This article was originally published prior to June 2, 2013.  Due to a change in content management systems, the initial publication date is not available.

Plans have changed for Baker University students traveling on the scuba diving interterm.

The trip, which was originally scheduled for Fiji, will now take place in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“The first word I got was from Connie Deel in Human Resources and then Susan Lindahl (Chief Operating Officer) made it official,” Rand Ziegler, vice president and dean for the college of arts and sciences, said.

Lindahl said the group had to stay inside U.S. waters for insurance reasons.

“We could not get insurance outside of U.S. waters,” she said. “We needed to be in U.S. waters for our students to be covered under our current policy, so that really was the main reason.”

Lindahl understood the disappointment with the change, but said the good news was the trip was still on.

“I became informed of (the issue) by Human Resources, and as far as I was concerned, certainly that was an easy decision to make, because we couldn’t put our students or our institution at risk by not having insurance with scuba diving,” she said.

This interterm will be Ziegler’s 20th time scuba diving with a Baker group, 18 of those being interterm trips. This will be his first time going to St. Croix with a Baker group.

“We were scheduled for Fiji and that would have been a superior trip,” he said.

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