Admin & History

Well, it's traditional at this point to whinge about how many late nights it has taken to produce this journal, so just take that as read, and I'll move on to more substantive things.

It's been 3 years since the last Cambridge Underground, so there's a lot in this issue, even without large sections of turgid description of finds in Austria (I have decided that as you can read these on the web they don't need publishing again here, and as the surveys for this year aren't done yet (Duncan!), you don't get those either). The recent dearth of journals has been largely due to the dearth of new members, and even, at times over the last few years, a dearth of actual caving. So here's a summary of recent CUCC history which goes some way to explaining this.

CUCC entered the 1996-1997 year as a very old-heavy club. There were always a good number of people at the Panton on Tuesday, but these were largely the stalwarts of 'young ExCS' that remain in Cambridge, and the conversation turned increasingly to DIY, gardening and car insurance. Correspondingly, the hours underground of most of those present dwindled to token levels with a few honourable exceptions (Sam Lieberman and Tony Rooke leading the field). We tried very hard to revitalise the club by recruiting more students at the Freshers' Fair, and trying to be nice to those that did turn up, but with limited success. Paul Hammond, one of the few new keenies, was made president in his 2nd year, and we managed to scrape together a committee. However producing journals was some way down the list of things to do so with the limited manpower it didn't get done. Expo was sucessful, though, being much less affected by the student shortage than normal club affairs.

The 1997-1998 year started off looking much better. The new president, Kiwi Jonathan Carr did some nice handouts and a shiny new website. His photographs had the knack of making miserable places you had been to many times look really nice! A good selection of new faces turned up to the pub and people went on meets. Unfortunately after Christmas things started to slip, as Jonathan had to spend large amounts of time out of the country on his euro-wide research project, and this vacuum at the top seemed somehow to spoil the momentum and several of our new recruits faded away. Paul ended up covering for Jonathan, despite being a bit weary of being 'the keen chap who does everything' for the 3rd year running, although he was now assisted by the efficient (even sometimes officious) Earl Merson. By the end of the year ennui had set in again and we had two uninspiring events in quick succession. The annual dinner was arranged out of term (largely by accident), with no students attending at all (the keen ones had gone caving in Fermanagh, and the president had a last-minute emergency in the lab (a camera stood in for him in the dinner photo), although Earl did put in an appearance, despite not being an official attendee.

Next we were unable to manage a quorum at the AGM. It being the same day as Strawberry Fair possibly didn't help, but mostly there just weren't 12 people interested enough in CUCC to turn up. The previous treasurer had also left the country, apparently having lost/failed to collect our GBP 600 grant money for the previous year. The new treasurer, Earl, was somewhat fed up with having to sort this out, especially in the face of massive apathy. An EGM-with-curry was called at the start of the 1998-1999 academic year, to entice people along long enough to sort out the mechanics of CUCC's continued existence, and one of our two keen recruits, Tim Vasbie-Burnie (who had also been nobbled as Expo leader) got the job of President. Our other keen recruit (a pre-trained mendip caver, Steve Jones) became a reluctant tacklemaster. He was concerned that it was an important job and that he wasn't well-qualified enough to do it, but was persuaded that he was by far the best-qualified candidate ...

At this time the descision was taken for 'young ExCS' to give up actively trying to help the club along, and to leave it entirely to the students. After all, they could hardly do worse than we oldies had in recent years. Also giving them full responsibility, without crumblies around telling them what to do and always being 'on-tap' whenever anything needed deciding, should help them expand into their rôles, and also made them look like they knew what they were talking about to the new crop of novices (if there were any!). This policy even went as far as oldies who weren't actually going on meets having a Wednesday-night pub meet instead.

The year started badly with no stall at the fair (see President's Report), but despite this, the club is looking healthier now than it has for at least 3 years, with full pub meets, oversubscribed caving meets, extra caving meets between meets, etc. Whether this is really down to 'getting the moany old farts out of the way' can't easily be determined, but it certainly seems to be a contributory factor. The new committee is doing a good job, helped by the continuity of recent presidents still being around, and the 1996-7 secretary (Andrew Ketley) returning from a year away; and despite the pressure of more work and less money, the new club members are doing plenty of caving. And, to cap it all, we even have a Journal! Perhaps slightly too much of it has been written by those same old farts, rather than the new membership, but this mostly just reflects recent events.

I hope CUCC's new flush of life will continue in the next few years. You never know - you might even get another journal next year!

Unfortunately the logbook seems to have been forgotten in the last couple of years, with email reports for the newsletter usurping its place. As as result it is impossible to calculate T/U's for the last couple of years, but then they probably weren't very impressive anyway...

Finally, the editors hope you find this journal of interest, and remind you that you need to start writing for next years ASAP:

Wookey

Editor, ranter and pesterer

Mark Shinwell

Technical editor and LaTeX fettler

Jonathan Carr

Picture editor

Paul Hammond

General dogsbody