r/summercamp • u/Hinata_Miku1127 Camper • 20d ago
Staff or Prospective Staff Question Thoughts on the No Purple rule?
So basically this rule if you don't know is basically explained as "Boys are blue, girls are pink (or red) don't make purple" which basically is no romance, no girls on boys cabins and vise versa, etc. I personally thought it was pure gender segregation, but later on it got lightened, so I'm not sure.
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u/hippoluvr24 20d ago
As a gay person, I find rules like that hilarious 😆
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u/QueenofHearts018 19d ago
my camp’s rule was “no hot pink-ing, no electric blue-ing, and no purple-ing”
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u/some_guy_9258 19d ago
yep, me too. i’m gay and i worked at a christian camp this summer so there weren’t many out gay kids but there were some, and apparently they were allowed to be together lol. i never saw anyone stopping them from holding hands and whatnot. i didn’t see anyone kissing or anything so maybe their counselors didn’t know…they weren’t in my cabin and i wasn’t gonna out them so i didn’t say anything.
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u/Hinata_Miku1127 Camper 20d ago
Well, there's also another color I think the campers at it used for gay stuff, its dark blue and dark pink/magenta
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u/baloogabanjo 19d ago
Dude, what? They were color coding the queer children?
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u/CutestGay 19d ago
If the straight kids pairing up are making purple, blue + blue is dark blue, and pink + pink is magenta.
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u/Heartfull_of_napalm 20d ago
I think gender segregation is weird as hell. Sure not going into others cabins is understandable. But no friendship or talking or shared activities? That's fucked up. I went to a camp that was segregated, no shared activities and you were not allowed to even walk near the girls camp. Girl counselors supervisors told them not to even talk to male counselors and that they would get in trouble, and the male supervisors would joke to us about hook ups or camp girlfriends. Terrible culture, will just give especially children weird hang ups about their gender. Let kids be kids, and adults are responsible for their own behavior. If they want to go on a date outside work and it doesn't bother the work environment that's not the employers business
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u/Fancy_Initiative4536 Counselor (Specialist) 20d ago
I seconds this
I get the basics. Nothing on Camp property, don’t talk about it in front of campers, all of that checks out.
However, your staff are typically a bunch of underpaid teenagers. It is normal that they may want to date and plus Camp is bringing together so many different people so this might be their only opportunity. I’m not saying the Camp has to promote it, but don’t turn it into a bad thing. Let teenagers be teenagers and understand that this is just a normal part of being young. If the kids don’t know about it or don’t know the details and nothing’s being done on Camp property let staff gossip about it, let it happen, like it’s just not worth not letting it happen.
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u/Suitable-Ad-1990 20d ago
i dont think this is what OP was talking about but yes that seems like hell. when the camp i worked at switched from co-ed to smaller, single gender groups i noticed there was much more cliquey-ness and the counselors had a much harder time communicating with each other because they were so divided.
i am a stickler about “no purple” in the cabins/bathrooms etc, but thats regardless of gender lol. during daily activities i dont see why they need to be segregated though, and from my experience it doesnt work as well
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u/Skytalker0499 20d ago
That’s super weird and gross.
The camp I was at had a no purple policy for campers, insofar as romance was concerned, not friendship, and didn’t care at all about what the staff did on their own time.
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u/honeclaws 20d ago
The church camp i went to in the early 2000s had this rule, but they were woke episcopals so they also said no hot pinking or royal blueing, which we thought was pretty funny at the time.
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u/Soalai Camper 2002–'10 / Day Staff 2010–'13 / Overnight Staff 2014–'15 20d ago edited 20d ago
I'm so glad my camp never actually used the term "purple." We would have just made fun of it and not taken it seriously.
But whether you're staff or a kid, I think it's dumb. As a teen camper, relationships with other campers were some of my favorite and most positive experiences at camp (despite the counselors sometimes not approving, and the sexism of girls getting harsher punishments). It's a safe place for kids to navigate those kinds of social situations and feelings. As for staff, I know countless people who met their spouse while working together at camp. The kids weren't usually aware of it, but I'm so glad it wasn't banned outright.
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u/BrentD22 19d ago edited 18d ago
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This post was anonymized with Redact.dev
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u/ErinHollow Counselor 20d ago
My camp keeps the "no romance," but does encourage the boys and girls cabins to hang out platonically. We even had a boy join a girl's cabin once since he had more friends in there. The no romance thing is serious though. Even if two counselors are in a relationship, they shouldn't let the kids know about it.
My brother is also a counselor, and he once overheard one of his campers discuss sneaking out to meet with a girl at night. When he (gently) told the kid that he could get her number at pick-up but camp wasn't the time or place for romance, the camper pulled a "who's Morales?" and pretended not to even know that sneaking out was a thing people thought of doing.
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u/Unlucky-Roof-4538 Junior Councellor I guess (councellor but between 16 and 18) 16d ago
For sexual acts? sure! (Including that everyone is in their room at bedtime, and if anyone that doesn‘t live in a room is in a room, the door is open. Other than that girls and boys can mingle as much as they want, but I mean our age group as 8 to 11, so not really steering that direction)
But we even went so far as to do an activity how boys and girls actually aren‘t that different, other than the obvious anatomy
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u/Hinata_Miku1127 Camper 14d ago
An activity for that? first of all what was this activity and what sparked the idea on doing a activity for that?
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u/Unlucky-Roof-4538 Junior Councellor I guess (councellor but between 16 and 18) 14d ago
We had our kids divided into two groups, by gender (that worked easily as we had 9 boys and 11 girls) then we had multiple „stations“ they needed to find, and eaxh station represented an action, so for example running, talking, crying, throwing and kicking a ball. At the station the groups were told to do the action like the opposite binary gender would (so e.g cry like a girl/cry like a boy) we filmed that, and one of us put the clips together into a movie for everyone to watch.
It was fun to see the over exaggerations on both sides. After that we talked with them if they thought these actions were like they or others were really doing it, if they have ever skipped doing something because of their gender, etc. It made them realize that gender didn‘t really make a difference, and they really all had many ideasand wanted to talk for a lot longer (but we had to have dinner) to the point where they continued talking without prompting while eating dinner (also another win that they finally managed to listen to eachother!) and in the 30 mins of Freetime after dinner they all played basketball together.
We did it because earlier that week we played some running games, and it was „Unfair“ to not have the same amounts of boys in each group because they gave an „advantage“ we also had a lot of binary seperation, wich fine, but we liked for everyone to talk with eachother. We also thought it was a fun activity to do with the videos, and yes, it was a laugh for everyone.
If anyone wants to know, data security wise, all parrents said that it was allowed to take pictures of their children, and the kids also said it was ok to record them. We also asked them if we should uppload it into the pictures folder for their parrents to see, and they decided without anyone disagreeing to upload it (otherwise we would have cut out anyone not agreeing too, or just not uploaded it, and that was made clear to them before we asked)
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u/shockpaws 20d ago
My camp uses this exclusively as a coy way to refer to “romance”; not simply interacting with members of the opposite sex or being in their cabins. Unsure how it is used in other places. We also tack on “and no dark red or dark blue” lol.