As many of you know, my daughter is a cadet in the local NJROTC unit. A short time ago my daughter returned from a color guard and was nearly in tears. I took the kids home and had to return to our store in town to complete some computer work that I had started earlier. My daughter asked if she could talk to me and I brought her back to town.
Apparently an issue that had been boiling for a few weeks in the unit had come to a head after the color guard on this particular evening. Some of the cadets were under the impression that a particular cadet was being unfairly favored over others. When the instructor was approached on this matter he apparently became fairly agitated and began a round of threats of firing various cadets from the jobs that they held, including some who were not even present at the event. At the end of this tirade the directive was issued that all cadets of chief and above were to be in the classroom the following morning at 0730, any cadet not present would lose their job and rank.
I asked my daughter to get in contact with some of the cadets and see if they would be willing to come and talk to me so I could get a feel for what was going on because I did not care for the way this was being handled at 8 pm in the evening.
Some cadets came to the store and explained that they did feel that there was some favoritism going on, there were also some disturbing stories about comments that the SNSI had made including a statement that "everyone should be issued 5 tags and be allowed to kill 5 people, if they kill more than that they should go to jail".
Cadets had also been told that if they had anything to do with the National Guard then they should stay out of the instructors way.
I was also told that there was a lot of name calling and generally abusive behaviour coming from the instructor. Many things that were supposedly going on I found a bit disturbing coming from a public high scool teacher, an NJROTC instuctor and a Naval Officer.
All in all 5 cadets came to the store and talked to me about this including my daughter.
I took all this with a grain of salt as I was only getting one side of the story and I decided to attend the meeting the next morning.
At the meeting the next morning I found that I was not the only parent who felt the need to attend the session, there were two other parents who attended other than myself, one arriving a few minutes after the meeting started.
The instructor started the meeting by having the cadets stand. He stated the he understood that there were some cadets who felt he was showing favoritism to some other cadets and one in particular. He had all of the students who believed he was playing favorites to move to the side of the room to his left and the ones who felt he was not playing favorites to move to his right. The room was fairly evenly split, some cadets were visibly uncomfortable with having to choose sides. I believe that some cadets chose the right side of the room based solely on the fact that the instructor was clearly angry and made no attempt to hide his anger at those who chose the seats to the left.
From the very beginning of the meeting the instuctor made many insulting and dinegrating comments and barely veiled threats. After a couple of minutes of lecturing on subversion and insubordination he decided to go around the room and let cadets say what they felt the favoritism and other problems were. On every occasion when a cadet on the left side of the room was talking, they were cut off and talked over.
The instructor at this time looked over to where the parents were sitting and said, "well do the parents have anything to add, do you want me run back to Arkansas?" he looked directly at me and I said "I'm basing my decisions on the attitudes in the room". The instructor tuned back to the cadets and said "Well my attitude is this" He went on to address the cadets on the left and tell them that they were and "elitest clique" who wanted no one to have a position if they were not a member of the "clique". He addressed my daughter and said that she had started the whole situation and that all of the trouble was her fault.
The instructor then let the cadets continue with airing their grievances.
One cadet stated that he felt the favoritism had been covered and he wanted to talk about something else. The instructor told him he wanted to hear about this cadets take on the favoritism and his tone of voice was far from congenial. The cadet was finally allowed to move to another subject and he brought up the "five tags" story I wrote about earlier. The instructor attempted to laugh this off by saying he was being facetious, he then addressed the cadet saying "you probably don't know what facetious means do you?" The cadets response was that he thought most of the cadets did not know what facetious meant and asked the cadets who did not know to raise their hands, the majority of the cadets raised their hands, only about 6 to 8 did not and there were approximately 20 or so cadets in the room. The instructor asked a cadet to define the term, the cadet attemted to do so explaining that it was a remark that was not meant to be taken seriously. She did not exlain the a facetious comment is ,by definition, supposed to be a humorous one.
At this time the instructor asked the cadet who brought up the "tag story" to continue. The cadet said he was finished speaking because this was going nowhere. The instructor told the cadet to be sure he was finished or "he may be more finished than he thought".
When the instuctor moved to the other side of the room he allowed all the the cadets to speak and only spoke over one cadet when she said that favoritism was going on but it was no big deal to her. The instuctor cut her off at this point and asked her if she was sitting on the "wrong" side. He made it a point to emphasize the word wrong. He also failed to note that this cadet along with one other came in late and sat on that particular side of the room because it was the closest to the door. They had come in after the division of the cadets had taken place.
At this time the instructor once again addressed me asking whose parent I was, I told him and he rolled his eyes and said "Ohhhh" while turning and returning to his desk he then said " You're just here to support your daughter and I appreciate that" I replied that "the sacasm and rude comments may work with the students but I won't put up with it, I'm here to support the unit because it was my unit before it was yours"
At this time the instructor dismissed the cadets because it was time to start the first class of the day. The instructor came over and addressed one of the other parents by saying " the reason your daughters are no longer in the unit is because they would not perform for me, they would do nothing I asked" The parent responded by saying " thats different from what you told me on the phone, is your story changing now?"
The instructor reponded by saying if the parent wanted to talk to him further he could contact the school office and make an appointment to see him. The parent said he wasn't going to make an appointment they could talk about it if there was another meeting, he turned to walk away and said "I'll see you later" over his shoulder, the instructor followed him and said "what did you say" when the parent repeated "I'll see you later" the instructor said "what do you mean by that, are making a threat to me?, I think you're making a threat" The conversation went downhill from there with the parent trying to leave and the instructor threatening to make a complaint about the man supposedly threatening him.
****I would appreciate any thoughts on this - There have been some follow-up conversations and I will re-cap them in other posts ********
