The Potential Fall of Varsity Brands

[keystone3ply]

Dealing with them for several years, here's my message for Varsity. 😁

 

 

[scheherazadesghost]

When I look at Varsity Performing Arts website, I don't see clear direct links to their sexual abuse training or their anti bullying training for drum corps... or really even what their role is. It appears they are truly a facilitator. Is that right? Am I late to the game here?

SafeSport has much clearer info about what they do. Looks like their "core" training is 90 minutes with the option for additional trainings. Is this what is offered to members and staff? If so, I don't think it's enough for staff, enough of whom don't have professional licenses or degrees to reinforce their qualifications... and still many do and it doesn't stop them from abusing members anyway. Isn't SafeSport also intended to be a mechanism for reporting abuse?

Without a professional license, but even with a terminal degree (didn't work in k12 directly), I did 20+ hours of training since I was an artistic/executive director and had already had a student disclose an instance of abuse to me. My training was with Stewards for Children/Darkness2 Light.

For me to feel safe about a future child joining this activity... I dunno. One staffer who misses the training or didn't take it seriously could so easily enable harm.. without being the harmers themselves. I had always hoped SafeSport was the first step, not the main solution. Based on my anti-racist/justice work, training alone is never enough. Thinking that it is has always been the real barrier.

I'm glad the members are getting something. But 90 min would not have given me enough info to stop what happened to me because it went all the way to the top. The staff needed to know what they were doing was wrong and there needed to be clear reprimands for their blatant misconduct. I wasn't the problem. Some of them probably still work in k12 with their professional licenses anyway...

Instead of reprimand, my harassers and abusers were all hired somewhere else in the activity, and continue with their happy little careers since like nothing happened. One even had the gal to approach me a few years back to give me praise... no acknowledgement of their abuse. All of them built their careers, in part, on my back and I've even heard one of them brag about 04 like it was theirs. Meanwhile, I'm the pariah despite my hard earned expertise and healing. Am I bitter? You bet.

I wish I had more brain space to digest the article on anti trust. I can say that I'm still deeply uncomfortable with naming names, so that matches the article to a t. Heaven bless the recent survivor out of Academy, they have way more chutzpah than me.

Edited September 13, 2022 by scheherazadesghost
typo

[Terri Schehr]

17 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

true, but they made the deal to get in bed with Varsity

You lay down with a dog and you get up with fleas.  I saw enough about Varsity on “Cheer” to cause me to raise an eyebrow.

[Jeff Ream]

2 hours ago, Terri Schehr said:

You lay down with a dog and you get up with fleas.  I saw enough about Varsity on “Cheer” to cause me to raise an eyebrow.

i have refused to watch it

[Terri Schehr]

1 hour ago, Jeff Ream said:

i have refused to watch it

It’s pretty nauseating. 

[Weaklefthand4ever]

On 9/13/2022 at 8:35 AM, scheherazadesghost said:

SafeSport has much clearer info about what they do. Looks like their "core" training is 90 minutes with the option for additional trainings. Is this what is offered to members and staff? If so, I don't think it's enough for staff, enough of whom don't have professional licenses or degrees to reinforce their qualifications... and still many do and it doesn't stop them from abusing members anyway. Isn't SafeSport also intended to be a mechanism for reporting abuse?

That's frightening if that's all that's offered to staff. The training I designed for 2022 for AGENT level employees for sexual harassment prevention is 2.5 hours. Then they have 2 hours of additional training on business laws and ethical conduct. STAFF level employees are closer to 9+ hours a year with an update usually in Q3. And we don't deal with people (even each other in many cases) face to face (thank you work at home universe.) 

There should be a universal training for these activities. There are too many people involved and too many different opinions of what needs to be trained from corps to corps. 

[scheherazadesghost]

12 minutes ago, Weaklefthand4ever said:

That's frightening if that's all that's offered to staff.

This screams at me as a potential transparency issue as well. If I were a parent or trusted educator/mentor sending a young person to the industry, how can I know that minimum standards in safety are being respected?

12 minutes ago, Weaklefthand4ever said:

The training I designed for 2022 for AGENT level employees for sexual harassment prevention is 2.5 hours. Then they have 2 hours of additional training on business laws and ethical conduct. STAFF level employees are closer to 9+ hours a year with an update usually in Q3. And we don't deal with people (even each other in many cases) face to face (thank you work at home universe.)

