Female Junior Staff?

[Nathan]

At the camp I work at, out of around forty staff members last summer, five of them were girls, and only one of those girls was over 18. But, no problems ever arose; there were no romantic entanglements, and there was no untoward behavior.

 

While it would seem that putting girls and boys together with little supervision would indeed lend itself to some obvious problems, that is not what happens. You can also not discriminate against girls working at a boy scout camp on the premise that some offensive results may occur. Such thinking is merely conjecture with little empirical evidence to support it, and I've also found that those girls who choose to work at a boy scout camp often know much more about the outdoors than a lot of the boy staffers.

[dsteele]

IN my third year as assistant camp director, we had a 19 year old female nature director. She hit it off with a young DE and they very discretely got together.

 

Tanya has been my wife of 12 years next month.

 

It ain't all bad . . . and we never fooled around on camp time.

 

DS

[Eamonn]

Never??

I met Her Who Must Be Obeyed at Summer Camp. She wasn't on staff. Her Dad was the maintenance man and the Camp Director and his wife lived next door.

Yes I was only 21 and yes I sneaked or is it snook in the quick kiss.

At the end of the day it was my sexy knees that won her over!!

Eamonn

[dsteele]

Eamonn:

 

You called me on it, so I'll respond.

 

Yes, we did the quick kiss -- but I don't consider that fooling around. The stuff the ranger thought we were doing we never did until we were married.

 

Dirty mind, that one had. Yoda I speak like, no?

 

DS

[MeriwetherPD]

Well this will be my 9'th summer on staff, and I've seen this go very well and very .. not well.

The first few years I was on staff the whole sub 18 females on staff issue wasn't handeled well, and there were problems.

In resent years we have cracked down. This summer I'm program director and my line is "While you are at camp if you arn't 18yet then we are your parent/or gaurdian. that makes you all siblings, That means no relations ships you wouldn't have with your brother/sister."

 

In addition the only sub 18 girls we have this year are related to current or past staff members, there is a certian fear that even a 16 year old staff (not hte brightest creature I was there) has of older brothers.

 

I have seen some good staff members come up from starting at 16. There are issues, but really I think That I've heard of more off color comments coming from scoutmasters then other staffers.

[LNTGirl]

Ok, female staff can be tricky.

I first worked at camp because a friend of mine was on staff. She was on staff because her father works for council.

Some female staff do cause problems. They may not know much about scouting and do not act professionally. This is usually the first time the younger staff have been away from home for long period of time. There's a lot of new autonomy and responsibility. It takes some getting used to.

This past year, I was an area director and had a 15 year old female staff member. She proved to be distracting, but soon switched areas by choice.

I think if any staff member causes significant problems, then he or she should not be rehired.

Some under 18 female staff do very well at camps, others do not. I think the best female staff members are the ones that have experience with scouting or are the ones encouraged to be on staff by other staff members.

Supervision is required for all staff members whether there are female or not; boy scouts like to burn things.

At our camp, the female staff usually have important jobs. Few of them spent much time as under 18 staff though. I agree that we should not have female staff under 16. Our camp allows females to be CITs.

The staff and leaders must be mindful to respect the female staff as they would any other staff member. This past summer a scout and leader had a bet going to see who would get my phone number first. At the time I didn't think anything of it but later felt like a race horse.

One other problem that I personally had at camp was gossip. If the scouts get any ideas about relationships on camp, they will mercilessly grill all parties involved. I was hounded about several different staff members, one of which was three years my junior, by a group of scouts. Another staff member tipped them off (of course, in the wrong direction) about my romantic life on camp. Of course, no scouts should be let in on any camp gossip.

My thoughts are that the staff needs to be supervised whether or not females are present. By supervised, I mean having authority figures (program director) living in the same area as the rest of the staff. If a female causes problems, she should be dealt with like any other staff member.

Personally, I love scouting. I love seeing the scouts year after year and I am dedicated to making my area the best area on camp. I want to be a good example for the scouts. I want them to remember camp as a great time. If someone does not have that goal in mind, he or she should not be on staff.

I must wonder if girl scout camps have problems like this at all. I visited one that had 38 females and 2 males. The male staff didn't seem to pose a problem at all. They were, of course well over 18.

