Kelsey Snelling: This episode contains mentions of disordered eating, mental illness, and suicide.
Kelsey Snelling: Please take caution while listening and check the show notes
Kelsey Snelling: for resources. It's June twenty second, twenty eleven, camper arrival
Kelsey Snelling: day at Camp Shane. It's also my twenty first birthday.
Kelsey Snelling: But there's no alcohol and there's definitely no cake. And
Kelsey Snelling: for the next nine weeks, I'm in charge of a
Kelsey Snelling: cabin of a dozen or so thirteen year old girls.
Kelsey Snelling: It's my first time as a counselor at a summer camp,
Kelsey Snelling: and I'm giving each and every camper an enthusiastic welcome
Kelsey Snelling: to what will be, if I have anything to say
Kelsey Snelling: about it, the best summer of their lives. Some campers
Kelsey Snelling: are excited, they know that good times and freedom from
Kelsey Snelling: their families await, but some of the girls are apprehensive
Kelsey Snelling: and uncomfortable, resistant to being left behind by their parents.
Kelsey Snelling: One camper is actively and inconsolably crying. Her mother leaves
Kelsey Snelling: and I sit on the bed next to her, trying
Kelsey Snelling: to offer comfort. I tell her what I've been repeating
Kelsey Snelling: all day long. Trust me, this is going to be
Kelsey Snelling: an amazing sum mer. I explain all the crazy activities
Kelsey Snelling: we have planned, all the wacky counselors and the old
Kelsey Snelling: camp traditions. I figure she's just a little scared to
Kelsey Snelling: be in a new place. But eventually she takes a
Kelsey Snelling: breath and says something that stops me cold. You don't
Kelsey Snelling: understand this is not my first time here. She knew
Kelsey Snelling: something about Camp Shane I didn't, something I would soon
Kelsey Snelling: see for myself. This is Camp Shane. I'm Kelsey Snelling.
Kelsey Snelling: This episode we're zooming in on my summer at Camp Shane,
Kelsey Snelling: the experience that set this whole podcast in motion. Today
Kelsey Snelling: we're talking about twenty eleven, a summer filled with disordered eating,
Kelsey Snelling: mental health issues, and a giant pit of jello. By
Kelsey Snelling: the time I got there, Camp Shane's heyday was in
Kelsey Snelling: the rear view mirror. Fewer campers were signing up. This
Kelsey Snelling: was in part because the cultural tides were turning. Traditional
Kelsey Snelling: diet culture was starting to be overshadowed by wellness culture.
Kelsey Snelling: Super skinny was deprioritized in favor of fitness and strength,
Kelsey Snelling: or at least that's how it was sold. Wellness culture
Kelsey Snelling: is just diet culture with a minimally disparate ideal. Plus
Kelsey Snelling: the aftershocks of the two thousand and eight recession meant
Kelsey Snelling: families didn't have as much money to send their kids
Kelsey Snelling: to summer camp anymore. Shane was reaching a tipping point.
Kelsey Snelling: David was seeking bodies to fill the camp, and according
Kelsey Snelling: to multiple sources, tensions were high between David and his
Kelsey Snelling: right hand man, the hands on camp director, Simon Greenwood.
Kelsey Snelling: I tried to talk to Merryl about it when I
Kelsey Snelling: interviewed her last spring. What was Simon and David's relationship like?
Merryl: I would like to not go there?
Kelsey Snelling: Yikes. In the spring of twenty eleven, I didn't yet
Kelsey Snelling: know about any of camp's shortcomings. I was a junior
Kelsey Snelling: in college and I hadn't even heard of Camp Shane.
Kelsey Snelling: I'd seen the movie Heavyweights, but I didn't realize fat
Kelsey Snelling: camps were a real thing that actually existed until one
Kelsey Snelling: day when my older sister called me on the phone
Kelsey Snelling: and said...
Robin: I found the coolest job ever and we need to apply.
Kelsey Snelling: So I said, okay, what is it? And she sent
Kelsey Snelling: me the link to the Camp Shane website.
Robin: I had finished college, I wasn't quite ready to get
Robin: started on a career yet, but I had this laundry
Robin: list of jobs that, for one reason or another, I
Robin: had always wanted to try and at the top of
Robin: that list was being a camp counselor.
Kelsey Snelling: That's my sister, Robin, but you'll never hear me call
Kelsey Snelling: her that. To me, She's just Bobby.
Robin: So I did an internet search and one of the
Robin: very first results that came back was this camp that
Robin: wasn't too far from where I lived. It was in
Robin: a beautiful part of the country. It had tons of
Robin: celebrity endorsements, and it just looked like a really fun
Robin: place to spend a summer based on all of the
Robin: activities that they had on their website.
Kelsey Snelling: At this point, Bobby and I were drinking the Camp Shane
Kelsey Snelling: kool aid or maybe crystal light in this case. The
Kelsey Snelling: way the website sold it, camp seemed like a fun,
Kelsey Snelling: positive environment. We looked forward to the chance to teach
Kelsey Snelling: kids about fitness and how to love themselves, and maybe
Kelsey Snelling: we'd lose a little weight ourselves. Sign us up. So
Kelsey Snelling: we applied and both got jobs, her as a general
Kelsey Snelling: counselor for the young adult women and me as the
Kelsey Snelling: arts and crafts teacher. I'd also be in a bunk
Kelsey Snelling: with thirteen year old girls. We were stoked.
Robin: I really was going in with a very optimistic view
Robin: that This would be a place where kids that were
Robin: struggling with their weight really could get some guidance on
Robin: how to develop better habits, how to be healthier, develop
Robin: their body image, that sort of thing.
Kelsey Snelling: There was one downside. The pay sucked. Base salary five
Kelsey Snelling: hundred and fifty dollars, completion of contract, stipend two hundred
Kelsey Snelling: and seventy five dollars, travel stipend two hundred and seventy
Kelsey Snelling: five dollars, for a total of one thousand, one hundred
Kelsey Snelling: dollars spanning about eleven weeks of work and about ninety
Kelsey Snelling: hours of work a week. That amounted to basically a
Kelsey Snelling: dollar an hour. But I didn't care. I was young.
