Hey there everyone! Sorry for the slowness on the updates, things have been hectic this week during staff training and its thrown me out of my “rhythm” for updating.

Staff training has been going on all week and this morning, campers will start officially registering for Culver Summer Camps 2006. Very exciting. Here are some fun facts I’ve heard this week:

• After a thorough search, Company One gained a Sr. Counselor on Thursday, Mr. Karamon, perhaps known by some as the Assistant Military Activities coordinator from summer 2005.
• Enrollment is way up this summer with approx. 1352 campers attending. Last summer involved roughly 1298 campers.
• 38% of this year’s Culver Summer Campers hail from outside the United States down from 40% last summer.  There are 26 internationals on staff this year.
• Aviation A and B have been combined this summer into one unit, “Aviation” and will join the Troop in all athletic competitions to compete against the naval companies as the “Air-Cav.” Aviation contains around 40 campers this year and Troop is up over 60 this summer (!) which means this new unit could be quite a force.
• The main upper camp SOP has seen substantial revision this summer as predicted on this very site. The TUXIS program has indeed been tied into rank for all upper campers. In order to gain any sort of rank promotion at the end of the summer, a camper must have earned his or her Tuxis.
• The Tuxis banner is also making a return to Upper Camp, going to the boys and girls units who showed the most participation in Tuxis each week.
• The girls are adding two new naval events to their competition each week, a wherry race (single pull) and a kayak race (double sprint). As these two “events” have long been a part of the Great Race it seemed only sensible to have the ladies race them throughout the summer to build of more experience.
• Boys intramural sailing will now include a 420 class sailing race on Tuesday’s.

Those are some of the interesting changes/developments we’ve been hearing about this week. We’ll keep you posted as things develop. Stay tuned. Our first camper just turned up in Naval 2!

Discuss

The Tuxis Program has long been a crucial part of Culver Summer Camps, providing every Culver Upper Camper the opportunity to earn a medal to wear with his or her dress A by completing a series of merit-badge style accomplishments as set forth by their Culver Summer Camps Tuxis Director. Third classmen may earn their bronze tuxis medal, second classmen have their silver to work towards, while first classmen set their sights on the gold tuxis. Each of these medals is progressively more difficult to earn with the understanding that moving up in rank at Culver means you have to perform at a higher level.

But how hard is it to earn you Tuxis medal? And how have the Tuxis standards fared over the years? Should there be more testing involved? less testing? more sports? less? What about those pesky Tuxis essays people work on, or their Tuxis collages.

I’m curious to hear what you think about the general level of challenge to the TUXIS program. In fact I’m starting a new poll on the front page about it, so weigh in with a vote there and your comments in the thread in Main Guard.

Finally to adress the questions about changing Tuxis standards I present to you an honest goodness 1920 Silver Tuxis Sheet that I tracked down using our new Ebay section just last week. What do you think of the point requirements? Any of them stand out? Let’s take a look…

…Read the rest of this entry…

Up on Ebay right now for 4 bucks: …Read the rest of this entry…

Today’s Staff Profile comes from the Tuxis side of things:

Name: Mr. Orochena
Position: Tuxis Program Assistant Director
College/Winter Employment: University of Pittsburgh
Home Town: Beaver, Pennsylvania
Nickname/s: yes, but not for this audience
Favorite Quote: Live for Today!
Last Good Book You Read: I dont have time to read any books besides school text books
Favorite Culver dance song: Sweet Home Alabama
Favorite Shack Snack: I LOVE IT ALL (beacuse it tastes better than the food upstairs)
Favorite Spot on Campus: On the WATER!
Best Part of Working at Culver: The People!

If you will be working at Culver this summer in ANY capacity and would like to have your profile included on the site Contact Me.

Welcome to Part Three of GoCulver.com’s four-part Summer 2006 Preview in which we continue our walk through the announcements sent to Upper Camp Sr. Counselors by Tony Mayfield, Director of Summer Schools and Camps on March 8, 2006. In this installment, as promised, we’ll be talking Tuxis.

As always, after you read today’s update be sure to pop over to the CulverTalk forums to respond.

Read Summer 2006 Preview Part 3