From time to time, we have a camp volunteer who crosses the line in their behavior to the point where their continued participation becomes highly questionable. In cases like this, I have made the decision to write a letter to the person and inform them they are no longer invited to volunteer to be on camp staff. Sometimes I issue a warning, sometimes I ask for a face-to-face conversation, and sometimes there are just too many incidents in the past and I make a final decision that the person is now out of the program.

At our last Outdoor Ministries Committee meeting, one of the committee members made a case for having a couple more people involved in making such decisions. He volunteered to work on researching and writing up procedures for removing people from the list of acceptable volunteers. I had concerns about widening this decision making process. If I as the staff person feel that a person is unsafe to be around children, I don’t want to have to either prove my case or argue with other people about that decision. I spoke briefly with our conference minister about it. She brought up the volumes of written materials she has added to our conference supplements to the Manual on Ministry for dealing with ethics violations of authorized ministers. And this differs from volunteers, because authorized ministers actually have rights in terms of their standing. No one has a “right” to volunteer in areas of conference or church activities, they are chosen to participate. She pointed out that if the decision to exclude a volunteer were broadened to a formal panel of people, we would need to set up very explicit criteria and procedures for making those decisions. The way it is now, everyone is relying on my judgment as the conference staff person.

It would be nice to not be the sole person subject to the wrath of someone kicked out of the camping ministry, and it would be nice to have a couple people to consult with and who would give me support for my decisions. However, it is extremely rare to exclude someone. It is never done without my being willing to discuss the situation with them. Though no one has ever come back after a period of time, expressed understanding of why they were excluded, and asked to be part of the program again, I would certainly be willing to talk with them. I just have concerns over opening up this kind of decision making process to volunteers.

I didn’t expect this e-mail to get so long! Basically I wrote because I’d like to hear what other OMA folks do in similar situations. Does anyone have a committee process that works? Do program administrators tend to make these decisions unilaterally?

Barbara Broadbent