I’m looking for some help with bylaws for Jr members. Our club has a small group of Jr members and they are starting to get out of control. The bylaws that we have for jr members are detailed enough. I’m looking for any model railroad club that has bylaws for Jr members or any model railroader that had dealings with Jr members. Our club goal is to rewrite our bylaws for both Sr and Jr members.
Thanks for any help.
Joe
Our club allows children to join, however they must be accompanied by a parent. We do not baby sit. That was a new by-law we made when a father would drop his kid off to the train club and head to the local bar for a few hours.
Joe,
Our club allows Jr. Members but our By Laws are pretty clear that they must be in the company of an adult when they are at the club. They are allowed to operate on the club layout as long as they have been trained on the proper operation of the “dispatch office” and “dispatch board” but again, they must be in the company of an adult. Once they reach the age of 18, they then can operate the layout as any “over 18” member can.
It might help if we knew what “out of control” was. My club doesn’t allow any junior members but we do have one member that was grandfathered in before the rule’s were written up. He just turned 16 and has never been a problem since I’ve been a member over 5 years ago.
Our bylaws allow Junior Members, but they must be accompanied by an adult. The adult understands that they are responsible for the Junior’s conduct and replacing anything that gets broken by that Junior member. The parent joins and pays the $10 monthly membership fee. There’s no extra fee for the Junior member.
Whether a particular Junior is allowed to join is up to the Board of Directors and we try to discourage “too young” members.
Our primary question when a Junior wants to join the club is, “Do you have any trains? If so, what?” If it’s only something like a Thomas the Tank Engine the parent bought at a yard sale, they are discouraged from joining by explaining to the parent how expensive our trains are and that they are not “toys.”
Oh gosh… One bad apple can ruin it for the rest of us! When I joined a club, the president gave me a rather strict lecture (definitely very different than an explanation of the rules to regular members!) on the rules and such of the club because a couple of former junior members had been causing trouble of some sort (I never found out what it was) years before.
In that club, the junior member was an unofficial member for a few weeks, and worked with a couple regular and long-time members on a project (I helped lay track in an autorack yard) who would later testify before the club, which would vote on whether to allow the junior member to join. I was voted in unanimously, as were most, if not all, of the other junior members already in the club.
You had to have a sponsor member, who had to attend meetings with you and pay full membership. Junior membership was reduced by 10 - 15 bucks.
What age are we talking about? And what specifically is “Getting out of hand?”
Are you sure you need by-laws? How about “unacceptable behavior is cause for expulsion.” If the kids misbehave, call the parents and send them home, then and there. You need to formalize that with written rules?
Our club has two classifications. Family Membership - where children must have their parent real member present. Children can be any age. The parent is accountable (as below) for any misbehavior by the child.
Junior members must be 16 years of age. They don’t get a key to the clubroom(s) and can only be at the club when a regular member is. They are responsible for their own actions. The rule for any member including Jr & Family is that any actions detrimental to the club wealfare or club property can be dealt with imediately by the Superintendent, Chief Dispacher, or Chief Engineer (depending on the area of impact) and ultimately reviewed by the board and can be cause for dismissal.
[Moved from another thread posted by spjoe]
Thanks for the help. As I stated in my last post about Jr. members out of control. Are Jr members are from the ages of 8 to 16 by our old bylaws. A parent must be presents at all times. Our bylaws are not that detailed for do’s and don’ts for our Jr members, We are a new club and still working on the kinks out. The parents are not that much help with the control of their child. The parents see us a play ground, They like to us our bylaws against us on this control issues. Thats why we are looking for some ideas with our Jr. membership bylaws, If someone or club that has gones though this before themselfs, Pass on some ideas if you can.
I don’t want to get into the out of control part of our Jr. members.
Joe [sigh]
Our swim and tennis club has a minimum age for unattended kids - I think it’s 10 or 12. That’s worked well for an outdoor, play-oriented club, but there still are occasional problems with certain kids.
I’m not in a club, so take this as the thought’s of an outsider.
