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I recently caught two teenagers behaving inappropriately in our family locker room. How do you deal with such activity, and how much authority should a facility operator have in these matters?

We would eject them for 3 months, and talk to their parents. Not the most fun job, but it has to be done.

We have a code of conduct and guest behavior policy, which is part of the membership application. We have a tiered approach to responding to issues, depending on the severity. It runs from a verbal warning to a written warning to suspension to expulsion.

Sex in our facilities will happen if private spaces are not secured. A low-tech solution is to lock the family locker room and make access available only via a checkout key (like at gas stations).

There are several ways to deal with this. The best is to issue keys to the family locker rooms. Another is to place video cameras at the entrance to the family locker rooms and note that the area is being monitored.

With over 3,000 children at our facility we take these issues seriously. We'd contact the parent(s), suspend the child from 1-3 months (depending on severity. We track these incidents through our software. If a second incident happend we'd terminate the child's membership.

We have posted video cameras down the hallway with signage. When incidents of this nature occur the procedure is: talk to the kids and let them know we will be contacting their parents, then call the parents and issue a written warning on loss of membership or facility ban for non members should there be any further abuse of facility etiquette. After coming down firmly and consistently on this issue the message gets out and we no longer have this issue

We recently started to offer teenage memberships and we have also had to deal with some inappropriate behavior. We warn the kids the first time. The second time, we ask them to leave the club for the day. If it happens a third time we are forced to terminate their memberships. Document each incident, as it happens, in writing. The facility operator, in my opinion has the authority to deal with these incidents however they see fit. We do not involve the parents unless the parent contacts us directly about the problem. Facility operators need to be more concerned with the rest of their members (the one's behaving properly) and not tolerate behaviors that make the majority of their members uncomfortable.

We opened up 7 years ago without any security for our family change rooms. However, we quickly found out our full door family change areas with large change beds for people with disability were a magnet for inappropriate activity. We now have locked the Family Change Room and a new access code is issued daily to patrons with children. As with other inappropriate behaviour, we always are in contact with parents and facility suspension is frequently used.

While we don't yet have family locker rooms, we would handle any problems of inappropriate behavior (depending on the severity of the issue) by having them leave for the night, or access deny their membership until they and their parents come talk to the Executive Director about their behavior and the Y's Core Values. Membership is sometimes suspended for a period of time. I appreciate this discussion and input from other facilities as we plan to add family locker rooms.

Both teenagers' parents are required to come to center immediately. They are told the reason for the meeting before they come. All parties [both parents and both teenagers] are in the same room at the same time. We tell all parties that this is inappropriate behavior and will not be tolerated. All memberships are terminated immediately. If either teenager is underage, then we call the police and let them handle it. This is not an issue at our club because everyone knows how they are expected to behave here.