Entry from 7/22: AUTHORITY

The VYCC has two types of policies: Immediate Dismissal Policies that require your prompt departure from the crew and organization and General Crew Policies that go by the three-strikes-you're-out idea.  This morning, we had two Corps Members break the GCP of being on time, each meritting a write-up that is documented in the Weekly Evaluation forms -- a document that is kept at HQ indefinitely to show how the CM grew and developed throughout the summer.  This morning Vanessa proposed we write up these two CMs after their tardiness and after she described to me what happened (I had gone into town to get water), I agreed to write them up for their offfenses, albeit slightly reluctantly.  After meeting with the CMs, however, I felt as though we had done the right thing.  The CMs will learn from their mistakes and actively try to be on time and, in the end, they do have one more chance to mess up before a third and final offense leads to their dismissal.
This was the first time I have really ever had to enforce a rule/policy/law in my life -- most of my life is based on ethics, not written law -- so this was a strange feeling for me to have as I sat across from my CMs as the stared at me sadly but with some understanding as we explained the reasoning behind out decisions.  Later in the day during out WoRD educational portion of the day, we read an excerpt from Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House (1950).  The excerpt we read was entirely based on challenging authority and I thought to myself, "Why am I all right with challenging authority in my life but would be shocked if a CM were to challenge me?"  I came to a similar conclusion that I came to on July 4th and thought that the policies I enforce make sense for a 7-week community (that is, additionally, an optional community) but policies that opress, dictate, and remove freeedoms from the people they are designed to protect are policies taht I feel I need to challenge.

YOU CAN FOOL SOME PEOPLE SOMETIMES BUT YOU CAN'T FOOL ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME