New CPP Codified - Updated 52-10

[lordmonar]

From Ned:

...and the regulation does not suggest or permit some cadets to be denied a CAP activity simply because of their gender.  Indeed, discrimination based on gender alone would be a violation of other CAP policies and regulation.

Our policy on the effective date of the revised regulation, is that all overnight coed activities have coed supervision.  This means that units that do not have senior staff (to include CSMs) of both genders have nearly six months to recruit and train the necessary senior members.

And if you cannot find coed supervision, then you have to suspend or cancel an activity. That to me is "suggesting or permit[ing] some cadets to be denied a CAP activity simply because of their gender." Being male.

Only if you offered the program to just the girls.    Yes, it sucks.   But that is the way it is.   If you offer a program to the boys you have to either include the girls or you have to offer separate but equal programs to the girls.

If you can't.....you can't offer it to anyone.

[NIN]

Poor Enid, the 65 year old orientation pilot at encampment. She was trapped against her will, couldn't go anywhere, leave base or go to the BX because Tammy, the female TAC officer, was in town on a soda run.

[EMT-83]

Is the female SM required for the entire activity, or just the overnight portion?

[Storm Chaser]

So if a unit has 20 male cadets and 1 female cadet, they should cancel overnight activities every time a female senior member is not available, cancels at the last minute or has to leave mid activity because of an unforeseen issue? That seems like reverse discrimination to me.

[EMT-83]

^ Reverse of what?

[Storm Chaser]

Meaning, we would be discriminating against the male cadets.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for same gender supervision during overnight activities. I would just have a hard time canceling an activity because the one female senior member is no longer available.

[coudano]

well even more amusing,
suppose you have two moms one is an active member and the other is a csm
they are moms of male cadets

can't do an overnight activity with those two as the senior members, with male cadets present
--even if the only two males there are THEIR boys
muah

[Eclipse]

A lot of units have >only< female leaders, especially
cadet units, or are led by male parents of female cadets.

The ramifications of this were not properly considered, or this was
inserted by someone unfamiliar with the practical realities of unit operations and
demographics.

Worse, this won't be a weekly issue, it will be an issue with the very activities
which are hardest to plan and which we are constantly trying to get members
more involved in.

Putting policies in place which encourage negative peer pressure towards female
cadet membership defeat their own purposes.

[Ed Bos]

FWIW, I spoke with General Carr on this issue, and the regulation does not suggest or permit some cadets to be denied a CAP activity simply because of their gender.  Indeed, discrimination based on gender alone would be a violation of other CAP policies and regulation.

Our policy on the effective date of the revised regulation, is that all overnight coed activities have coed supervision.  This means that units that do not have senior staff (to include CSMs) of both genders have nearly six months to recruit and train the necessary senior members.

CP officers treat each other and the cadets in a professional manner, while leading, challenging, and mentoring our cadets.  I'm having trouble imagining how the adjective "motherly" could ever be applied to a CP officer.

Nice to see that the ramifications of reinstating this requirement were discussed at the highest echelon... But why was this even an issue?

I can only assume there were reasons why we (the Civil Air Patrol) eliminated discriminating based on the sex of leadership and participants years ago. Why are we reinstating this policy?

Personally, I find such a policy distateful and fraught with the potential for mismanagement...

"Mrs. Parent, we'd like your to join our squadron. We may or may not have a job or responsibilities you're interested in, but you're a woman and that's what we need so someone's daughter can stay overnight at activities."

"Cadet Isagirl, since you're over 18 and we can't find any Senior Member females to supervise at the upcoming overnight activity, so we want you to consider transferring to Senior Member status so we don't have to cancel the activity."

"Well, as the Membership Committee, we have some reservations about accepting Ms. Smith as a new member, but she's a woman and we have a quota now, so we may have to overlook them in order to have overnight activities that all of our cadets can participate in."

Saying, "just recruit some moms as Cadet Sponsor Members," is a non-solution to a problem that we've just created for ourselves. Even if we did so, this doesn't make cadets any more "protected" or necessarily add capacity to pursuing the Civil Air Patrol's chartered missions.

[coudano]

Or how about this one,

mySquadron has maybe 6 male senior members who will go do cadet activities
and 1 female senior member (the wife of one of the males)

So the 6 dudes split up the squadron activities, each one doing 4 a year.
Current/old rules, these guys alone can do 12 activities a year.
A decent op tempo, and not too taxing on anybody...