Kelsey Snelling: Any amount of money was exciting to me. Employees had
Kelsey Snelling: staggered start days, and as the arts and crafts teacher,
Kelsey Snelling: I had some setup to do. So I arrived at
Kelsey Snelling: Camp Shane a few days before my sister, and right away
Kelsey Snelling: I realized the food was less than optimal. All of
Kelsey Snelling: the work Simon had put into elevating the cuisine at
Kelsey Snelling: camp didn't seem to matter much when the portions were
Kelsey Snelling: so minimal.
Robin: I remember you called us to let us know how
Robin: camp was going, and this was of course, before all
Robin: of the counselors and campers had arrived, in the early
Robin: days of just getting things set up, and you said
Robin: something about we had breakfast and it was one silver
Robin: dollar pancake and five blueberries. And I remember talking to
Robin: Mom and saying this, she has to be exaggerating. There's
Robin: no way they would be feeding adults this for breakfast.
Robin: And then I got to camp myself and realized that
Robin: was not an exaggeration. It was quite accurate.
Kelsey Snelling: Thank you. I get accused of exaggerating.
Robin: Well, not this time.
Kelsey Snelling: Another thing that needs no exaggeration. The camp was in
Kelsey Snelling: complete disrepair. My first three or four days were spent
Kelsey Snelling: just cleaning with my new colleagues, rearranging mattresses, dusting and
Kelsey Snelling: cleaning windows, and sweeping the floors, which had huge gaps
Kelsey Snelling: between the wooden planks. In some areas you could see
Kelsey Snelling: down to the ground below, and when you looked up,
Kelsey Snelling: the roof leaked too. As the Arts and Crafts teacher,
Kelsey Snelling: I also had my own classroom of sorts to prep.
Kelsey Snelling: It was in my favorite building on campus, tucked into
Kelsey Snelling: the woods, away from the busiest parts of camp, with
Kelsey Snelling: a big balcony looking onto the lush greenery below, but
Kelsey Snelling: inside it was gross. There were unclaimed art projects that
Kelsey Snelling: had grown moldy from years in storage, Bottles of glue
Kelsey Snelling: had completely hardened, and empty tubs of what was once
Kelsey Snelling: glitter were filled with dead bugs. I threw everything into
Kelsey Snelling: trash bags and started from scratch, which included repainting the
Kelsey Snelling: walls and sanding the splintering floors. One day during this
Kelsey Snelling: orientation week, a few counselors and I went down to
Kelsey Snelling: explore the campground's creek, which was a bit of a
Kelsey Snelling: walk from the main part of camp. A dip into
Kelsey Snelling: the cool crystal water surrounded by towering pine trees sounds idyllic, right?
Kelsey Snelling: Well in this case, no. The creek was filled with trash.
Kelsey Snelling: There were old car parts scattered around, and at one
Kelsey Snelling: point I felt something bump my leg. When I looked down,
Kelsey Snelling: I saw a bloated dead beaver circus staring up at me.
Kelsey Snelling: I still think about its eyes. Now here's the thing
Kelsey Snelling: I'm all about, that rustic life. Okay, I camp, I backpack,
Kelsey Snelling: I'll sleep on the floor. I don't care. By twenty eleven,
Kelsey Snelling: families were spending nearly ten thousand dollars to send their
Kelsey Snelling: children to camp and at that price point, I was
Kelsey Snelling: pretty shocked at the state of things. Now. I refer
Kelsey Snelling: to this time as orientation week quite loosely, because really...
Casey: Training was just kind of like cleaning up the camp
Casey: and getting to know each other, and we really weren't
Casey: given any sort of formal training. Like I think I
Casey: knew what to do if there was a fire in
Casey: the cabin, but I feel like that's that's probably where
Casey: it stops. Now looking back, I'm like, none of us
Casey: were trained or qualified or really knew what we were doing,
Casey: but like some of us really were there for the
Casey: right reasons.
Kelsey Snelling: That's another Camp Shane counselor from my twenty eleven summer.
Kelsey Snelling: She requested to be anonymous, so we'll call her Casey.
Kelsey Snelling: Casey was hired to be a group leader at Camp Shane,
Kelsey Snelling: meaning in addition to counselor responsibilities, she would also be
Kelsey Snelling: managing other counselors in her cabin's age group. When she
Kelsey Snelling: arrived at camp, she was amped up and ready to
Kelsey Snelling: bond with the girls in her bunk she had the
Kelsey Snelling: sixteen year olds. When the kids eventually arrived at Camp Shane,
Kelsey Snelling: they were told to strip down to a swimsuit in
Kelsey Snelling: front of everyone to be photographed. This would be the
Kelsey Snelling: before picture, which would showcase their inevitable big transformation over
Kelsey Snelling: the summer.
Casey: And my campers were so anxious.
Kelsey Snelling: Understandable. Can you imagine showing up to a completely new
Kelsey Snelling: place where you know no one, and then you're asked
Kelsey Snelling: to take off your clothes and show off your body,
Kelsey Snelling: which is perhaps your biggest source of shame and insecurity.
Casey: And I went ahead and took my T shirt off
Casey: and I had like a sports bra and shorts on.
Casey: I was like, come on, guys, we can do this,
Casey: like we'll do it with you, And so all my
Casey: counselors all removed their outer T shirt and from that
Casey: point on we were known as like the naked bunk
Casey: because we were always like, you know, fuck what anyone cares. Like, okay,
Casey: we have fat on our stomachs.
Kelsey Snelling: She even came up with a special name for her
Kelsey Snelling: girls to help boost their confidence.
Casey: We called ourselves the Honey Badgers because like I would
Casey: encourage them to like work out in the sports bra
Casey: and just not care what anyone fucking thinks about them.
Kelsey Snelling: Honey Badgers named after that viral video that was everywhere
Kelsey Snelling: in twenty eleven.
Honey Badgers Clip: The honey badger has been referred to by the Guinness
Honey Badgers Clip: Book of World Records as the most fearless animal in
Honey Badgers Clip: all of the Animal Kingdom. It really doesn't give a shit.
