FIRST Youth Protection Program

[g_sawchuk]

Firstly, thank you to FIRST for applying this rule. Although the chance of having a mentor as an offender tends to be rather unlikely, the rule will indeed be beneficial when an offender wants to mentor a team for the wrong reasons. However, I personally feel like all mentors should have to undergo a criminal record check. For one thing, just making the lead mentors get a criminal record check is unfair. Plus, when anyone volunteers somewhere with kids they have to get a criminal record check. Why shouldn't everyone mentoring FIRST teams have to get a check as well? Any offender as a mentor (lead or not) could pose a threat to the youth on the team, and it is best to be safe instead of sorry.