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A homesick letter was a summer camper rite of passage for decades. That changed when cell phones made checking in with parents a whole lot easier. But more campers may be writing letters next summer, now that the Sitka Fine Arts Camp is going cellphone-free. 

Starting in 2025, campers at the middle school and high school camps will turn over their phones before camp begins, and get them back at the end of the session. Roger Schmidt is the executive director of the camp. He says the decision to remove cell phones from the equation is meant to help preserve what makes camp special: a place where campers have long been able to leave the outside world behind for a moment and focus on the arts. 

“My first year as director, we had one phone at the camp, and kids…who wanted to call home would line up. And you know, you’d have maybe five minutes on the phone, or two minutes, or 30 seconds, because you had 20 to 30, people behind you waiting to call,” Schmidt says. “And it wasn’t unusual for parents to say, ‘Boy, I haven’t heard from my kid for the entire camp, and for us to say, ‘Usually, that’s a great sign. That means that your kid’s having a great time.'” 

Schmidt says now it’s like the students have a “parent in their pocket.” It makes it harder to solve problems on their own and even connect with other campers. Community and friendship, Schmidt says, is often built out of necessity.

“You get four kids who don’t know each other, and you put them at a table, and if they have nothing to do, what do they do? They start talking with each other,” Schmidt says. “If there’s a way to avoid that awkwardness, they’ll turn to their phone, and once they turn to their phone, they’re lost to each other.”

But some campers disagree. Juneau Douglas High School senior Lee Orozco has been attending camp for a few years, studying mostly theater, some photography and a little painting. She was upset when she got an email from the camp announcing the change.

“It feels more like we’re punishing the whole group for the actions of a little amount of people, because I feel like phones weren’t that big of an issue,” Orozco says. “I felt like it was a few campers, and at least in my classes, I only ever had one or two who are really distracted on their phone the whole time.”

Orozco says she doesn’t use her cell phone during class at camp, but she does use it to take photos, connect with fellow campers through social media, and even check in with her counselors.

“There have been times where our counselors have been a little loud in the middle of the night, and I hadn’t been able to sleep, and so I was able to text my counselor and be like, ‘Hey, you guys are kind of loud down there. Can you quiet it down?'” Orozco recalls, and laughs. “They were watching a movie, I think, and it was quite loud, and they were like, right under us.” 

Orozco says her mom is debating whether to send her to camp next summer. She says it’s a safety issue, and prefers to have a direct line to her in the event of an emergency.  But Schmidt says camper safety is another reason they’re going phone free.

“Back in the olden days, you know, when kids went to bed, we knew where they were. We knew what they were doing and we knew there was a limit to what they can do,” Schmidt says. “We could monitor the community that they were spending their time with.” Now, campers have access to the world of the internet constantly, Schmidt says, and monitoring where they’re spending their time has become much more challenging.  

Sitka High School senior Aiden LaFriniere says he understands how cell phones could be detrimental or distracting for some students, but he thinks the pros of having cell phones on campus outweigh the cons. Cell phones make it easier to coordinate with friends on campus. They’re sometimes used in classes like filmmaking, and for LaFriniere, writing. 

“I see technology when used correctly, as a massive benefit to the arts. I’ve utilized my cell phone at fine arts camp for all sorts of things, because I prefer getting my words down typed, as opposed to written, just due to my handwriting and everything,” LaFriniere says. “And for a while there I didn’t have a computer, and a lot of people don’t have the financial ability to have a laptop or anything they can just type on. So yeah, I used my phone for a while just to get a lot of my ideas down in a state where I could still read them weeks later without having to guess what I was saying.”

And he says phones actually allow for meaningful connection that may not always be visible. He gives the example of an inside-joke camp game called “Hearty or Meager.”

“They take a picture of the daily lunch, dinner, and breakfast, and then you vote on whether or not it was ‘hearty’ or ‘meager,'” LaFriniere says. “That kind of stuff, and of course all the memes, helps add the into the camaraderie and the environment of it. Everybody knows them. Everybody’s contributing to that, and losing that will definitely feel like losing…a pretty vital chunk of that ecosystem.”

Both Orozco and LaFriniere think there’s a middle ground solution– both suggested turning in phones during courses and accessing them at other times.  But Schmidt hopes that students will see it as an opportunity and a challenge, not a punishment. 

“If this is something that you’re feeling is really pulling you out of your comfort zone? Well, by golly, that’s why we do the arts is to have those experiences that pull us out of our comfort zone, challenge us, or get us to think differently about things,” Schmidt says. “And so, just the resistance you might be having would be reason enough to sort of embrace it.”

And to embrace – maybe – a pencil and paper for a letter home.

The post Sitka Fine Arts Camp to go cell phone-free next summer appeared first on KCAW.