On the new rules, the female has to do 12 activities a year.
While the male senior members can now cut back to 2 a year.
cool for the dudes...  i'll bet we burn her out in six months...


I mean sure, "go recruit more female senior members"
but uh,
well, easier said than done.
if we had the foggiest clue how to recruit senior members in the first place, these sorts of things would probably not be issues at all.

[Spaceman3750]

This will be interesting for NESA... There wasn't a single female SM staff member last year at AGSAR. There was one student, but I would call that a fluke. Does husker cancel that school next year? Do we have to convince a logistics or transportation female staff member to come sleep in the woods with us?

[Tim Day]

I was very impressed with the coordination process leading up to this. How the co-ed rule got added separately from that process is a disappointment.

I would really like to see addressed a scenario of what we do when the one female adult leader signed up for an overnight at a reserved camp site for which we have 10 male cadets and 4 female cadets signed up has to cancel.

Cancelling the activity as now appears required will result in lost opportunities for cadets of both genders, not to mention loss of any deposits.

This also seems to place extra pressure on female senior members as well.

[a2capt]

I guess after all those years of hearing it, someone figured they might as well write it up..  because it wasn't true previously.

[Ed Bos]

I guess after all those years of hearing it, someone figured they might as well write it up..  because it wasn't true previously.

I recall being told, when I joined over a decade ago, that this had been a written policy 15+ years prior... But you're right in that it certainly hasn't been required for a long time.

[Alaric]

Is the following only for during CAP events?  Two friends who are also CAP cadets can no longer meet alone?  Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  They should really have added during official activities as they did for the adult mentoring conversations to clarify. 

f. Semi-Private Discussions. Adult leaders who need to mentor or counsel cadets individually during official activities should do so in the presence of a third person when reasonably possible. Alternatively, one-on-one meetings are permitted if conducted in a semi-open setting (e.g. office door kept ajar, or conversing away from, but in sight of, the group, or other circumstances). Cadets are prohibited from meeting one-on-one in a closed environment; an adult leader must be present or other arrangements must be made to minimize the risk of misconduct, such as keeping the door fully open, for example.

Does this mean I can't give my godchildren gifts if they join CAP?  Before everyone jumps on the "previous relationship" bandwagon, my point is the policy says what is says as opposed to what they may have meant.

i. Favoritism & Gifts. Favoritism is to be avoided as much as is reasonably possible. Adult leaders are expected to make a good faith effort to avoid favoritism and to support each individual cadet in their sphere of responsibility with an appropriate amount of individualized attention. Further, adult leaders will not bestow gifts upon cadets. Adult leaders wishing to provide financial support to an individual cadet will do so via a donation through the unit and in a manner that keeps the donor's identity unknown to the cadet.

[NIN]

I guess after all those years of hearing it, someone figured they might as well write it up..  because it wasn't true previously.

I recall being told, when I joined over a decade ago, that this had been a written policy 15+ years prior... But you're right in that it certainly hasn't been required for a long time.

It was never a national-level policy going back at least 25 years that I can remember (taught it as a Level I/CPPT instructor in the early 1990s). I will stipulate that my memory is getting a lot worse these days

No, that gender specific policy only ever reared its ugly head when someone at a lower level (squadrons, usually) decided that their particular level of discomfort with not having an adult female along overrode good sense and the regulation as written.

If I had a buck for the number of times I had to squash that kind of "Well, the regulation says..." around this particular issue, I'd have had a LOT of dollars.  I'd whip out the regulation and say "Can you please show me where the regulation says that?" and then they'd go off on a tangent about what they felt was appropriate behavior and how they can't face parents and blah, blah, blah...

Have I run co-ed activities where there were no female seniors? Yep. As far as I know, nobody had any trouble with it.  Heck, I think we took 2 whole vanloads of cadets to Washington DC one year with 4 male seniors and at least 2 female cadets.  "Here you go, cadets, your barracks is over here.. Our barracks is over there. If there is a problem, I'm billeted in this room, come beat on the door if you need to.  If we need you folks, we'll come beat on your doors.. Mmmkay?"  (pre-cell phone, that should tell you how long ago this was!)