Kelsey Snelling: In addition to these photos, at the start of the summer,
Kelsey Snelling: there were the infamous weekly weigh-ins that tracked kids progress.
Kelsey Snelling: The weigh-ins had been around since the camp's inception, and
Kelsey Snelling: kids were desperate for their number to go down each week.
Kelsey Snelling: Sometimes they'd completely starve themselves the day before, they'd refuse
Kelsey Snelling: to drink water, they'd cram in a couple of extra
Kelsey Snelling: sit ups, and they'd even make trips to the nurse,
Kelsey Snelling: claiming to be constipated so that they'd be given laxatives
Kelsey Snelling: or prune juice. Now, laxatives are a huge red flag
Kelsey Snelling: of disordered eating. You'd think a nurse at a weight
Kelsey Snelling: loss camp would recognize that and not pass out laxatives
Kelsey Snelling: willy nilly, But it happened, and Casey remembers the toll
Kelsey Snelling: these weigh-ins took on her campers.
Casey: My girls would not want to eat Saturday night, they
Casey: wouldn't want to drink water so that they would weigh
Casey: more with water weight. It was a giant obsession with
Casey: the number on the scale, and so there was always
Casey: a lot of anxiety walking over to weigh-ins, and there
Casey: was tears, and there was high fives, and there was
Casey: just a mix of disappointment and pride depending on the
Casey: kid what they saw when they got in.
Kelsey Snelling: Casey had her own struggles with weight, which had inspired
Kelsey Snelling: her to apply for a job at Camp Shane in the
Kelsey Snelling: first place. As she tells it, she started gaining noticeable
Kelsey Snelling: amounts of weight when she was around twelve.
Casey: I grew up in a house which was a pretty
Casey: conservative house, I would say, and I hid a big
Casey: secret for a while to my family, which was that
Casey: I struggled with my sexuality. I started gaining weight right
Casey: around the time I realized that I was gay, or
Casey: maybe after. I mean I think I knew when I
Casey: was younger, but I'd say around the age of twelve thirteen,
Casey: it got pretty out of control.
Kelsey Snelling: Struggling emotionally, Casey turned to binge eating.
Casey: Just reading other people's testimonies. As an adult, I'm like, man,
Casey: that's like a thing where you actually eat your feelings.
Kelsey Snelling: Throughout high school and college, Casey continued these habits and
Kelsey Snelling: continued to gain weight. It didn't stop until one day
Kelsey Snelling: she had a difficult conversation with a close friend.
Casey: I kind of had a hard conversation with a friend
Casey: of mine in college who was like, why don't you
Casey: ever go to the beach with us, Why don't you
Casey: ever go on cruises with us when we go for
Casey: spring break? You're really missing out. And I would always
Casey: come up with these horrible excuses like, well, I have
Casey: a really big thing I have to study for, or
Casey: I just want to go hang out with my family,
Casey: or oh, I have other plans, And I really didn't.
Casey: I just didn't want to be in a bathing suit
Casey: or in shorts or anything showing any body part. So
Casey: at about twenty one, I just decided enough is enough,
Casey: threw away all the food in my apartment, and I
Casey: went to the grocery store and just like started from scratch.
Kelsey Snelling: Now it's important to say that big changes like this
Kelsey Snelling: don't always lead to big weight loss. In fact, they
Kelsey Snelling: usually don't, But for Casey, changing her eating habits and
Kelsey Snelling: exercising more did lead to significant weight loss. By age
Kelsey Snelling: twenty four, she was in a completely transformed body. A colleague
Kelsey Snelling: then suggested she apply for a summer job at Camp Shane,
Kelsey Snelling: and Casey thought it was a great idea.
Casey: I wanted to inspire people, as cheesy as that sounds,
Casey: and use my transformation as like an inspiration to pass
Casey: it on. And that's really why I was there. I
Casey: wasn't I definitely wasn't there to find a hookup. I
Casey: wasn't there for the money, because god knows they didn't
Casey: really pay. But I thought making friends would be fun,
Casey: and I thought being a good model for these kids
Casey: was a great idea since I never had one.
Kelsey Snelling: I also had struggled with eating and body image throughout
Kelsey Snelling: my life. Casey, Bobby, and I were all at Camp
Kelsey Snelling: Shane for similar reasons. We thought this was going to
Kelsey Snelling: be a body positive, progressive environment, teaching kids to love
Kelsey Snelling: their bodies and enjoy active lifestyles. But Camp Shane being
Kelsey Snelling: Camp Shane, that's not how things panned out. Camp Shane
Kelsey Snelling: wasn't what my sister and I had hoped it would be. First,
Kelsey Snelling: the meal plan. We've talked about the food plenty already,
Kelsey Snelling: but as Casey pointed out to me, there didn't seem
Kelsey Snelling: to be a specific strategy around the small portions. It
Kelsey Snelling: wasn't low carb, it wasn't about filling up on greens.
Kelsey Snelling: It was random food in a calorie deficit.
Casey: Their motto was live, laugh, lose, But I wasn't really sure,
Casey: you know what they if they agreed or aligned with
Casey: a certain nutrition philosophy or weight loss management philosophy. It
Casey: was just no one really knew like how to lose
Casey: weight health in a healthy way and keep it off,
Casey: and so people just did their best with their own knowledge.
Kelsey Snelling: The Camp Shane no-strategy-strategy didn't sit well with Casey.
Casey: I didn't feel like the kids were learning how to
Casey: maintain any sort of weight loss, which led me to
Casey: start having thoughts like, oh, they want kids to gain
Casey: weight back so that they come back next summer. It
Casey: makes sense, it's a business.
Kelsey Snelling: Throughout the years, the camp advertised on its website a
Kelsey Snelling: professional chef on staff, as well as licensed nutritionists to
Kelsey Snelling: put Shaners on the path toward a better lifestyle. But
Kelsey Snelling: Casey noticed that the people teaching nutrition classes didn't seem
Kelsey Snelling: qualified to make sure her girls were getting the education
Kelsey Snelling: they had signed up for. Casey took matters into her
Kelsey Snelling: own hands.
