Drinking and Dating
How should your camp address thorny staff issues?
Summer camp is about the kids, of course, except when it isn’t. Unfortunately, camp directors often find themselves in the difficult position of having to deal with thorny staff issues during the summer. We spoke with Dr. Ethan Schafer and Stephen Wallace, two authorities in the uncomfortable areas of teenage sexuality and underage drinking, respectively; their advice could help you prepare now to nip problems in the bud before the camp season begins.
Ethan holds a doctorate in child clinical psychology. He’s in full-time private practice in the Cleveland area, working with children, teens, and families, and consulting with two private schools. He also consults with summer camps across the country.
As a school psychologist, adolescent counselor, SADD Chairman and CEO, researcher, camp director, and college professor, Stephen has gained broad experience with teens and unique insights into their development, attitudes, and behavior. He serves as the Director of Counseling and Counselor Training at Cape Cod Sea Camps.
Dating & Sexuality
Q: Is it really possible for two counselors to have a healthy romantic relationship during camp?
DR. ETHAN SCHAFER: Yeah, I think it certainly is. I’m sure that it happens all the time. When people work together, they’re going to have relationships. The difference at camp is that there have to be clear guidelines. There are some things that are definitely not appropriate, either because of the two parties involved or because of the behaviors and actions of the two people. I mean, two twenty-year-olds dating each other – I can’t imagine that anyone would find that inappropriate in and of itself, but if they’re behaving in a way that brings their personal business into the lives of other people who don’t want it, then it’s a problem.
Q: How do camps go about developing policies that deal with romantic relationships between staff members?
SCHAFER: They should have specific policies if they want them. Everything needs to be said beforehand. I can see some camps, just like some workplaces, saying, “It’s against the rules here to be romantically involved with any of your co-workers.” But if you’re going to do that, you have to do it from the beginning. They should be very explicit, both in their staff manuals and in their training sessions about what expectations they have for adult relationships at camp. There have to be clear guidelines and rules. For example, if you have a heterosexual, 
twenty-year-old couple, are they allowed to hold hands in front of the campers? And what about two gay counselors? Are they allowed to hold hands in front of the campers, too? We have to be explicit and fair.
Q: Who should be involved in discussions about setting a camp’s policy?
SCHAFER: The first thing you do is you get the leadership of the camp together to talk about what you want your policy to be. Then, you develop a set of language you’re going to put down for employee consumption. Then, you get input from senior members of your staff. There’s no point in getting input from people on things that aren’t negotiable, so decide what’s going to be definite policy and where there’s room for collaboration with people who are on the bottom end of the hierarchy.
Q: In your experience, of the camps that have said, “We’ll allow dating,” where do they run into the most trouble?
SCHAFER: There’s always going to be talk about relationships. It has to be made very clear where work starts and where play starts. Because you’re living at a residential camp, the boundaries are less clear. You can’t just say, “We don’t want to see it at work.” You’re off the clock while still at camp sometimes, but if you’re on camp grounds and there are kids around, I would suggest that you’re still on the clock. A lot of the stuff that might feel natural and normal to do can’t be done, and so camps have to have a mechanism for talking about it with people, and a mechanism for making changes that they think need to be made. I will always think it inappropriate for people to be flaunting the sexuality of their relationships in front of kids who are not there to be witnesses to that.
Q: What should camps be doing right now to prepare for the summer?
SCHAFER: They ought to be clarifying their policy and making sure everyone’s on the same page. One of the biggest problems I’ve run into is different expectations for the staff.
Underage Drinking
Q: A lot of camps in New England are not exactly near hotbeds of late-night entertainment, so when the sun goes down and campers go to bed, staff don’t often have a lot of time-off options. How do camps strike the balance between coming down hard on underage drinking and making sure that staff are happy and willing to return summer after summer?
STEPHEN WALLACE: I think counselors need clear expectations regarding underage drinking, and any stated consequences need to be followed through with. I’ve heard anecdotally – though I haven’t seen any data on this – that there are camps that have come down very hard, including one that apparently instituted random drug and alcohol testing. They were worried about whether or not they would lose staff, but when they were informed their incoming staff of this new policy, they only had two opt-outs. I believe it makes sense to hold our staff to at least as high a standard as we apply to our campers.
Q: You spend a lot of time looking at this issue with respect to colleges; what can camps learn from them?
WALLACE: There have been a lot of different types of program instituted at the college level, and there are some that show very promising signs of results. Those are usually ones that do contain very clear expectations for students, clear and consistent consequences for violating the rules, and social marketing campaigns, particularly around the idea of changing social norms. Looking at what alternative activities there are, I recognize that some camps are in rural areas where there isn’t that much to do, but there are certainly things that camps can offer, using their own facilities for staff. At Rutgers, they went through this process, and talked 
to students, asking them, “If the college could offer alternative stuff for you to do, what is it that you would want to do?” And they said, “Well, we’d like to be able to go use the gym.” So they went to the athletic department, who said, “Well, it would cost us x number of dollars to keep the facility open and staffed from 10 pm to 1 am, which is when students said they wanted to use it.” But then, they did a little analysis and found that no one was using it during other hours when it was open, so by simply shifting the cost to different hours, they weren’t necessarily adding to the cost. I think there are opportunities like that that camps can make available to their counselors.
Q: Some camps might tell their staff – especially those counselors who are between the ages of 18 and 21 and have been to college, “Here is the law in this state. Here are the rules on our property. Don’t let your nights off affect your performance as a counselor. Be careful.” Is that enough?
WALLACE: Well, my view on that is that most camps hire their counselors to be role models for kids, and it’s tough to be a good role model when you’re breaking the law. If they don’t think their campers know what they’re doing, they’re deceiving themselves. Even for 21 and older, if you go out and have a drink on your time off, you still do bring it back, even if it’s not as blatant as coming back and waking up a cabin full of kids by doing something stupid because you’re intoxicated, but simply by the stories that they tell that trickle down to the campers.
Q: Now, if you’re a camp director and you discover that problem drinking is much more widespread among your staff than you anticipated – so widespread that you can’t let all the offenders go – how do you come up with a response that’s appropriate, but not so draconian that your best counselors might still want to return?
WALLACE: It’s tough. I think that camps need to decide how serious they are about the issue. There’s not an easy way through this. It calls for tough decisions and oftentimes requires tough action that may create other problems. I know from working in the field for 25 years that doing nothing is not helpful.
Q: Is the onus more on the underage drinkers themselves or the suppliers? Who should get the brunt of a director’s attention?
WALLACE: I think both in equal measure; I mean, they’re both illegal. If you have staff that are providing alcohol for underage staff, that’s a pretty serious breach of trust.
For further reading on staff and alcohol, might we suggest Stephen Wallace’s article, “Under the Influence.” For a different perspective than Ethan’s, read Edward Schirick’s “Open Letter to Camp Counselors – Think, and Have a Great Summer.”
If you’re interested in learning more about these topics, please consider attending our annual Conference at the end of March in Manchester, NH, chock full of relevant workshops.