[hops_scout]

Of which area of IL are you from? Just wondering b/c I'm in the Southwestern part of the state in Waterloo, IL. Okaw Valley

[CCTp1776]

The last summer I was on staff at camp I was a Commissioner. We had two female junior staffers working on the waterfront. The problems we had were not with the staff, but with the campers. Some Scouts refused to participate in the waterfront activities "because there were girls there". They were self conscious and didn't want to be seen in their swim trunks. Since that summer, only boys have been hired to work the waterfront. I think we need to remember that not all of the boys would be comfortable with young girls at scout camp and be sensitive to that.

 

CC (not new to this forum, just gone missing for a while... back with a new name)

[Eamonn]

So who were you before?

Eamonn

[LNTGirl]

As far as I know, we don't have a problem with girls at waterfront and making the scouts uncomfortable. The only problems we have had is with one or two girls that take the oppertunity to socialize rather than perform their jobs well. That problem cannot be solved by banning girls from any area since certain people will slack off no matter what.

[Joni4TA]

My 15yr old daughter (and Senior Girl Scout) served as a Staff Member at both Boy Scout and Cub Scout Summer camp this past summer. My husband was also on staff. We had two or three Senior Girl Scouts serving on the staff with no problems. I suppose screening a staff application for references and/or knowing who the staff applicant knows as far as other applicants may help quash any "hooking up in the woods" situations.

[ozemu]

We have a coed program from age 6. We have a few things happen but because they often have lots of Scouting experience by age 14 our Scouts handle things quite well.

 

So my contribution is that the experience of each prospective staff member is probably the main issue.

[COIcampgirl04]

My camp had 6 female staff members, 4 of which were under 18(us four were 17). there were no problems at all. In fact, I was in the department that taught basic Scouting skills, and I taught it the best of anyone in my dept., excluding the director. I think it is a GREAT idea to have staff demographics such as this. Is there a certain hormone that turns off as soon as you reach your 18th birthday? As long as the people that are being hired are there for the right reasons, it shouldn't matter. Doing their jobs for the Scouts will most likely not be affected at all, and if it is, then it should be dealt with on a case by case basis.

[DuckyTheSecond]

Well, I've been on staff for about 4 years now, I'm considered a Sr. Staff Member because of being on Cub Day Staff, we don't have a good turn-around rate, namely, as you all know, because of the pay. However, we have a coed staff, and when I was a camper, we had coed staff also. They, however stayed over at the camp ALL SUMMER. From staff week to staff week (Open to Close) they camped in the cabins. About 10 years ago, however, it ended. We had an interesting incident with a male and female staffer. A couple of the other long time campers/staffers and I figured out, mathematically (like figuring that we make $2/hr) that we would now have their CHILD as one of our campers. Since then, however, we have not had any major incidents. We've had boyfriend-girlfriend relationships, and really, they are respectful of camp. As our boss says, every summer, "THIS IS DAY CAMP; NOT DATE CAMP!". I can recall at least 3 incidents, 1 from personal experience, but nothing ever came of them because they never escalated. Our PD and CD know enough to trust us. Our staff started at around 15 as CIT's and now we range from 16 to 21! We out-date our bosses!

 

So, realistically, it's understandable as to why nothing happens, we've become more like a family then... So, we can be trusted. We also look out for one and other, it's just the way that we've developed, it's nice to have a family to fall back on each summer.

[ScoutNerd]

I'm new here, so I'll try not to be dogmatic,

I started (at 16) on Camp Staff as a Jr. Staffer,

but I've been going back every summer for 5 years now (this summer may be the 6th), so I am definitely qualified to be Sr. Staff. Every year we've had Jr. staff of the feminine variety (mostly sisters who first came as visitors of either campers or staffers), and every year we do admittedly have slight problems based in gender issues (guy and girl alone with tent flaps closed for example). That being said, I really don't think the problems (individually or in sum) outweigh the problems we have from normal interpersonal issues (if it were strictly male staff). Sometimes (coming from personal experience) having the girls around actually helps the work get done more quickly.

One of you, more experienced than I, said it before, we do become a family, but we start off as group of completely random people, who are going to live together and work as a tight-knit team for 9-10 weeks. That means that there are bound to be all sorts of problems/conflicts/disagreements no matter the gender makeup of the group. Some of the girls I've had the privilege(