Casey: The girls would come in and be like, I'd be like,
Casey: what'd you do a nutrition class and they're like, we
Casey: learned how to bake chicken with certain seasonings. And I'm like, okay,
Casey: that's good, but why is the chicken healthy? And they're like, oh,
Casey: I didn't tell us. So I used to sit down
Casey: with my campers like a couple times a week, and
Casey: they would bring their notebooks and I would share what
Casey: limited knowledge I had. I tried to introduce them to
Casey: like nutrition one oh one, like from a scientific sort
Casey: of thing, but also how you could incorporate it into
Casey: like a regular life, Like instead of going for fruit loops,
Casey: you could eat hard boiled egg or whatever in the
Casey: morning yogurt or Greek yogurt because it's very low in
Casey: sugar and high protein. And they were just furiously taking notes,
Casey: and I'm like, this is what you should be doing
Casey: a nutrition class, but I did it on my time off.
Kelsey Snelling: Casey wasn't a licensed nutritionist or dietitian, and some of
Kelsey Snelling: her tips were still steeped in a diet culture mindset.
Kelsey Snelling: She was just using her own experience to try to
Kelsey Snelling: fill in some gaps in the camp's programming. She also
Kelsey Snelling: got special permission to cook her girl's dinner one night
Kelsey Snelling: so they could get a taste of a meal that
Kelsey Snelling: was healthy, nutritious, and didn't leave them starving.
Casey: Afterwards, I was allowed to go to the grocery store
Casey: with a couple of my counselors and we did like,
Casey: you know, baked Greek chicken. We did like a side
Casey: of roasted vegetables and Greek yogurt for dessert, sweetened with
Casey: like stevia or something like that. It was it was
Casey: really good. It was a really healthy, very protein packed
Casey: and that was probably the most special night I ever
Casey: had with my girls. I think these kids needed a
Casey: safe space to divulge their sort of emotional issues surrounding food.
Casey: I feel like they needed education. I feel like they needed
Casey: a lot of love, a lot of forgiveness.
Kelsey Snelling: Outside of her ad hoc nutrition lessons, kids at camp
Kelsey Snelling: that summer were subject to a whole host of problematic
Kelsey Snelling: approaches to food. Camp Shane prided itself on unique and
Kelsey Snelling: immersive activities throughout the summer, many of course attributed to
Kelsey Snelling: Simon and his head's staff. There was a Vegas casino night,
Kelsey Snelling: a carnival, and something called Fear Factor Day inspired by
Kelsey Snelling: the NBC game show. For the most part, these were
Kelsey Snelling: creative and memorable experiences for the kids, but sometimes they
Kelsey Snelling: turned out to be memorable in all the wrong ways
Kelsey Snelling: and only reinforced negative relationships with food Like the jello
Kelsey Snelling: pit a truly unsettling site to behold. A few counselors
Kelsey Snelling: were asked to dig a four foot deep pit in
Kelsey Snelling: the ground, then fill it halfway with red jello. This
Kelsey Snelling: was for an activity where kids could jump in two
Kelsey Snelling: at a time and compete in a wrestling match. Many
Kelsey Snelling: of the campers were shirtless, sweaty, and covered in mud,
Kelsey Snelling: but that didn't stop them from attempting to sneak a
Kelsey Snelling: little taste of the dessert, in which they literally swam.
Kelsey Snelling: As you can imagine, this posed a threat to that
Kelsey Snelling: week's weigh-in, so staff started mixing soap in with the
Kelsey Snelling: jello to discourage any snacking. This deterred only about half
Kelsey Snelling: of the attempts. Then there was the Apache Relay, the
Kelsey Snelling: last part of the famed Color War, which we talked
Kelsey Snelling: about last episode. This race was the culmination of summer
Kelsey Snelling: and every single person on campus was involved. Essentially, everyone
Kelsey Snelling: was assigned a different leg of the competition. You might
Kelsey Snelling: be tasked with a dizzy bat run or rolling an
Kelsey Snelling: orange across a field using only your nose. My sister
Kelsey Snelling: Bobby was assigned the second to last stretch of the
Kelsey Snelling: relay race for her team.
Robin: And so the baton has passed to us. We're running
Robin: the end of the course and we turn the corner
Robin: and the end of our leg of the race is
Robin: two picnic tables. One is full of blueberry pie, the
Robin: other is full of watermelon. I'm talking of full watermelon,
Robin: not slices of watermelon. And I had to watch my
Robin: female co counselor eat an entire blueberry pie as fast
Robin: as she could, and one of my male co counselors
Robin: eat an entire watermelon in front of all of the campers.
Robin: This is pretty messed up, right, Like someone decided at
Robin: a weight loss camp they were going to have counselors
Robin: down as much food as they can while all the
Robin: kids are watching and cheering. After my co counselor ate
Robin: the blueberry pie and I did watch her make herself
Robin: throw up, we had to swim together on a raft
Robin: across the pool.
Kelsey Snelling: Bobby wasn't the only one who witnessed puking. The counselors
Kelsey Snelling: couldn't help but throw up publicly in trash cans in
Kelsey Snelling: front of the crowd. I have photo evidence. But beyond
Kelsey Snelling: being gross, these events were reinforcing dangerous ideas about food.
Kelsey Snelling: We've already established that Camps Shane's diet was hmm problematic
Kelsey Snelling: to say the least. There were the minuscule portions, the
Kelsey Snelling: ever present weigh-ins, the pig out room, and now the
Kelsey Snelling: pie eating contests and giant pits of jello. All of
Kelsey Snelling: these things set up a damaging cycle of restriction and excess.
Kelsey Snelling: It encouraged campers to covet for bit foods and then
Kelsey Snelling: feel guilty afterwards for eating them. All of this, combined
Kelsey Snelling: the lack of nutritional education, the restrictive diet, the emphasis
Kelsey Snelling: on food without taking into account the mental toll it
Kelsey Snelling: takes on kids, it's dangerous. Bobby started witnessing disordered eating
Kelsey Snelling: from her campers.