Would it be my personal preference to have a female senior member on an over night when we have female cadets? Oh, heck yeah.  BUT, I'm not going to cancel a small wing's summer encampment because the only female senior we could get could only be at encampment for 3 or 4 days out of 8, especially when the regulation didn't say I had to.

[Maj Daniel Sauerwein]

i. Favoritism & Gifts. Favoritism is to be avoided as much as is reasonably possible. Adult leaders are expected to make a good faith effort to avoid favoritism and to support each individual cadet in their sphere of responsibility with an appropriate amount of individualized attention. Further, adult leaders will not bestow gifts upon cadets. Adult leaders wishing to provide financial support to an individual cadet will do so via a donation through the unit and in a manner that keeps the donor's identity unknown to the cadet.

Emphasizing the bold statement, does this mean that recognizing a cadet for reaching a certain milestone (Mitchell, etc.), or for doing outstanding work, by giving them a challenge coin is forbidden after 1 October?

I understand the intent of the section as written, but if all cadets have the opportunity to someday receive a challenge coin to further recognize their hard work and achievement, this segment of the regulation seems too much.

I guess ordering these from Vanguard will be unnecessary soon.

http://www.vanguardmil.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_422_2222&products_id=15148

http://www.vanguardmil.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_422_2222&products_id=15096

[lordmonar]

i. Favoritism & Gifts. Favoritism is to be avoided as much as is reasonably possible. Adult leaders are expected to make a good faith effort to avoid favoritism and to support each individual cadet in their sphere of responsibility with an appropriate amount of individualized attention. Further, adult leaders will not bestow gifts upon cadets. Adult leaders wishing to provide financial support to an individual cadet will do so via a donation through the unit and in a manner that keeps the donor's identity unknown to the cadet.

Emphasizing the bold statement, does this mean that recognizing a cadet for reaching a certain milestone (Mitchell, etc.), or for doing outstanding work, by giving them a challenge coin is forbidden after 1 October?

I understand the intent of the section as written, but if all cadets have the opportunity to someday receive a challenge coin to further recognize their hard work and achievement, this segment of the regulation seems too much.

I guess ordering these from Vanguard will be unnecessary soon.

http://www.vanguardmil.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_422_2222&products_id=15148

http://www.vanguardmil.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_422_2222&products_id=15096

You missed the next sentence.    Adult Leaders can't bestow gifts.......but the unit can.

[Panache]

Only if you offered the program to just the girls.    Yes, it sucks.   But that is the way it is.   If you offer a program to the boys you have to either include the girls or you have to offer separate but equal programs to the girls.

If you can't.....you can't offer it to anyone.

"Sorry guys, I know we've be planning this activity for six months now and everybody was excited to go, but Lt. Lady broke her ankle last night so she can't go.  That means we have no female Senior Members available, so we have to cancel.  Sorry."

(All the cadets in the squadron stare at Cadet Isagirl.)

Yeah, this won't make any problems at all.  Nope.

[Maj Daniel Sauerwein]

i. Favoritism & Gifts. Favoritism is to be avoided as much as is reasonably possible. Adult leaders are expected to make a good faith effort to avoid favoritism and to support each individual cadet in their sphere of responsibility with an appropriate amount of individualized attention. Further, adult leaders will not bestow gifts upon cadets. Adult leaders wishing to provide financial support to an individual cadet will do so via a donation through the unit and in a manner that keeps the donor's identity unknown to the cadet.

Emphasizing the bold statement, does this mean that recognizing a cadet for reaching a certain milestone (Mitchell, etc.), or for doing outstanding work, by giving them a challenge coin is forbidden after 1 October?

I understand the intent of the section as written, but if all cadets have the opportunity to someday receive a challenge coin to further recognize their hard work and achievement, this segment of the regulation seems too much.

I guess ordering these from Vanguard will be unnecessary soon.

http://www.vanguardmil.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_422_2222&products_id=15148

http://www.vanguardmil.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_422_2222&products_id=15096

You missed the next sentence.    Adult Leaders can't bestow gifts.......but the unit can.

Good point. I guess I was looking at it from the standpoint of me, as Commander, or my DCC, bestowing a coin on a cadet, as our way of recognizing them as their leaders, but I guess it could still, even it that circumstance, be from the unit, as we represent the unit.