When I was in high school there were two things which I loved doing.
One was technical theater, and the other was YRUU. I came to both of them
between eighth and ninth grade, and both were organized on the principle
of what I have come to call "guided youth autonomy". That is,
the technical crew of our drama club and any average youth group were free
to run themselves, as long as they adhered to some basic common sense guidelines
and let the adults supervise most of the time. I loved that (lack of) imposed
structure, and the feeling that we could do anything. Both groups dreamed
big, and, for the most part, brought our dreams to fruition. It was in
the safety of those groups that I did most of my growing during those years,
and both groups became very important to me. Unfortunately, it wasn't perfect,
and from time to time something would go wrong. Often, the group would
fear that its existence was in danger, especially in UU youth programs.
Perhaps YRUU always felt particularly precarious to me because I was involved
in starting the local and district programming. In trying to start the
group, I had heard horror story after horror story about the bloody but
justified death of LRY. Within my congregation, the rumor was that in the
mid-seventies they called a minister who was particularly known for his
ability to dismantle youth groups, and he did it with cold-blooded efficiency.
The implication was that if the slightest thing went wrong, most of the
congregation would not think twice about withdrawing its support again.
Once I got initial support and a core group of people, I felt a great deal
of responsibility to myself, the congregation, and the group to make things
work, and make them work right. As local and district programming grew
and I got involved on a continental level, I began to get a feel for the
diversity of programming and activities across the country. I started to
hear more horror stories, about districts that were recreating the LRY
mess, that had had district programming terminated for years at a time
because of bad planning or supervision. I didn't want that to happen, either.
I felt very supported by the people with whom I worked, but there was always
this ethereal "other people" who would destroy our programs if
we slipped. We kept that in mind and tried not to slip. While in high school
I also started to notice the problems (and solutions) that my group(s)
encountered as we grew. When I saw the number of smokers drastically increase,
I got nervous. When I noticed that some people were beginning to lose sight
of the UU connection, I got worried. When I realized that groups of people
were breaking the rules (and others' trust) because they could, I got concerned.
It all felt very much like what I had heard about the beginning of the
end of LRY. I didn't want that.
Most of my contact with former LRYers was at General Assembly. Their view
of LRY was radically different from what I heard in my home church. For
the most part, they held a nostalgia for it that was incredibly strong.
I noticed it when I asked them questions about youth programming, or when
I discussed with them the differences between the ex-LRYers and the ex-YRUUers,
trying to figure out why people from YRUU didn't feel welcome in denominational
young adult circles.
They seemed to feel that YRUU was okay, but LRY was amazing. That we were
missing out on something we could never hope to understand. They seemed
to feel a bond that would not expand to include non-LRY alumnae. This was
not universally true, but it was common.
After a while, I began to wonder what LRY was, anyway. I already "knew"
that it had been an organization of drug and sex crazed teenagers in the
sixties. I wanted more. Somewhat to my surprise, what I found wasn't all
bad. I found out that a lot of the well-loved YRUU traditions were actually
passed down from LRY. I discovered that LRY had come into being well before
the UUA did. I realized that the organizations before LRY had also been
strong, and that there was a rich youth tradition. I no longer felt that
everything about past UU youth programming was irretrievably lost. Unfortunately
I did not make most of these discoveries until I was headed for college.
Thus LRY became a concern for me both in terms of the programming I was doing
and in terms of my place in the denominational structure. I created this
project for several reasons. One, to find out what really happened. The
truth about LRY's ending is complex and hard to pin down. As far as I can
tell, it isn't written down anywhere. Follow the Gleam, by Wayne Arnason,
covers the story until the late seventies. There are a number of reports
to various boards and the stories from some upset people, but no one place
to go see more than one side of the story. That was my first goal. My second
goal was to learn from it. Occasionally I see parts of the story reenacted.
A district may choose to terminate support for youth programming for two
years, or a group starts to have problems with drugs at conferences. Perhaps
some people decide that rules were meant to be broken. Maybe no one has
figured out how to connect the sudden influx of new people with UUism and
the sponsoring congregation. In any of these situations, there are echoes
of the problems that LRY experienced on a denominational level. Not all
LRY groups had any of these problems, and few had them all, but they were
contributing factors. It is important to me that all of the story be "out
there" and available to everyone in the denomination, so that when
there are problems, we don't recreate the emotional upheaval that resulted
from LRY's restructuring into YRUU. YRUU-l, the new e-mail mailing list
for people involved with YRUU (especially the youth) had a discussion over
the summer of 1996 with subject line, "What was LRY?" The questions
are definitely still in circulation.
As a denomination, a whole lot of UUs are online. We have varying degrees of access, but the World Wide Web is a good way to get information out to people rapidly, and a good way to make sure changes are widely available. I began by using the Web as a way to make my project available to people who helped me with it, so that if I misconstrued something they had said or written, they would be able to see the mistake and correct me. I also used it to make the questions I was asking available to anyone who wandered by. Now I'm using it because it is the best, most dynamic way to make information available to a wide number of people. I would love to see this project published on paper, but meanwhile the internet serves to make it widely available. Also, the Web lends itself nicely to graphics and easy-to-read presentation of information. I can include photographs and break my project into accessible chunks, each of which is available from a separate hypertext link. This makes it more likely that people will read at least the parts of my project in which they are interested.