I wouldn’t allow any junior members under the age of 12 or maybe even 14 unless at least one parent is a member. Otherwise, you really are setting yourself up to be a drop-off babysitting service. My wife teaches arts-and-crafts after school, and occasionally gets kids in that boat. The kids have no interest in art, but the parents want a couple of hours off, so they sign them up. (To her great credit, she manages to engage most of these kids, and everyone wins.)
If you read the posts by this forum’s junior members, you’ll see that many of them are at least as mature and skillful as us so-called grown-ups. Then, there are others who can clearly use a few more years to get their act together. Just like adults, teens are all individuals, every one, and each deserves to be treated as such. A few blanket rules and restrictions are probably necessary, but your policy should still aim to provide flexibility on a case-by-case basis.
Amen. I was a member at a club where a couple of 50-something-year-olds sometimes displayed childish behavior (such as screaming, swearing) that was very disturbing. Got myself out of there.
Mark
We used to have (not any longer) a “sponsored” membership for ages 12 to 15. The idea was that an interested child of a regular member could join under the sponsorship of the parent. The restrictions on this class of membership were that they could not hold club office, they could not vote, and they could not hold a key to the clubroom. There were no dues. The sponsoring adult was responsible for the young member, including behavior.
Then we had a situation where an interested party wanted to “join”. We told the parent, who was not interested, that he had to join and be there while the youngster was present. This went okay for a couple of meetings, and then we ran into the “dump child off for the duration” problem. This situation was temporarily resolved when one of the regular members, wanting to be a good samaritan, said that he would take over the sponsoring duties and be the responsible party. Unfortunately, when the regular member was not present, the youngster’s parent assumed that someone else at the club would take over, and the dump the child off problem persisted.
Since none of the other club members had the inclination or desire to be the bad person and correct a youngster who was not theirs, we basically had a situation where a group of men were held hostage by a child.
My recommendation is that if you are contemplating any rules for admitting young folks, those rules should be that the parent has to be the sponsor (not some other volunteer), that the child can only be there when the parent regular member is present, and that the parent is responsible for the child. Responsible means that the parent monitor
I am a member of the NMRA’s Hub Divison (Boston), and have been paying dues for the past few years. I believe there are few restrictions, and while I am dropped off at the modular set ups, to the best of my knowledge I haven’t been anything “out of hand.” I think I joined when I was 13, and am 16 now, and believe I’ve been accepted by the members as one of the more mature, and more aware junior members.
I know MANY decent teenagers, and its sad that one child has to ruin it for the rest of us. I see a lot of clubs require a parent to be a member, and while I can understand this, perhaps after 6 or 12 months have it be voted on, as to whether or not a parent must attend that particular child. I remember running on the Hub Modular layout at 13, and to be honest, I probably could/should have waited until I was 14. That leaves me with the conclusion that those below 14 need to be accompanied by an adult, and those 14 and older, who show signs of maturity may be allowed without a parent.
Edit: Give them a warning the first time they do something innappropriate, and the next time kick them out. Its that simple.
[quote user=“MisterBeasley”]
I wouldn’t allow any junior members under the age of 12 or maybe even 14 unless at least one parent is a member. Otherwise, you really are setting yourself up to be a drop-off babysitting service. My wife teaches arts-and-crafts after school, and occasionally gets kids in that boat. The kids have no interest in art, but the parents want a couple of hours off, so they sign them up. (To her great credit, she manages to engage most of these kids, and everyone wins.)
If you read the posts by this forum’s junior members, you’ll see that many of them are at least as mature and skillful as us so-called grown-ups. Then, there are others who can clearly use a few more years to get their act together. Just like adults, teens are all indivi
Thanks for all the good ideas. It’s not are plan to run off any of our Jr members, We enjoy teaching them. We have one jr member who is out of control and thinks he runs the show, members of the club attempted to point out to this child that we are a train and we have rules that you must follow. Parent stepped in and stated I read your by-laws and what you are saying to my child is not in your by-laws. That why we are attemping to better our Jr. membership by-laws, we told the parent that we are not a play groud for childern. We are hear to teach and enjoy model railroading. When you have one, jr member that does what his want the others try to follow.
