Editor’s Note: As part of our year-long celebration of our 100th Year Anniversary (1922-2022), we’ll post a Throwback Thursday edition of our Alleghany Rattler Newspaper to give you a peek into life at camp across those 100 summers!
Alleghany Tent Points Mean More Than Law, July 10, 1945
“Tent points” — that phrase has gotten to be so well known at Alleghany that it is liable to become just a phrase. Tent points are given for four qualities that go to make a good camper, a good companion — namely promptness, cooperation, cleanliness, courtesy.
Where a great many people live in close proximity, many laws are necessary; that fact we have met with from infancy, and now accept without question. Beyond law, however, there are certain precepts that must be accepted, if a group of individuals is to live happily together, and those precepts are called at Alleghany “tent points.”
Promptness — Suppose more than two hundred people came strolling in to lunch, or assembly when they chose! You say that all two hundred or so would never be late. Nothing catches on like a bad habit, however. The only way to be assured that meals, meetings, and so forth will go off smoothly, wasting as little of everybody’s time s possible, is for you to be on time — and this “gentle reader” means you.
Cooperation — there are many problems and jobs in camp that are the responsibility of not one person , but of a group. At home if your room is poorly kept, if your personal belongings are in a jumble, it usually inconveniences you alone. In camp it inconveniences three or four other people. In a closely knit community we must pull together. If you don’t carry your part of the load, some other girl will probably carry it for you; but you won’t like yourself very well if you make it necessary for her to do this.
Now cleanliness is next to Godliness, the Bible says. We have a heavenly spot her in these beautiful mountains. Let’s keep it heavenly, and we can only do so by keeping it clean. Ton grace this beautiful spot let’s keep ourselves neat and attractive.
Very rarely are Alleghany girls consciously discourteous. Our errors are more apt to be those of omission than of commission. Our life in Camp is free and easy, and we want it to continue free and easy, but thoughtfulness and courtesy should be so much a a part of our lives, that they are unconscious. It should be so that we feel neither free nor easy if we are not courteous.
These Alleghany precepts were not thought up in order to catch you out on team or individual points. They bare a basis on which our happy community is built. Fortunately, we need neither beauty, talent, no, nor brawn to excel in promptness, cooperation, cleanliness, and courtesy. Al that is necessary is the will.
