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Originally Posted by Brian Beatty
I am adamantly opposed to mentor background checks. As Ben Franklin said, "If people are willing to trade a little bit of freedom for a little more safety, then they don't deserve freedom or safety". As already stated, who decides what is acceptable and unacceptable? What are the "criteria"? What about someone that smokes cigarettes, isn't that a bad influence? If sex offenders are their concern, then go look then go match the mentor list to the public list and be done with it. I know I will pass the check, but many people here are missing the point.
Most people connected with FIRST are idealists to some extent trying to make the world a better place. This for me is a big step backward. I will not voluntarily submit to a background check and if some "authority-whoever that is" asks me to leave, then so be it.
Sincerely,
Brian Beatty
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Brian...
You brought up the spectre of Benjamin Franklin...and I wish I had done so myself. It sets up a much more cogent argument than the frog analogy that I used in an earlier post.
I'm surprised, shocked, disappointed that FIRST (everybody happy I didn't call it US FIRST?) hasn't been paying attention to this forum and at least attempt to put our concerns to rest.
My father was an elementary school teacher for well over 20 years (second career) during which he became a union rep for his district. During those years I recall him having to help teachers that were accused by students of improprieties. Sometimes they were valid and the teachers were deep sixed, other times the teachers were accused by troubled students who fabricated incidents. In either case, I'm sure that in both cases these teachers had been through a background investigation process. It doesn't matter...maybe we need to get the "pre-cogs" taking a peek at our souls.
In the past years, I have encouraged our mentors to avoid the pitfalls mentioned by FIRST in some of their documentation which deals with student contact. Don't put yourself into a situation where you can be accused of doing something wrong. We don't drive students home...we don't work one on one with students behind closed doors....we police ourselves and expect the school adminstrators to back us up.
Our team's dilemma is this...the overwhelming majority of our team's mentors are Dept of Defense civilian and military employees. We already have been through a much more thorough process that has granted us the appropriate levels of security clearance. These investigations delve deeply into our pasts and the fact that we're still employed, doing good things for the country and FIRST (see, I am trainable) should be proof enough that we're worthy of working with our team's students. I am deeply disturbed that FIRST and even some of the folks with the counter viewpoint are trying to use the "what do you have to hide?" argument to twist arms in order to comply.
I, along with my team of highly effective mentors, have nothing to hide but having polled the troops they feel like this invasion of privacy isn't worth it. We'd like to continue our association with FIRST and our team, but I believe we've had a line in the sand drawn in front of the door. Unless something "gives" here, we have no option other than to walk across it.
See y'all on the high ground.
Jim