Counselor Influence

I would like to start this blog post with a story. This did not take place at Yavneh, but at another Jewish summer camp that is very similar to ours. Three seniors in high school were entering their first year as counselors, and their former counselor decided to take them all out to dinner. At the restaurant, he proceeds to tell his former campers the best places in camp to smoke pot because his counselor did the same thing for him. After the dinner, the first year counselors were thankful and really appreciated that their counselor was treating them like they were adults and not campers.

There is no question that as a counselor in camp, such a conversation would be inappropriate. However, outside of the camp setting, especially when not dealing directly with campers anymore, the line becomes murkier. At what point do counselors stop being counselors? Do we allow our lives to be dictated by this camper-counselor relationship? How much influence do current and former counselors really have on their campers? And when does our influence have ramifications on campers that reach far into the future?

Flashback to the year 1997.  I was a kaytana camper going first month and I was having a great time. I loved playing softball and I happened to be on the pee-wee softball team that summer. A few days before my parents were scheduled to pick me up, my rosh aydah pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to stay the full session. As a naïve 10-year-old, I thought he was asking me to stay because I was good at softball (which I wasn’t) and he wanted me to stay on the team. Even though I had to say no because I was going to another camp after kaytana, that counselor really made me feel quite special. It had a huge effect on me, and it certainly led me to come back to camp the following summer. The thing is, the question that he asked me had nothing to do with softball. Every kid is asked if he or she wants to stay for the full month. His innocuous question had such a significant influence on me, way bigger than he possibly could have realized.[1]

That’s the shear beauty of being a counselor. As a counselor you might say something, do something, react in some way, or passively sit by but the fact of the matter is, the campers are always watching. Whether you enforce rules or you let your campers do what they want, the campers always notice. It is really both the active and passive decisions you make that affect the kids around you.

For me, a prime example of this is the fact that I was rosh da’at at camp in 2006 and 2007. Besides checking the aruv, this job required me to be the face of the religious aspects of camp. I was frequently the Gabbai for the orthodox minyan and often led services, and also found people to do the kiddish, hamotzi and birkat. But because of this job, my campers perceived me as someone who was more religious than I actually was. When I lead the egalitarian minyan after my time as rosh daat, current and former campers often approached and questioned me, wondering why I was praying in that minyan. They assumed I came from an orthodox background, which is false. I could have been a more vocal about my conservative roots but I wasn’t. The thing is, I may have inspired some of my campers to be more involved in orthodox Judaism and may have detracted others but I can assure you I had an effect on them. However, was it fair of me to influence kids in a way that a) I didn’t fully believe in, and b) wasn’t necessarily the way that “camp does it”? The answer is certainly up for debate.

This past summer my male campers were obsessed with the prospect of playing a game called fire/Mario tennis. The game is played at night on the tennis courts and consists of dousing a tennis ball in lighter fluid, lighting it on fire and hitting it back and forth with tennis rackets. They had learned of the game from Kerem 06, the Kerem that their current counselors were in. Due to the dangers of the game, it was obvious that this game could not be allowed. However, because of this rule, I put my counselors in an ethical dilemma. How could they preach to my campers that they couldn’t play Mario tennis when it was obvious that they themselves had played when they were campers? It is pure hypocrisy. Is it ok to distinguish between a comment made by a 20 year old and the actions of the same person at the age of 16? How can you predict how much influence you have as a counselor over a camper before you even finish your Kerem summer?

Let’s return to the pot smoking example. It turns out that those three first year counselors got kicked out of camp within the first week of being there for smoking pot. Who do you blame in this situation? The new counselors for smoking, or the former counselor for improperly influencing his former campers? The power of influence creates many ethical and moral dilemmas - it’s not easy to say every situation is black and white, yes or no, or good or bad.  

I struggled and continue to struggle with this issue all of the time. On the one hand, I know that I don’t have campers anymore. I will never be a rosh again and my youngest campers are 17, on the cusp of going to college and making big decisions for themselves. They would want me to treat them as I would treat every other adult. However, as I was told countless times over the summer[2], my kids look up to me. I am a role model to them and because of that I have trouble acting any other way. The balance of when or how much to influence my campers is constantly in play; and likely will be for a long time.  

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[1] EDIT: In fact, at Leah Lebowitz wedding on Tuesday, a camper from Kerem 2010 came up to me and told me that his rosh in 2004 loved him because he asked him to stay for the full month.

[2] EDIT: and even just recently as the other day at the wedding,