The winds of change are upon Campus Life during the 2025-26 school year as the campus department welcomes new personnel, programming, and changes to club funding. Notably, Campus Life changed its club travel policy for the 2025-26 academic year, prohibiting all international travel for student clubs.
The policy change will mostly affect club travel to Canada as air travel has historically been restricted for club travel, Luke Allen, coordinator of Campus Life programming, said.
Allen said that the policy change has been in discussion for a couple of years, noting that international travel poses a variety of equity, cost, and logistic challenges for students and staff.
Allen said that van rentals for a Canada trip can cost up to $1,000 each, that ensuring proper passport documentation for each club member posed an equity issue and that differences in drinking age laws put student club leaders in awkward situations of complying with Bates policy.
The “final push” to make the restriction on international travel official came with the increasing difficulty of travel for international students, posing a significant equity issue for club members, Allen said.
Though travel to Canada does not affect most clubs on campus, those with yearly traditions of Canada trips are feeling the disappointment of altered plans.
The a capella group, Takenote, takes a yearly tour to Montreal where club members stay together in an Airbnb, meet with a cappella groups at McGill University and spend their days busking in the city streets.
“It’s a great way to get experience performing and in a different setting than Bates College campus,” club co-president Lexi Inger ‘26 said. “It’s a nice way to also utilize where we are. We’re so close to Canada that it really usually is a very accessible trip, and it’s usually fun for our members who have never traveled out of the country.”
Inger also noted that the trip is an important time for newer club members to learn the group’s repertoire. “[It’s] really like cram time to learn all of our songs that we have claimed,” Inger said.
Inger and AJ Matos ‘26, club co-president, reported that they were not aware of the change in the Campus Life travel policy before they started planning their trip. The c0-presidents said that they found out about the change after submitting their funding request for the Canada trip which was promptly denied because of the new policy.
Selecting a new location for the tour became difficult, as the club had limited funds.
In anticipation of this year’s trip, the club decided not to go on their Canada trip last year. They planned to utilize a funds rollover policy, where the clubs can withhold requesting their allotted $2,500 from the previous year and request more the next. That is, if a club decided to rollover their funding request from last year to this year, they could request up to $5,000.
Last year, the funding request limit was $3,000. This year, the limit was lowered to $2,500 for each club. However, the request does not guarantee that it be fulfilled. The cap denotes the maximum amount that a club can receive.
After submitting requests to go to Acadia, Maine and North Conway, N.H. which were both denied, the club received $1,000 of a requested $3,000 to go to Bethel, Maine.
However, the club presidents expressed that this money was barely enough to cover the cost of housing. The group also had to shorten their trip from four nights to two.
According to Inger and Matos, Campus Life suggested that the club ask for donations from its members.
The club presidents were decidedly against the suggestion. “We can’t do that; that’s not Takenote…We don’t think that is equitable,” Inger said.
Instead, the club turned to its alumni and fans, asking them for donations. So far, they said, they’ve collected enough money to cover gas and some food.
Overall, the c0-presidents stressed that they understood the club change policy, but that club members were just disappointed. “The group’s morale about it has been really great,” Matos added.
The Crosstones, another a cappella group on campus, also does an annual fall break trip to Canada for their tour. Like Takenote, they found out about the club policy change through their rejected funding request.
And, like Takenote, the greatest challenge was pivoting after late-notice of the policy and disappointing club members.
For Reese Hillman ‘26, co-president of the Crosstones, it was difficult to announce the change of plans to the club. “One of the things we did at our first rehearsal was make sure everyone had passports and were free over October break,” Hillman said. “So it was very sad to have to break the news to the club.”
She noted that the tour serves as important bonding time for the club after a busy first half of the semester. “[It’s] just a few days of hanging out, making music together, busking, exploring,” she said. “But really it’s the first time where we have the opportunity to talk to each other [and] that’s the time where people tend to really bond and become close for the first time.”
The club is now going to a club member’s house in New York state where the group will put on a community performance at a local library and at someone’s home.