Robin: One of them had a total breakdown because she, in quotes,
Robin: slipped up and ate a single potato chip and she
Robin: wanted to go talk to the counselor about it. So
Robin: there were there were a number of little things like
Robin: that that were happening all around me that, you know,
Robin: I started to realize this is not just a group
Robin: of people who are looking to lose a little bit
Robin: of weight, like there are some deep seated things here
Robin: that this camp is not not only is it not
Robin: able to address, but is doing things that may actually
Robin: be detrimental by pushing the weight loss and pushing the
Robin: restricted eating and really spending no time on the deeper issues.
Kelsey Snelling: And again, Bobby was not a trained psychological professional. She
Kelsey Snelling: didn't know how to handle this kind of distress kids
Kelsey Snelling: were experiencing, so she brought it to Simon.
Robin: I was having a conversation with a couple of other
Robin: counselors and staff members. I was saying how distressing it
Robin: was to learn about the trauma and the eating disorders
Robin: and the body dysmorphia that a lot of my campers
Robin: were revealing to me, and I didn't necessarily know how
Robin: to handle it. And he said something along the lines of, oh,
Robin: everybody at camp has an eating disorder, and he said
Robin: it in such a nonchalant way, and I just remember thinking,
Robin: I never want to get to the point where I
Robin: normalize children having eating disorders. I just I couldn't get
Robin: over it the way that it was just breezed over
Robin: like it was totally normal.
Kelsey Snelling: In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone left camp
Kelsey Snelling: with an eating disorder just by the nature of the
Kelsey Snelling: camp environment. Here's weight inclusive physician doctor Lisa Erlanger, who
Kelsey Snelling: you've heard from throughout this series.
Dr. Erlanger: Dieting in childhood and adolescence is one of the best
Dr. Erlanger: predictors of disordered eating behaviors later in adolescence. Behaviors like
Dr. Erlanger: binge eating, fasting alternating with eating, compulsive exercise, and eating
Dr. Erlanger: disorders rob people of life. They're like any other mental
Dr. Erlanger: health disorder. They consume so much time and they become
Dr. Erlanger: solitary pursuits. It makes it hard to eat with friends,
Dr. Erlanger: it makes it hard to exercise in public. People develop
Dr. Erlanger: so much hatred of their body, they don't want to
Dr. Erlanger: be with other people, and it becomes hard to do
Dr. Erlanger: things that we know support health, and that's not what
Dr. Erlanger: any of us want for kids.
Kelsey Snelling: Many people don't understand the severity and danger of eating disorders.
Kelsey Snelling: They are not to be taken lightly.
Dr. Erlanger: Eating disorders are the most lethal mental health disorder, second
Dr. Erlanger: to opioid use disorder. Anorexia, which is under recognized, vastly
Dr. Erlanger: under recognized in larger bodied kids, is a deadly illness.
Dr. Erlanger: So not only does it rob kids of joy and
Dr. Erlanger: well being in their childhood and their adolescence. It kills them.
Kelsey Snelling: More than five percent of anorexia patients die within only
Kelsey Snelling: four years of initial diagnosis. Symptoms of anorexia include thinning bones,
Kelsey Snelling: dry and yellowish skin, low blood pressure, slowed pulse, heart damage,
Kelsey Snelling: brain damage, infertility, and organ failure. People with anorexia are
Kelsey Snelling: at risk of dying from medical complications associated with starvation,
Kelsey Snelling: and suicide is their second leading cause of death. Anorexia
Kelsey Snelling: is perhaps the best known eating disorder, but bulimia or
Kelsey Snelling: binging and purging is also common and can have physical, emotional,
Kelsey Snelling: and even financial effects. Stripped tooth enamel, esophageal issues, shame,
Kelsey Snelling: and of course other poor health outcomes from eating piles
Kelsey Snelling: of fetishized foods. At Camp Shane, I succumbed to binging myself. Remember,
Kelsey Snelling: counselors were on the same restrictive diet that the campers were,
Kelsey Snelling: so my fellow counselors and I used our nights off
Kelsey Snelling: to visit the local diner and gorge ourselves on all
Kelsey Snelling: the foods that were forbidden at camp.
Robin: Once the evening activities were over, a percentage of the
Robin: counselors were sort of set loose to go out into town,
Robin: get off of the campgrounds for a couple of hours,
Robin: and do whatever they needed to do. So we're in
Robin: the middle of nowhere. There's not a ton to do.
Robin: But the one thing that every single counselor wanted was
Robin: to get as much food as they could as quickly
Robin: as possible for.
Kelsey Snelling: On our elaborate binge missions, Bobby, our friends and I
Kelsey Snelling: would drive down the street to the Liberty Diner. My
Kelsey Snelling: meal of choice was usually French fries, a plate of
Kelsey Snelling: buttered toast, chocolate milk, and a big brownie sundae complete
Kelsey Snelling: with four scoops of ice cream and a brownie of
Kelsey Snelling: magnificent size, served on a literal silver platter in a
Kelsey Snelling: moat of whipped cream, topped with a cherry.
Robin: This was meant to share with I'm going to say
Robin: six people. People would eat it by themselves, no problem.
Kelsey Snelling: During the production of this podcast, I actually went back
Kelsey Snelling: to that diner and thank god, they still sell the
Kelsey Snelling: brownie sundae.
Robin: The diner was like the place that you went to
Robin: just find comfort in food, but then also just all
Robin: of the emotions came out.
Kelsey Snelling: We'd dig into our food and let out our frustrations
Kelsey Snelling: about how dysfunctional camp was. Then we'd go to the
Kelsey Snelling: gas station and buy pastry cakes and candy bars. If
Kelsey Snelling: we had any leftover time, we'd hit up McDonald's for
Kelsey Snelling: quadruple topping Rollo McFlurries, and sometimes we'd even venture to
Kelsey Snelling: the grocery store for a few tubs of Nutella. At
Kelsey Snelling: the time, this ritual was the only thing getting me
Kelsey Snelling: through the stress and calorie restriction of working at Camp Shane. Casey,
Kelsey Snelling: on the other hand, felt an obligation to her new
Kelsey Snelling: body to stick to the Camp Shane diet, but she
Kelsey Snelling: sometimes got dragged along to other counselors binge missions. One
Kelsey Snelling: involved a Dunkin Donuts and a trash bag.
