And from that spontaneous leap it grew, and grew, and grew. What started off as a casual jaunt in Frenchman Bay has become, two-and-a-half decades later, a beloved, annual rite of passage for the College of the Atlantic community.

Professor Ken Cline and a group of early Bar Island swimmers, including professor Helen Hess, COA president Steve Katona, and long-time registrar Sally Crock, 1990s.Professor Ken Cline and a group of early Bar Island swimmers, including professor Helen Hess, COA president Steve Katona, and long-time registrar Sally Crock, 1990s.

In the beginning

It was the fall of 1990 and COA was unveiling a beautiful new pier. But not everyone was a fan. The school barely had any boats to speak of at the time. What was the point of building such an expensive pier?

“Students were grousing about us spending money on the pier,” environmental law and policy professor Ken Cline remembers. It was a fairly chilly day, Cline said, when he was talking with a few of his students after class and the contentious subject of the pier came up, followed by the usual complaints.

“Then one of the students said, ‘Well, if nothing else, it’d be a good place to go swimming,’” Cline, said. “So, from that, a couple of us decided to jump off the pier. I don’t know who made the suggestion, but someone said we should all swim out to Bar Island. So that’s what we did.”

“There were originally four students and me,” Cline said, “and as we were walking down to the dock another student got caught up with the energy and joined us, and jumped in in her underwear.”

Taking the leap...Taking the leap...

And that’s how the Bar Island Swim started. The next year, the group swelled to 15, and it’s been growing ever since. In 2014, close to 130 students, staff, faculty and alumni turned out for the frigid traverse. People have shown up painted blue, with inflatable animals in tow, in costume, and in their birthday suits.

Taking risks

“I love the swim,” said Cline, who is now the Rockefeller Family Chair in Ecosystem Management and Protection. “That’s why I’ve been such a big advocate for it. Because I think it epitomizes some of what we want our students to do with their education. We want them to try something that they haven’t done before that might be a little bit scary, a little bit uncomfortable. And, I think we draw students who are willing to take those sorts of risks and try new things. And it does give them a sense of accomplishment.”

Gathering on the Bar Island sand bar for the swim back to COA, 2014.Gathering on the Bar Island sand bar for the swim back to COA, 2014.

And that sense of achievement, Cline said, is something that lasts for a long time.

“Students will tell me four years later that they did the Bar Island swim, and just how accomplished that felt, and also feeling that they were part of something bigger. I think there is that sense of having the adversity with other people, and you get that with the swim.”

Keeping it safe

There’s been some vocal criticism of the swim over the years, coming from those concerned with safety. After all, not everyone who takes part is a skilled swimmer, the waters of Frenchman Bay are quite cold, and the ocean can be a dangerous place.

But the college does everything it can to keep the event safe. There are many monitors scattered about in boats, ready to pull swimmers at a second’s notice, there’s an hour-long, mandatory meeting beforehand, and there’s the simple rule that all you have to do is jump in the water for a second to be considered having done the swim. This, Cline said, is meant to prevent people from pushing too far past their limits.

Jumping into Frenchman Bar from alumnus Diver Ed's boat, Starfish Enterprise, 2013.Jumping into Frenchman Bar from alumnus Diver Ed's boat, Starfish Enterprise, 2013.

“We do that for safety reasons. From real early on I wanted people to feel comfortable asking for help. I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to go all the way if they can’t,” he said. “It does have risks. Some have asked, ‘Is the tradition really worth the loss of a student?’ And, it’s not. We do everything we can to make it as safe as possible.”

A right of passage

The parameters of the swim have changed over the years. As the crowd grew, the dock became too small of a launching spot. For a few years, swimmers traveled out near Bar Island in a boat, jumped off, and swam back. But then the crowd grew too large for the available boats. The latest incarnation has swimmers gathering at the Bar Island sand bar, wading into the water, and swimming to the COA dock. It might not be as dramatic a start, but the swim still represents an incredible rite of passage, one that is challenging, fun, and amazingly singular to COA.

“Students get a really clear idea that first day that they’re not going to some other school. They’re going to College of the Atlantic,” Cline said. “They’re in the Atlantic. It’s a little bit different, it’s a little bit risky, and it’s connected to the place that they’ve chosen to go. And I think that feels pretty cool.”