I'm ashamed to say how far I got in youth education before such training was ever even brought to my attention. Even 2.5 is minimal, but commendable in this world. Folks simply don't understand the extent to which violations reverberate in a survivor's life, let alone that many violations are preventable. That's not even getting into survivor support, which all educators should be adequately prepped for. Too many educators are mandated reporters and don't know it. 😞

12 minutes ago, Weaklefthand4ever said:

There should be a universal training for these activities. There are too many people involved and too many different opinions of what needs to be trained from corps to corps. 

Agreed. The variance is hugely problematic.

[IllianaLancerContra]

10 hours ago, Weaklefthand4ever said:

That's frightening if that's all that's offered to staff. The training I designed for 2022 for AGENT level employees for sexual harassment prevention is 2.5 hours. Then they have 2 hours of additional training on business laws and ethical conduct. STAFF level employees are closer to 9+ hours a year with an update usually in Q3. And we don't deal with people (even each other in many cases) face to face (thank you work at home universe.) 

There should be a universal training for these activities. There are too many people involved and too many different opinions of what needs to be trained from corps to corps. 

Yes to universal training.  
But, as you are in the training business, perhaps you can shed some light on a question that comes to mind:  How often is the ‘anti-abuse’ training (for lack of a better term) updated?  Seems to me that as as staff learn what to watch for, then the perpetrators will find a way to work around it - thus requiring staff to need to watch for new stuff.  So the training needs to be continuously updated.  And it must be somewhat soul-crushing to be the person who repeatedly has to figure out what needs to be added to the training.   

[Weaklefthand4ever]

7 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

Yes to universal training.  
But, as you are in the training business, perhaps you can shed some light on a question that comes to mind:  How often is the ‘anti-abuse’ training (for lack of a better term) updated?  Seems to me that as as staff learn what to watch for, then the perpetrators will find a way to work around it - thus requiring staff to need to watch for new stuff.  So the training needs to be continuously updated.  And it must be somewhat soul-crushing to be the person who repeatedly has to figure out what needs to be added to the training.   

That...is an EXCELLENT question! So here is essentially the way that it works. Throughout the year, specific representatives of the legal staff and HR (or People Solutions or whatever your company calls their HR department,) meet to discuss changes to laws, current trends (be it in cyber security or upticks in certain forms of abuse, etc.) As you pointed out, as the landscape changes (especially now that virtual training and work is a thing,) and keeping up with new challenges is much more in depth now than in the past. 

The information on necessary changes is brought through the legal team and then proposed changes are put into a change log. The Instructional Design Team then meets with legal and HR and we implement the changes. There may be several re-writes through Q1 and Q2 before release in Q3. We also have the option to create additional training "on the fly" and post it out globally. 

Every employee is put into our Learning Management System (LMS) and automatically enrolled in the training with a start and end date. New employees take the required courses during orientation. Tenured employees will begin taking the courses when their open dates come up and we track weekly who has taken and not taken the courses. If an employee does not take the course work, they will be subject to dismissal for non-compliance. 

Soul crushing is one way to put it LOL. In some ways, it makes you shake your head in disbelief that people do the things they do. I tell folks all the time, "There wouldn't be a rule if someone hadn't tried it." 

[Jeff Ream]

21 minutes ago, Weaklefthand4ever said:

That...is an EXCELLENT question! So here is essentially the way that it works. Throughout the year, specific representatives of the legal staff and HR (or People Solutions or whatever your company calls their HR department,) meet to discuss changes to laws, current trends (be it in cyber security or upticks in certain forms of abuse, etc.) As you pointed out, as the landscape changes (especially now that virtual training and work is a thing,) and keeping up with new challenges is much more in depth now than in the past. 

The information on necessary changes is brought through the legal team and then proposed changes are put into a change log. The Instructional Design Team then meets with legal and HR and we implement the changes. There may be several re-writes through Q1 and Q2 before release in Q3. We also have the option to create additional training "on the fly" and post it out globally. 

Every employee is put into our Learning Management System (LMS) and automatically enrolled in the training with a start and end date. New employees take the required courses during orientation. Tenured employees will begin taking the courses when their open dates come up and we track weekly who has taken and not taken the courses. If an employee does not take the course work, they will be subject to dismissal for non-compliance. 

Soul crushing is one way to put it LOL. In some ways, it makes you shake your head in disbelief that people do the things they do. I tell folks all the time, "There wouldn't be a rule if someone hadn't tried it." 

i work in the financial world, and every quarter new trainings drop on ways to spot financial abuse in its ever growing shapes and sizes. as i take these trainings i am amazed at the ways people have figured out to commit financial crimes from fraud to elder or dependent abuse. but at least we continue to update and alert all. i am sure legal has an entire team devoted just to this topic