Either, we come up with good set Jr. menbership by-laws, or stop allowing Jr. membership. Model railroading is a great hobby to be in. We teach the Boy Scouts and even have open houses for the elementary Schools.
Joe
I’ve been in a model railroad club for over 25 years, and I don’t remember any problems with kids. Adult members are another thing altogether. Some of them can be worse than kids.
I remember a time when the club was on the verge of disintegration while we were in the process of building our second layout. There were a couple of rabid right-wingers who had gotten to the point where all they wanted to do was sit there and spew their venomous hatred and turn club meetings into political discussion forums. So we didn’t get much work done on the layout. They’re gone, but at the time I wished we had bylaws to discourage such behaviour.
We did reach the point where we pondered over our future as a club, but we never formulated bylaws regarding disciplinary action against club members. We wanted to maintain our reputation as an open and informal group. The only thing I was concerned about was using the club as a venue to run trains, so during my term as club president we at least arrived at a mission statement: “To build, operate, and maintain a portable model railroad layout.” We are on our third HO layout and we also have an N scale layout, and we like to put either one on public display and promote the hobby…
I was a junior member of a club once, and I saw the other side of the coin. I wish they’d had stricter rules requiring sponsorship or mentoring of junior members by the senior members.
I would show up for work nights and spend the first hour bouncing between adults who were each working on their own projects. Each time I would ask what I could do to help one of the adults, the answer I usually got was that they were too busy to show me what they were doing (or they were almost done, or some other reason/excuse why they didn’t want/need my help), but maybe I could go see if so-and-so needed some help. Of course, the next adult I asked gave me the same basic answer, so I was left standing there wondering what to do with myself. The clubhouse was located across the street from an active rail line, so with no projects to help on, I would usually wander out the door to watch when a (real) train came by. After a few weeks of this, I started overhearing complaints by the adults that the junior members weren’t committed to the layout and were only interested in standing around outside railfanning. I complained to the club president about the lack of work projects for me, and suggested that a senior member could possibly compile a “punch list” of projects for me to take on. I certainly didn’t want to take on a project of my own without some sort of direction from the club leaders. Despite my suggestions, nothing changed. I didn’t exactly leave the club in disgust, but when I came back to town after a year at college, I made no effort to re-up with that club, and I have never been interested in club membership since then.
I guess my point with all this is that there are a lot of teenagers who are genuinely interested in, and committed to, the hobby. I think it’s great that clubs will allow responsible juniors to join, but at the same time they are writing rules to help the junio
[quote user=“potlatcher”]
I was a junior member of a club once, and I saw the other side of the coin. I wish they’d had stricter rules requiring sponsorship or mentoring of junior members by the senior members.
I would show up for work nights and spend the first hour bouncing between adults who were each working on their own projects. Each time I would ask what I could do to help one of the adults, the answer I usually got was that they were too busy to show me what they were doing (or they were almost done, or some other reason/excuse why they didn’t want/need my help), but maybe I could go see if so-and-so needed some help. Of course, the next adult I asked gave me the same basic answer, so I was left standing there wondering what to do with myself. The clubhouse was located across the street from an active rail line, so with no projects to help on, I would usually wander out the door to watch when a (real) train came by. After a few weeks of this, I started overhearing complaints by the adults that the junior members weren’t committed to the layout and were only interested in standing around outside railfanning. I complained to the club president about the lack of work projects for me, and suggested that a senior member could possibly compile a “punch list” of projects for me to take on. I certainly didn’t want to take on a project of my own without some sort of direction from the club leaders. Despite my suggestions, nothing changed. I didn’t exactly leave the club in disgust, but when I came back to town after a year at college, I made no effort to re-up with that club, and I have never been interested in club membership since then.
I guess my point with all this is that there are a lot of teenagers who are genuinely interested in, and committed to, the hobby. I think it’s great that clubs will allow responsible juniors to join, but at the same time they are writing rules to help the junior