Here we go again - AGAIN

    As mentioned way back when in May in my post “When is it right to hurt someone?” and the post “un-home-like” in June, the club I belong to at school has had issues with two people in particular whom I’ve dubbed Michel* and Joe.*
    I’ll get to Joe in a minute, but the focus of today’s post is Michel, and keeping track of what is apparently an ongoing situation.

    In the first post I linked to above, I explained how Michel ended up leaving the room in a huff during a club meeting when the tension between her and group came to a head. Within a week of her leaving the room, Michel’s mother came to the school and caused a fuss with Student Life, complaining about her daughter’s treatment by our club. Student Life asked to our President about what happened, and once they understood they didn’t tell us to do anything specific, they didn’t reprimand us, and they certainly didn’t tell us that we had to let her back into the room (though we weren’t actively banning her, so it really didn’t matter). After all, who in the world, with any common sense, would continue trying to interact with a group that was hostile towards them at worse, and tolerates them at best?
    They thanked us for handling it as best we could, gave us a heads-up that Michel’s mother came in complaining on her behalf, and asked us to try to be a little less aggressive if it happened again (the implication being with someone else, as they too assumed that the issue was settled).    
    Still, a month or so later, Michel resumed coming into club. Mostly she sat towards the back of the room, avoiding conversation, but she had returned despite knowing that most of the group had no interest in interacting with her.
    Why?

Un-home-like.

"Oh boy," I find myself saying- "here we go again."

I outlined in a previous post how the student-club where I hang out with friends tends to deal with people who just don’t ‘fit in,’ typically due to behavioral issues, in a sort of cycle. To save you the click,

-The person comes in and rather than sit and watch what’s on the screen, will attempt to strike up loud or unrelated conversation. (If it’s not a ‘noise’ issue we’re dealing with, it can be generalized as something we just find disagreeable.)
-They are asked to please quiet down or leave the room if it‘s really bad. This may happen multiple times before a Warning occurs.
-Feeling like the people who issue the Warning (typically one of the top three officers of the club) are ‘mean‘ or ‘unfair,’ the person being Warned will sit in the back of the room and complain to anyone who will listen about how rude and hateful we are.
-The person being Warned will continue to attend the club, every week, and continue to complain from the back, or carry on having loud conversations or being distracting, and receiving warnings.
-Tension will eventually reach a head, and the person is confronted by our ‘Warden’ - aka, the Officer responsible for dealing with people who are being a constant bother.
-The person storms out and may return at a later date, more subdued, or not at all - though they may continue to complain about us outside of the group.

By this point, we‘ve encountered this cycle enough times that we’ve learned to spot escalation coming pretty early on. Our major concern with any problematic member is to give them as many chances as they can to redeem themselves if they’re being disagreeable and try to avoid confrontation - the last thing we want is to cause people to leave a group where the goal is to just hang out and have a good time.
    In any case where we’re having issues with someone, while we may feel bad about having to deal with someone who shouts, swears or threatens to report us to Student Life (for what exactly? Enforcing our rules?), how do we deal with someone who’s only real fault is trying too hard to be friendly?

The current issue is with a guy we’ll call Joe.

When is right to hurt someone?

    Sometimes we need to do things that just aren’t nice. How do we know when that is, though? What if no one is actually being hurt, physically - is it better to just stand aside and let something continue?

I’ve been trying to be a ‘better person’ (whatever that means) - and a big part of that is trying not to be ‘unnecessarily cruel.’ That is, don’t gossip, don’t hurt people thoughtlessly, etc. Even if someone raises my ire, better to ignore them and move on than get into an unnecessary conflict. But what is the right course of action if there’s something or someone bothering me, or me and my friends?

    Every week, I gather with friends to watch movies and shows of group interest. It’s an official club recognized by the college we attend, with a club ’mission’ and everything - in not so many words, the purpose of our group is to hang out, watch things, and have a good time. Sometimes we play board games or cards, but for the most part, it’s just a place for us to get together. Most of us have classes or work schedules that prevent us from meeting all together for the rest of the week, so it’s like a weekly reunion.
    Our club has been changing and growing for some years, and gone through splits, unions, and changes in leadership. I consider most of the people who show up pretty good friends, and most of those friends I met in club - and we get new people moving in and out of the group all the time. But, it being open to anyone in the student body, sometimes people who don’t exactly ‘click’ with the rest of the group show up.
    For the most part, none of us really mind. Some of the people are pretty awesome, even if they don’t come every week, and we usually hang out at one of our houses at the end of the night after club is over, so anyone who proves to be a bother isn’t a huge issue - they just don‘t get invited along. Any annoyance we deal with during club is just an annoyance at club - and that’s all. Even then, we don’t typically run into any huge problems.
    It being a gathering where we watch things on a single TV - typically recently released movies or new episodes of series we’re all following - the greatest annoyance is background noise. We have club rules (posted, as well as in a binder for anyone to look at) against playing videogames with the sound on, loud conversation, loud, unrelated talk or discussion (that’s what the student center is for!) and general distraction. Anyone who breaks these rules doesn’t just get kicked out of the room without a chance to stop being distracting - they get Warnings. After a number of Warnings have been issued to the same person, the Officers of the club meet and discuss what action to take - usually this ends up in some sort of confrontation, and if it’s really bad, a month long suspension. Multiple suspensions may result in a Ban, but this has yet to happen - and we‘ve only ever issued one suspension. Depending on how distracting or inconsiderate a person is being, warnings may range from 3-10 or not even counting. After all, we’ve all been excited by something or laughed inappropriately loudly, or forgotten that there aren’t subtitles on if it’s an anime, so it’d be wrong to give someone a Warning because of a small slip up. But, when it’s a constant issue, like someone who comes in every club meeting and is known to make a lot of noise or be generally disagreeable to the majority of the room, it can be a little difficult to deal with. We’ve had to deal with such an issue a number of times, and it usually follows the same steps:

-The person comes in and rather than sit and watch what’s on the screen, will attempt to strike up loud or unrelated conversation.
-They are asked to please quiet down or leave the room if it‘s really bad. This may happen multiple times before a warning occurs.
-Feeling like the people who issue the warning (typically one of the top three officers of the club) are ‘mean‘ or ‘unfair,’ the person being Warned will sit in the back of the room and complain to anyone who will listen about how rude and hateful we are.
-The person being Warned will continue to attend the club, every week, and continue to complain from the back, or carry on having loud conversations or being distracting, and receiving warnings.
-Tension will eventually reach a head, and the person is confronted by our ‘Warden’ - aka, the Officer responsible for dealing with people who are being a constant bother.
-The person storms out and may return at a later date, more subdued, or not at all - though they may continue to complain about us outside of the group.