A background check using a social security number is not a part of ANY youth sports league I have been involved in. The most stringent requirements I have seen are for school related sports leagues that are state sanctioned and while they do involve some online training, and I assume some sort of background check using your name & address, they DO NOT require a social security number. Most youth leagues do not come near the level the state requires.
Last edited by Mike Switzer; 01-25-2016 at 04:30 PM.
Also, the online training required by the state is only for the head coach & assistant coach - I can volunteer at a school team practice without going thru all that. It is common practice to never let an adult be alone with any one student, whether it be accomplished by having one coach with multiple students or 2 adults coaching one player. This would be impractical for a ride in a C150.
I think the issue isn't so much what happens during the Young Eagles event. A YE event could be leveraged to continue contact with a participant ("Hey, you did great flying the airplane! Why don't you come by the airport next Saturday and we can fly again!"Originally Posted by Mike Switzer
The whole purpose of the new program is so EAA can claim to have followed approved processes to reduce the chance of this happening.
Ron Wanttaja
Nothing, absolutely nothing the EAA can do will prevent that.
Absolutely, positively true. But if the criminal made first contact at an EAA event, EAA will be asked whether they'd screened the people who would be in contact with the kids. Having made *some* effort to eliminate the bad apples will play better in court than pretending it couldn't happen. The EAA *will* get sued, in such a case, and if they can claim they took precautions to prevent it, they might avoid a major judgement against them. Juries are NOT pleased with organizations with slapdash policies, in these cases.
Ron Wanttaja
..which is exactly the argument that seems to be taken here as a "bureaucracy" speaking rather than "what we're all here for"...
Let's assume this was caused by that recent case (http://www.twincities.com/crime/ci_2...ual-abuse-case).
Alternative is to Not Do It, and argue that (approximately) 0.00005% chance is Not Worth It (1 out of ~2 mil: your odds of being struck by a lightning in a given year are about double, and 2 orders of magnitude larger of being struck over lifetime (numbers "stolen" from NOAA: http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/odds.shtml)). I don't see a Gross Negligence in disregarding such a chance based on such low chances, and knowledge that lots of kids' related activities will dwindle with introduction of such policies.
What is mostly disappointing is that this Policy seems to have been implemented by folks who don't understand their membership at all.
Pilots are already heavily vetted by FAA during medical process.
Pilots are generally one of the "do what makes sense, not what the lawyer says" groups given my limited experience with them.. seems to be confirmed by ~80% of (so far not so long running) poll respondents not liking this policy as is, and ~60% opposing it without serious changes.
Pilots are some of the most dedicated, professional groups of people at large.
I am not trying to diminish other folks and please don't take offense, but it anecdotally feels to me that it takes a bit more resources and time to become a pilot, yet alone willing to take. strange. kids. you've never met before. In Your Airplane. as opposed to typical "sunday volunteers" that work with them. What Im trying to say is that the very fact that one's a pilot is already a huge "background check" presented by life.
CYA could've taken a lot of forms: waiver's one of them. Training could have been other. Even recurring training. "See something: say something". Heck, have you guys SEEN this training? It's BS: you can't fail, they basically show you 1 paragraph of text and then immediately ask the question.. even the TSA-mandated SIDS training I had to take when I was flying out of KOAK ("close the door behind you and don't let anyone w/o the badge unsupervised") was less silly than this.
But not SSN-mandated background checks, "2-deep leadership" (okay, this name is seriously silly? ), and requirement to keep paperwork for years-or-more.
To whom it may concern:
My name is Steve Glenn, EAA # 307275. Been a member since '86, been an Airventure volunteer since '97. Many of you know me as one of the Point managers for VAA down at "Point Fondy," the shack at the south end of Runway 18/36.
I've got four kids. My oldest is 17 and has been volunteering as a ground-pounding flightline worker. My other children are younger and all work with their mother at Aeromart. You folks may remember my youngest - the eight-year-old girl who hands out shopping bags.
So... after we digest this furball that threatens Young Eagles.... what about Airventure? Are all volunteers going to need training and background checks? Just so a few of us can bring our kids up to be Airventure volunteers?
And what about foreign volunteers? They don't have social security numbers.
I can already sense what's coming: no volunteering - none - for any minors. At which point I'm going to have to seriously re-evaluate my family's commitment to Airventure. It has been our 10-day main vacation of the year for 27 years....
I have a 16 year old young man aspiring to be an aeronautical engineer as a member of my chapter. He is actively involved in many of our adventures, including trips to the Kermit Weeks hangar for restoration projects, member build projects, fly-outs, etc. Not to mention regular chapter meetings and the like.
As a Boy Scout Leader, I understand some of the reasoning behind recent decisions. I go through the same stuff in BSA, not only to be a Scout/Cub Master, but also as a merit badge counselor. Even more so as an Aviation Merit Badge counselor. So nothing new here for me.
I also see this as a reason that we have dwindling BSA memberships these days as well. Over-enthusiastic policies put in place as a reaction to a few bad eggs make people move toward activities that are less bothersome and personally intrusive. This may very well have the same effect on the Young Eagles and other youth programs based on some of the reactions and feedback of entire chapters I'm reading above.
That being said, I'm not about to ruin the experience for my dedicated young person, who really enjoys our group and the opportunities and events in which we participate. I will, however, be making sure that build activities will be completely separated from chapter activities, as there are restrictions that keep minors from using power tools. And whether or not we choose to become active in Young Eagles activities will be up to the membership and we'll explore it during the next meeting.
My vice president and I have committed to the Youth Protection Training and background checks because we believe very strongly in our mission to provide experience and guidance to our current teenage member. We'll do everything that we can to ensure that his experiences are not interrupted or hampered by these policy changes, even if we have to act upon them as external activities. What this means for future young members organization-wide remains to be seen.
I hope that for other chapters, this doesn't turn into a, "Yeah, we're glad you're interested. Come back when you're 18." kind of moment. It will surely hamper youth involvement in local chapters.
Respectfully,
Chris
Christopher Owens (EAA #808438, VAA #723276)
Germantown, WI
Bearhawk Plans #991, Bearhawk Patrol Plans #P313
Chris, I admire your dedication. Congratulations.
You just hit the nail on the head. EAA is forcing many of the Youth Activities to be separated from EAA Activities. So how does that protect children? Yeah, I see how it protects the EAA legal folks when they can say the EAA didn't have anything to do with that activity; but again, how does this protect children?
There are solutions out there, mostly based in simple training and common sense guidelines, but corporate dictatorship of legalistic programs to volunteers doesn't work, and in my mind, makes me think Corporate EAA is clueless about their membership.
-Cub Builder
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