When an organization gets big, it begins to have problems. No matter what the organization is: a youth group,
a theater club, a fellowship, when it begins, it is usually composed of
a few thoughtful, extremely committed individuals with a common vision.
That's how groups get started.
Example: When the Metro New York district started to create youth
programming, it took a few committed youth, a few committed adults, some
cooperative churches, and a vision. After the first year of programming
in the New Jersey Area Council, the programs spread to the rest of the
district. The first district conference was a little unwieldy, but the
planners learned from their mistakes, and subsequent conferences settled
down to a comfortable routine.
Getting to the comfortable routine often seems like it's the hard part.
After all, you have to get a vision, and a group of people with the resources
necessary to make the vision happen. Then you have to find other people
who want to partake of your vision, because most events need participants
as well as planners. To get the people, you need advertising, a contact
person, a location, date, time, and The Event, whatever it may be.
Contrary to popular belief, that's the easy part. The hard part comes after
your vision is in place and running. You have The Event regularly, and
other, less impressive meetings in between Events. You have people who
come to most of the events, and occasionally newcomers drop in, and stay,
or not. The organization is beginning to grow, and this is a sign of success.
The Events are getting better and better and bigger and bigger and new
people are helping with planning. No problem.
But slowly and then suddenly, you realize that there are a lot of people
you've never seen before at your Events. Some of them have different ideas
about how Events should be, or what they should be About, or who should
plan them. Perhaps someone says that you've been hogging the Planning all
to yourself because you want to keep Control that you should be sharing.
You might not have meant it that way, but these people see it that way.
You worked hard to give the group a sense of ownership, and they have it.
And one day, someone says, Let's Do This! And lots of people cheer. This
should make you happy, but it makes you uneasy. You can't figure out why.
You talk to some other people who were there at the beginning, and you
discover that all of you feel uneasy. And then you figure out that you
feel uneasy because this new suggestion will lead the organization away
from the Vision.
But organizations have to grow and change.
But this change seems dangerous, and it seems like maybe the New People
don't understand the dangers of their New Idea.
Or maybe you're just trying to hog control. Maybe those people were right.
THIS is where the problem begins.
For YRUU and other similar organizations (like UU fellowships) this situation
is especially difficult. We (UUs) have a general policy of inclusively.
We like to grow, usually, because the bigger the group is, the more it
can do, and new membership validates our existence as a group. We don't
convert people, per se, so the only ways for our group to grow are (1)
people who find us and like us and stay and (2) people who are born into
it and decide not to leave. So newcomers are very important to us, as an
organization and as a denomination. Of course, like most religious organizations,
we also believe that we provide a kind of ministry, and that anyone who
needs it should have access to it. All of this means that even if someone
that you absolutely cannot stand joins the congregation, you don't throw
him/her out. If the person makes you uncomfortable for unresolvable reasons,
you might choose to leave, yourself, but no one will ask the person to
leave unless s/he is being somehow actively destructive and refuses to
stop.
We are also great believers in "the use of the democratic process
within our congregations and in society at large" (UU Purposes and
Principles). This means that if more than half of the people want to do
something, they usually get to do it. Anyone who does not like it may leave
or stay as s/he wishes, but the majority rules more often than we come
to consensus.
Groups, especially large ones, especially of youth, tend to be very volatile.
Thus, the majority's rule can change fairly easily. One speech on the floor
of the UU General Assembly can change the vote from overwhelmingly pro
to overwhelmingly con.
As groups, we tend to develop a number of tacit rules and expectations.
They include rules for behavior, expectations of goals, and the basis on
which one votes. For example, listen when someone is talking, we are striving
for a safe, spiritual space, and we vote for the person who will do the
best job, not for the most popular person.
If there is suddenly a big group of relatively new people, they may not
know all of that unspoken code. People study foreign cultures so that they
won't accidentally offend someone. Most organizations have their own cultural
restrictions and liberties, and understanding them can take a long time.
Also, in a congregationally-organized religion such as ours, the rules,
restrictions, liberties, values, and expectations can vary widely from
congregation to congregation and from district to district, so even someone
from another part of the country may be temporarily on unfamiliar territory,
and often without realizing it.
If that group becomes the majority before they pick up on that unspoken
behavior code, they can suddenly and unintentionally cause a radical shift
in the code.
Getting back to concrete examples, many youth groups are very physical
with each other. They hug frequently, hold hands, sit in each other's laps,
wrestle, and sling their arms around each other's shoulders without giving
it a second thought. In most cases, this is completely asexual contact.
When newcomers attend a youth conference or a youth group meeting, they
sometimes misperceive this as sexual contact. Most people figure out that
it isn't sexual fairly fast. Those who don't figure it out usually get
an explicit explanation from a group member. But if the group is suddenly
composed of more newcomers than old hands, then suddenly the majority's
expectation is that touch is sexual. The misperception becomes codified.
For a w