Casey: Dunkin Donuts has this policy, or at least they used to.
Casey: If you rolled up to the Dunkin Donuts drive through
Casey: at like eleven fifty five as they were closing because
Casey: they closed at midnight, they would give you donuts for free.
Casey: One time, I went with some counselors and we rolled
Casey: up and there was a literal like huge garbage bag.
Casey: I'm talking like four feet tall garbage bag, like very
Casey: big for those big industrial trash cans filled with Dunkin donuts.
Casey: It was literally like pounds and pounds and pounds, and
Casey: they brought it back and snuck it in.
Kelsey Snelling: The doughnut syndicate was a clear indication that things were
Kelsey Snelling: out of control. How were we supposed to help kids
Kelsey Snelling: develop healthy habits when many of us were dealing with
Kelsey Snelling: our own disordered eating? And eating disorders weren't the only
Kelsey Snelling: mental health issues campers were struggling with. Cole Perry was
Kelsey Snelling: a staff member in twenty ten and twenty eleven.
Cole: I think that eating disorders and or being overweight, or
Cole: having body issues, or having a hard time with food,
Cole: They're not a singular issue by any means. I think
Cole: that those issues are often fueled by depression, self esteem issues, anxiety.
Cole: They relate to each other very heavily, and I think
Cole: a lot of the kids that came to Camp Shane
Cole: definitely had one or the other.
Kelsey Snelling: Cole was the camp videographer. They didn't directly oversee any campers,
Kelsey Snelling: but they got to know many of the kids quite
Kelsey Snelling: well as they walked the grounds each day gathering footage
Kelsey Snelling: for promotional videos.
Cole: At Camp Shane, there was definitely a lot of kids
Cole: who had a lot of self esteem hardship, and a
Cole: lot of them were bullied in school. A lot of
Cole: them got made fun of. A lot of them had
Cole: parents who were upset with the fact that they were
Cole: not a skinny kid and would shame them. They were
Cole: looked at as a product that could be changed.
Kelsey Snelling: That mentality wasn't just the fault of the camp. Most
Kelsey Snelling: kids were receiving the message that they'd better lose weight
Kelsey Snelling: all year round, sometimes from their own families. After all,
Kelsey Snelling: these kids wouldn't be at Camp Shane if their parents
Kelsey Snelling: didn't sign them up and bring them there. There's one
Kelsey Snelling: example of this that really struck me. One of my
Kelsey Snelling: campers was thin but still sent to Shane to lose weight.
Kelsey Snelling: Her brother was sent too. Their mom told them whoever
Kelsey Snelling: lost the most weight would get a five hundred dollars
Kelsey Snelling: gift card at the end of the summer. There were
Kelsey Snelling: plenty of parents who bribed their kids with shopping sprees,
Kelsey Snelling: gifts and vacations and somehow had absolutely no idea how
Kelsey Snelling: messed up it all was. Pretty quickly into that summer,
Kelsey Snelling: the pressure of caring for a bunch of tween girls
Kelsey Snelling: was taking a toll on me. Us counselors were acting
Kelsey Snelling: as parents and coaches and nutritionists and therapists for dozens
Kelsey Snelling: of kids at once, in many cases, while still being
Kelsey Snelling: kids ourselves. Even if campers wanted to talk to their
Kelsey Snelling: parents about what they were going through while at camp,
Kelsey Snelling: they couldn't. The whole summer, campers didn't have their cell phones.
Kelsey Snelling: They were taken away on the first day, supposedly to
Kelsey Snelling: promote a fun environment where kids aren't just sitting around
Kelsey Snelling: texting all day. Kids could use corded landlines to call
Kelsey Snelling: their parents once a week, but counselors would be standing
Kelsey Snelling: steps away, listening in on the conversation. If the camper
Kelsey Snelling: said anything negative, counselors were supposed to hang up the phone.
Kelsey Snelling: I ignored this rule, but the fact that it even
Kelsey Snelling: existed is absurd and left us counselors offering what emotional
Kelsey Snelling: support we could.
Cole: You're basically taking care of this kid. You are their
Cole: parent for twelve weeks. They look up to you for
Cole: absolutely everything. They are going to you for When should
Cole: they eat food? When should they go to sleep? What
Cole: am I doing? When they're going to you for all
Cole: of their love and care that they want from a
Cole: parent that they're not receiving at home. You are everything
Cole: to them as a staff member at a summer camp,
Cole: and especially at Camp Shane, because these kids are not
Cole: getting what they need from their parents most of the time.
Kelsey Snelling: Remember I was freshly twenty one, and I'll be the
Kelsey Snelling: first to say that at that age I was not
Kelsey Snelling: equipped for the things that were thrown at me. I
Kelsey Snelling: had a camper run up to me screaming about how
Kelsey Snelling: another camper was cutting with a razor in the shower.
Kelsey Snelling: My co counselor was battling a serious case of bulimia,
Kelsey Snelling: and there was absolutely no support for her, for me,
Kelsey Snelling: or any of us. And on top of all of that,
Kelsey Snelling: it might not be surprising to hear that threats of
Kelsey Snelling: suicide were popping up among campers. About three weeks into camp,
Kelsey Snelling: the head counselor is called a staff meeting. We were
Kelsey Snelling: told that an eighteen year old male camper had been
Kelsey Snelling: sexually inappropriate with a thirteen year old girl at camp.
Kelsey Snelling: The male camper was not asked to leave because he
Kelsey Snelling: had a bit of a developmental disability and the higher
Kelsey Snelling: ups didn't want him to feel bad. That evening happened
Kelsey Snelling: to be my night off, so my friends and I
Kelsey Snelling: went to the diner. I ordered the brownie sundae I
Kelsey Snelling: loved so much and overwhelmed, cried into it. Sitting with
Kelsey Snelling: me was Bobby, my friend Amy, and Cole. It felt
Kelsey Snelling: abundantly clear that no one was going to protect our
Kelsey Snelling: kids and that that responsibility fell on us alone, though
Kelsey Snelling: we were powerless. It was a heavy and hopeless weight.
