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Cell Phones, Computers Intrude On Experience
By Rachel Stockman , Greenwich Time
Matthew Chase tucked a cellular phone in his pocket when he got on a plane to travel to All Star's Camp in Maine this summer.
His mother, Jane Chase of Greenwich, gave him the phone to make sure her 12-year-old could call her in case of an emergency on his way to camp.
When he arrived, camp counselors quickly put the phone away.
Many summer camps, including All Star's, recently created policies restricting cell-phone use. While many sleep-away camps are trying to increase communication between campers and their parents, camp directors also are taking more precautions to ensure that new technologies do not interfere with the camp experience.
Sixty to 70 percent of the 12,000 camps nationwide are expected to ban cell phones this year, according to the National Camp Association.
"If campers and counselors walked around with cell phones during activities like horseback riding or lake swimming, it would destroy the environmental impact of camp, and it would be weird," said Bob Briskin, director of Maine Teen Camp in Porter, Maine.
About a dozen Greenwich teens attend Maine Teen Camp each year. The camp, which costs about $4,000 per session, does not have a problem with cell phones now because it has limited reception, Briskin said. But if it becomes a problem, he plans to limit campers' cell phone use to designated phone times.
Other camp directors have different solutions to the cell phone use.
Julian Krinsky, owner of the Pennsylvania-based Julian Krinsky Camps and Programs, said he allows campers to use their cell phones discreetly between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. They must be responsible and respectful when they use them, he said. About 50 percent of his campers bring phones to camp, he said.
"You have to adjust with the times," Krinsky said. "I didn't want to use a computer, but now I couldn't live without one."
Greenwich resident Jeffrey Higbee, 10, who attends Campus Kids in Middlebury, a Monday-through-Friday sleep-away camp, does not have a cell phone yet, but said his parents have promised him one in two years.
"I will definitely bring it to camp when I get one," he said, noting that he would use it primarily to call home.
To increase communication between all campers and their parents, Julian Krinsky Camps and Maine Teen Camps are two of the more than 1,200 camps that have hired camp messaging services.
In addition to providing e-mail, administrators at bunk1.com, help camp directors create Web sites that are updated daily with photo galleries and newsletters for parents.
"I check out the Web site everyday to look for Matthew," said Chase, who uses bunk1.com to stay in touch with her son. "I went to summer camp, and I wish we had something like bunk1.com to use."
Ari Ackerman, founder and CEO of bunk1.com in New York City, drew up the plan for his software four years ago while at the Kellogg School of Management, at Northwestern University.
Before the official inception of his company, Ackerman drove across the United States, trying to convince camp directors that his idea was necessary and easily applicable. But he never expected the company to be uploading 20,000 pictures and sending 30,000 e-mails a day to camps, he said.
"One of the things I love about what we are doing," Ackerman said, "is that it doesn't take away from being at camp. It is completely unobtrusive."
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