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NEWS: Anime Expo's SPJA Announces Youth Protection Program

When I skimmed through those SPJA videos and saw them putting those Chikara mascot t-shirts on their generic adult male minders, I realized something.

The SPJA are fools for creating Chikara for such a divisive program.

They make sound like there's all kinds of craziness that goes on in these cons. Now I'll admit I've gone to a few at NYCC and I've never encountered any wrong doing. Just watching kids sitting back in groups having fun. Parents have access to their children they don't just let them roam around alone.

Once cons start catering to triggered Shonen Jump Weekly, the entire con scene will just implode, wither and die.

Do you think it's going to be that extreme, as in ALL cons regardless of what they're about, even state fairs and trade shows closed to the general public? Has there been a precedent?

Chrno2 wrote:

They make sound like there's all kinds of craziness that goes on in these cons. Now I'll admit I've gone to a few at NYCC and I've never encountered any wrong doing. Just watching kids sitting back in groups having fun. Parents have access to their children they don't just let them roam around alone.

I am rather jealous you don't see quite so many unsupervised children as I do. They're everywhere around here.

But no kid should be unsupervised at ANY event. Maybe those that can navigate themselves around with friends might be fine but should still be cautious. But smaller children should held onto at all times. But there should always be staff on hand that can be trusted and helpful. The problem sometimes are neglectful parents.

Chrno2 wrote:

But no kid should be unsupervised at ANY event. Maybe those that can navigate themselves around with friends might be fine but should still be cautious. But smaller children should held onto at all times. But there should always be staff on hand that can be trusted and helpful. The problem sometimes are neglectful parents.

Yeah, neglectful parents are undoubtedly the root cause of all the unsupervised kids I see (not just at conventions, but every public place). The worst part is that you can't do anything about it because if they find out you so much as tapped the kid's shoulders, they explode like Vesuvius and threaten to sue. (And a few of them actually do.)

The only way to get through to these cases is by asking the parents directly. I've tried it, and I've seen other people try it, and mention of their kids is a berserk button for them. Nine times out of ten, it goes nowhere: Either no one can find the parents, the parents deny they have children around (and will pretend to be by themselves until you go away), or they get even MORE ornery than if you attempt to guide the kid somewhere else.

I remember being in a Toys R Us a few years ago and seeing these two boys pick up scooters and crash them into shelves. Objects stocked onto the shelves would fall to the floor, and they kept doing it. They ignored everybody except each other. Their parents were nowhere in sight (and indeed, I couldn't find any individual in the store who lookedlike they might be parents). I was just there to compare prices for a video game and decided to wander about the store, but it annoyed me so much to see these boys doing it, then annoyed me further when I couldn't find their parents anywhere.

Maybe it's the culture around here, because from what I hear from people who live in other places, the situation with unsupervised children is not nearly as bad anywhere else. Unsurprisingly, we get a lot of child abductions too. Our amber alert signs have a new one almost every day.

Sorry for the rant, I just don't like them period, just hearing that word gets me all pissy lol

I actually suspect that these new policies have less to do with defusing potential lawsuits (which are hard to quantify in terms of financial risk) and more to do with getting breaks on the cost of event insurance (which is a very real, and major, expense).

AX is partnered with the Nonprofit Risk Management Center for this new program, and helping clients get deals on insurance appears to be a substantial part of the NRMC's activities. The NRMC's website also has an entire hard-sell section devoted to pushing youth-protection consulting services, which I'm sure also played into this.