Kelsey Snelling: There was a silence between tears and that's when Cole
Kelsey Snelling: announced they were quitting, along with the other videographer, Danielle.
Kelsey Snelling: For the two of them, the incident with the young
Kelsey Snelling: girl was the last straw.
Cole: So we were just waiting to see if anybody had
Cole: said anything about like the police were called, maybe a
Cole: professional was called to talk to the kid, or like,
Cole: were the girl's parents even called. Absolutely nothing, to our
Cole: knowledge was there that should have been done for this girl.
Cole: So we just were like, what do we do. We
Cole: are here as a videography team promoting this camp and
Cole: it is our job to promote a camp now that
Cole: is essentially condoning behavior that we don't agree with, that
Cole: is actually really fucked up behavior. So we just didn't
Cole: feel good about being there. And Danielle really, the point
Cole: for me that like drove it home when she was like,
Cole: I have a young daughter if I ever sent her
Cole: to a camp and this happened to her, and nobody
Cole: called me about it, like I would raise hell, I wouldn't,
Cole: I don't even know how I would react. And I was just like,
Cole: you're right, like that's absolutely fucking terrible. And she was like,
Cole: I have to leave, like I just I can't be
Cole: here anymore. I have to go. And I was just like,
Cole: you're right, like we're leaving, pack up your stuff.
Kelsey Snelling: Looking back, knowing what I know now about Camp Shane,
Kelsey Snelling: this situation wasn't just one egregious misstep. It was a
Kelsey Snelling: whole series of poor judgments, starting with letting in kids
Kelsey Snelling: that had higher needs than the camp staff could handle.
Kelsey Snelling: Then add on top of that, not supervising campers enough,
Kelsey Snelling: not training staff to prevent these situations from occurring, not
Kelsey Snelling: kicking out campers when they should have definitely been kicked out,
Kelsey Snelling: and then not providing support to the victim.
Cole: I wish I knew what David told himself in order
Cole: to go to sleep at night.
Kelsey Snelling: A note to listeners. Since this episode first aired, new
Kelsey Snelling: information has come to light. An employee from twenty eleven
Kelsey Snelling: reached out to say that the police were notified about
Kelsey Snelling: the situation. The source claims that the police ended the
Kelsey Snelling: investigation without bringing any charges against the male camper, but
Kelsey Snelling: the timeline and extent of police involvement remains unclear.
Kelsey Snelling: You might remember when I mentioned my Camp Shame contract
Kelsey Snelling: had a completion stipend. David would pay counselors half of
Kelsey Snelling: their paycheck at the midpoint of the summer. The final
Kelsey Snelling: half of their payment was to be received at the
Kelsey Snelling: end of the summer. So if counselors quit before one
Kelsey Snelling: of those two payments, like Cole and Danielle did, they were shit
Kelsey Snelling: out of luck. They never received payment for the work
Kelsey Snelling: that they did put in, and tons of staff members,
Kelsey Snelling: despite this system, quit. By the end of the summer,
Kelsey Snelling: Camp Shane was operating on a skeleton crew, and as
Kelsey Snelling: the session neared its close, counselors were suspiciously fired. This
Kelsey Snelling: happened summer after summer, including twenty eleven. Here's Casey.
Casey: He would fire people at the end of every camp
Casey: session so he wouldn't have to pay them. And we're
Casey: talking like twelve hundred dollars like it was, and you know,
Casey: and kids paid something like nine grand to go there
Casey: for a few weeks, and so you know, to withhold
Casey: of thousand bucks from like a twenty year old kid
Casey: who just worked for all these weeks seemed a little
Casey: ridiculous to me, and I definitely was like, well, that's
Casey: not going to be me, because I'm going to follow
Casey: the rules and be good and you know, show who
Casey: I am.
Kelsey Snelling: One of the people who got fired just before payday
Kelsey Snelling: was Casey. Casey wasn't interested in hooking up or drinking
Kelsey Snelling: after hours like some of the other counselors. She was
Kelsey Snelling: really trying to make a difference with her kids. She's
Kelsey Snelling: the one who just said.
Casey: That's not going to be me because I'm going to
Casey: follow the rules.
Kelsey Snelling: It all started during the last week of camp when
Kelsey Snelling: she took a day trip to New York City with
Kelsey Snelling: a group of counselors on their day off. On the
Kelsey Snelling: way back from their day of debauchery, as often happens
Kelsey Snelling: when driving in or around New York City, they hit traffic.
Kelsey Snelling: Casey was driving.
Casey: Curfew was midnight for the counselors and it was one
Casey: in the morning for group leaders, so I knew I
Casey: was okay, but I was worried about getting the counselors
Casey: back on time, and anyway, we rolled up to camp
Casey: and it was a negligible amount of minutes that we
Casey: were late. So we went to the girl's head counselor's
Casey: office and everyone was extremely apologetic that we ran into traffic.
Casey: It was an accident and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
Casey: I felt bad, but I was also like, wow, this sucks.
Casey: We're probably gonna get a slap on the wrist. And
Casey: so I went back to the bunk. Woke up the
Casey: next morning and I was called into the office again
Casey: and she was just she looked at me and she
Casey: was like, you're done, and she slapped a piece of
Casey: paper in front of me and like made me sign it.
Casey: It was a termination paper, and I remember my heart
Casey: was beating so fast, and I was like, what does
Casey: this mean. She was like, get off camp as soon
Casey: as possible, is what this means. And I've said, well,
Casey: I mean all my stuff is in my bunk. She
Casey: was like, yeah, don't care. You can just grab it
Casey: and here's trash bags.
Kelsey Snelling: It was a flimsy excuse. People came in late all
Kelsey Snelling: the time. It wasn't a fireable offense, at least based
Kelsey Snelling: on precedent, and Casey hadn't even missed her own curfew,
Kelsey Snelling: but she felt like there was nothing she could do.
