Email Policy Letter 2010

Dear Parents:

We hope that you and your children are well and enjoying the fall at home. We have heard from so many parents about Bar/Bat Mitzvah’s, birthday parties, play-dates and sleepovers, and we love knowing that your children’s camp friendships remain strong throughout the months away from THC.

We are writing to you today to remind you and your children about a policy that we instituted many years ago as a way to ensure the relationships we help them build at camp stay strong during the off season.

As parents, we all know the challenge of managing our children’s exposure to technology and making sure that they are using it appropriately. Between cell phones, facebook and the dozens of other modern communication devices, it’s a full time job knowing who’s talking to whom and what they’re saying.  Unfortunately, each year the actions of a small number campers at home have impacted other campers and their plans to be at camp the following summer.  The problem generally begins when one camper sends another camper rude, demeaning and sometimes vulgar e-mails, facebook videos or postings, and/or instant messages/texts. We have unfortunately seen this practice in each of our sleep-away camps and, after speaking with fellow camp directors in the industry hear that this problem is somewhat widespread. Often, it results with the victimized camper withdrawing from our program and leaving them feeling hurt, at best.

Accordingly, we are again asking you to please speak with your children and let them know of the following camp requests and policies:

1. We request that campers keep e-mails, IM’s, facebook posts, texts & phone calls positive.
2. If your child is the recipient of a negative, nasty or otherwise disturbing communication, we ask that you please PRINT them and fax a copy to our office.
3. We will call the parents of campers who send negative messages to other campers and will share the content of those messages with them.
4. The camp will monitor websites such as YouTube, Facebook, and My Space and will hold campers and staff accountable for items that they post that reflect negatively on the reputation of our camp (or photographs in which they are portrayed).
5. Depending upon the severity of the transgression, we reserve the right, under our Enrollment Application to revoke a child’s enrollment for the coming summer.

At THC we take great pains to protect your children in June, July and August while they are at camp and under our care.  We now feel the need to extend that protection, the best we can, to any camper who by virtue of choosing to be at our camp, is victimized by inappropriate communications before or after camp.

We appreciate your help with this matter.

Andy & Wendy Siegel