operates and how its trips are run and organized. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to ask.

The activity for the meeting (speaker, slideshow, social event, etc) will start at 7.30 pm on Wednesdays. Organization of the following weekend’s or holiday’s trips will occur at about 8.30 pm. Meetings are usually held in the Upper Common Room in Students Association.

Meetings only occur during termtime so holiday tramps are organized at the last meeting of the preceding term.

Information about the trip will be available in the newsletter. If you can’t make it to the meeting and want to go on a trip, phone the Trips Officer beforehand, NOT after! You must be a club member to go on a club trip, unless exceptional circumstances apply.

After the main activity for the meeting (concluding at about 8:30), the Trips Officer will tell people what trips are going and their grades, and where to meet with the leaders.

The participants fill out the trip form available from the leader. Medical conditions such as asthma, allergies, diabetes, haemophilia, ankles prone to spraining, etc should be made known to the leader, in private if preferred.

Members’ cars or hired transport will be used. The CUTC Drivers Guide is available from the Safety Officer.

Party gear and food will be organized with the help of the leader. The time and place of leaving and expected time of return will be arranged. Make sure you know the Base Contact’s name and phone number.

Pay the Treasurer at the meeting. If you must pay later, be sure to do so before the trip leaves. If you find later that you can’t go on the trip, you can get 75% to 100% back (at the discretion of the Treasurer, Trips Officer and Club Captain) provided you contact the leader or Trips Officer before the trip leaves.

Personal gear hired from the gear locker will have a deposit plus hire charge. The leader will help you get gear from the gear locker.

Give your family/flatmates the Base Contact’s phone number, and explain how the Base Contact system works.

Intentions will be left with:

• Base Contact. This is a person remaining in Christchurch with full details of the party members and their intentions. They are responsible for informing authorities and maintaining contact with family members/flatmates if the group is overdue.

• Trips Officer

• National Park HQ

• in huts as you go

Intentions information includes names and phone numbers, planned route and possible variations, and expected time of return.

If something goes wrong and a phone or mountain radio is available, the Base Contact will be informed (usually by the leader).

The car drivers must contact the Base Contact when they get home.

TRips lOG, better known as TROG, is a journal produced by the TROG editors at the end of the year, consisting of reports of club activities. TROG usually makes for fun bed time reading. A report, including photos, should be written by someone on the trip for inclusion in TROG. Old TROGs are in the main library Mountaineering Collection.

All club group gear is to be returned to the gear locker by the next meeting. Any damage to gear should be pointed out to the Gear Locker Officer.

If you had any safety concerns during the trip please discuss these with the Safety Officer.

If you change your address, get a new phone number, or your emergency contact details change then please contact the Membership Officer. Newsletters get sent to your termtime address. TROG gets sent to your emergency address (assumed holiday contact address) unless you inform the Membership Officer otherwise.

If in the unlikely event your behaviour at a club event is inappropriate for the interests of the club or its members, the committee may give you a warning or even terminate your membership. Which basically means no stealing, sexual harassment, violence, deliberated putting peoples lives at unreasonable risk, etc.