Kelsey Snelling: She went to her room, collected her things, and then
Kelsey Snelling: got picked up by a staffer in a golf cart
Kelsey Snelling: to remove her from campgrounds. But just in those few minutes,
Kelsey Snelling: word had spread to Casey's campers and they were not
Kelsey Snelling: going to let her leave without putting up a fight.
Casey: And then like this swarm of kids runs out of
Casey: like all these buildings and they were just like stop
Casey: the golf cart and they just surrounded me and they
Casey: were like jump, jump jump. I told him, I was like,
Casey: can you stop. I want to say goodbye to my kids.
Casey: I was like, they're my kids. I need to say goodbye.
Casey: He was like I can't, I can't, and he was
Casey: so nervous. He's like I'm not supposed to. And I
Casey: was like, well, you know what, I'm gonna jump and
Casey: he was like ah, and the kids were like jump
Casey: jump and so I did. And then they just flocked
Casey: around me and just huge hugs, all these tears and
Casey: they're like, don't let them do this to you. And
Casey: it was like it was like a lot of love
Casey: and support and I was very overwhelmed.
Kelsey Snelling: Casey was fired days before last payday. She never got
Kelsey Snelling: that completion stipend. You may be wondering at this point,
Kelsey Snelling: why didn't we all just leave? Why didn't I leave?
Kelsey Snelling: There were red flags from the very first day, and
Kelsey Snelling: the pay was a joke anyway. I spent eleven weeks
Kelsey Snelling: straight overwhelmed, overworked, and underfed. I talked to my sister
Kelsey Snelling: about this. Did you ever consider quitting? And why did
Kelsey Snelling: you not quit?
Robin: Oh boy, there were many times I thought about quitting. Honestly,
Robin: if you hadn't been a counselor, I think I would
Robin: have been out of there because it was just too
Robin: overwhelming for one person to process without having somebody that
Robin: they trusted to talk through it with. What kept me
Robin: there at the end of the day is like knowing
Robin: that it would be easy for me to walk away,
Robin: but that my campers would still be there, and that
Robin: I trusted myself more than I trusted the quote unquote
Robin: professional staff to give them a memorable and positive experience.
Robin: So you know that's not great. I have no background
Robin: in this, I have no training on how to deal
Robin: with some of this trauma and these like really challenging
Robin: situations that campers are coming from, and yet just by
Robin: being a moderately mature and like sensitive person, I felt
Robin: like I could change their experience if even a little bit.
Kelsey Snelling: Bobby and I made it the entire summer, and once
Kelsey Snelling: campers were gone and the days of cleanup had gone by,
Kelsey Snelling: we collected our pathetic paychecks and left with zero desire
Kelsey Snelling: to ever go back.
Robin: I realized that camp had really no understanding of the
Robin: situation its campers were in. It certainly didn't have the
Robin: solutions that they needed, and it didn't really seem like
Robin: owners were invested in making it better. They had a
Robin: model that worked and they were sticking to it. I
Robin: felt like for a short period of time, all I
Robin: thought about was food. That was like a new thing. Luckily,
Robin: I kind of with time got out of that stage,
Robin: but I completely looked at food differently and not in
Robin: a good way.
Kelsey Snelling: After the summer ended, I was messed up for a while. Depression? PTSD?
Kelsey Snelling: I never got an official diagnosis. Camp Shane felt like
Kelsey Snelling: a fever dream. What I saw left me exhausted and empty.
Kelsey Snelling: I felt like I couldn't go to the police necessarily,
Kelsey Snelling: but maybe I could create something that would reveal what
Kelsey Snelling: was happening to these kids, something that would expose this place,
Kelsey Snelling: which is just one cog in a huge societal machine
Kelsey Snelling: that teaches people to feel shame about their bodies. So
Kelsey Snelling: I started interviewing everyone i could. I've also wondered about
Kelsey Snelling: Simon's role in all of this. Despite his missteps, nearly
Kelsey Snelling: every person I've spoken to characterizes him as the absolute
Kelsey Snelling: heart and soul of the community and magic of Camp Shane.
Kelsey Snelling: I'm left wondering how someone so revered could also allow
Kelsey Snelling: such terrible things to happen. But maybe Simon was in
Kelsey Snelling: the same position as me, financially under David's thumb and
Kelsey Snelling: emotionally bound to Camp Shane through the campers. Maybe Simon
Kelsey Snelling: was exhausted and depleted, but was sticking around to make
Kelsey Snelling: sure things didn't get worse. Next time on Camp Shane.
Kellye: Finally we got connected and Sadie is on the phone
Kellye: with her dad at the time, and she just breaks
Kellye: out crying, come get me, come get me, please, come
Kellye: get me. She told her dad. She said she was scared.
Kelsey Snelling: We reached out to David Ettenberg, his wife Ziporah Janowski,
Kelsey Snelling: and Simon Greenwood for comment. At the time of this recording,
Kelsey Snelling: we have not received a reply. If you or someone
Kelsey Snelling: you love is struggling with an eating disorder, wou can
Kelsey Snelling: call the free hotline of the National Alliance for Eating Disorders.
Kelsey Snelling: The number is one eight s ixty six six six
Kelsey Snelling: two one two three five. Camp Shame is a production
Kelsey Snelling: of iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host Kelsey Snelling. Camp Shame
Kelsey Snelling: is produced by Brittany Martinez, Taylor Williamson, Sarah Schleede, Luci Jones,
Kelsey Snelling: and Alyia Yates Grau. Our editor is Courtenay Hameister, with
Kelsey Snelling: additional editorial support from Lindsey Kratochwill and Grace Lynch. Our
Kelsey Snelling: executive producers are Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rudder and me Kelsey Snelling.
Kelsey Snelling: For iHeartMedia, our executive producer is Cristina Everett. Fact checking
Kelsey Snelling: done by Madeline Gore, Luci Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams,
Kelsey Snelling: and Fiona Pestana. Our theme music is produced by Sean Petell.
Kelsey Snelling: Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or
Kelsey Snelling: wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram at
Kelsey Snelling: camp Shane. That's with an M. If you or anyone
Kelsey Snelling: you know went to Camp Shane, reach out with your
Kelsey Snelling: camp stories