Last year Glenn Reynolds mentioned that a US Navy recruiter was apparently suffering adverse consequences for questioning what appeared to be an ill-considered, even illegal policy: A recruiting quota limitation that was racist in effect, if not in intent. I wrote then that I found the policy – and the seemingly associated consequences – difficult to understand:
I know the modern Navy well enough to know that, no matter how many problems we may have, institutional racism is not one of them…
(It’s) important to know that young officers can challenge what they believe to be – and what were later proved to be – illegal orders without fear of professional consequence.
Happily, the young recruiter’s career appears to be back on track:
LT (Jason) Hudson, who had been embroiled in a whistleblower and reprisal controversy since 2002, received notification on July 26, 2007, that a review board had recommended approval of his promotion to lieutenant commander. Despite an exemplary record, he had been denied promotion once before after registering a complaint about a problematic recruiting directive.
Hudson says that he is humbled by all the support he received. He’s now ready to continue his career in the U.S. Navy and in January 2008 will start his new assignment as officer-in-charge of a naval support group in Saratoga, N.Y. It will be his first command position, and he’s looking forward to the challenge.
“All I ever wanted was to do my job to the best of my ability,” he said. “This promotion and the new assignment give me the chance to do just that and to continue my development as an HR officer in the Navy. I am truly grateful for this opportunity.”
A person’s faith in anything – God, country, even an institution – can be shattered all at once. Building it back up again can be a laborious, stone by stone process. Doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. Just means that it’s hard.
We do hard every day.
My heart bleeds for this man. Igot a call about a year ago regarding my second son. I told the recruiter that if the 2nd son wanted to be in the Navy, he surely would be as the first son already was. This, of course, took the pressue off and the recruiter told me about his “real job” which was the patriot missle system in Israel…
The pride with which he spoke about this missle system was truly amazing.
We should keep in mind that recruiting is mostly a shore tour. A lot of these men think of it as a respite from being deployed.
Another proud moment for the Red, White and Blue!
“Hudson called a Vanderbilt classmate, Ross Booher, a former Navy attorney now with Bass Berry and Sims law firm in Nashville. He took the case without charge.”
We got Johnny Cochrans* now too, so the fix can be in for us all, if you have the money and/or the connections.
Americans do love their lawyers so.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cochran
“2008 will start his new assignment as officer-in-charge of a naval support group in Saratoga, N.Y.”
Welcome, neighbor! Other than a dysfunctional state government, you’re gonna love it here…
As I understand it, this is a good man who got wronged. The folks who made it right did so, but others made the man’s life unpleasant and it cost him in time, effort and salary.
I was glad to know it got fixed, but am still unhappy that the situation was so bad on the LT.
I hope he has a good time at the old stomping grounds of Saratoga…
did he get retro-active date of rank and back pay?
As someone who’s been in the job that this guy was in, I have to raise a flag on this. What the original story doesn’t tell the reader is that there are several alternate paths up the chain of command this LT had, and yet he apparently only brought his concerns to his CO’s attention. CO’s in recruiting are generally working outside their professional expertise (Aviator, SWO, etc.) and prefer not to make waves. There are professional recruiting officers at the Region and National level, not to mention CNRC Legal Officers, to whom he should have addressed his concerns before just deciding he was going to disobey a written order. I’m not saying he wasn’t ultimately right; it just sounds like he reacted foolishly.
I’m also a former EPO. I express no opinion on the above case. I will say that recruiting is like making sausage, you don’t want to see it. When I was in recruiting, for instance, we gave something called the OAR, officer aptitude rating, a passing score– for one group of candidates was 40, though to have any chance of being selected they needed a score in the mid 50’s– another group of candidates could score a 28 (If you answered very question wrong you scored a 20) and the Navy had established a prep school in Newport to boost this groups scores up to a 40, whereupon they would be welcomed to OCS. And another group of candidates had a officer designator just for them!On the enlisted side, one group of applicants was welcomed into the navy if they had a score at level IIIb, another group was ineligble with that score. also our recruiter incentive system (QIS) could give maximum points for one applicant and minmum for another even though they scored the same on the ASVAB. Not to mention that certain ratings were always, never, or only sometimes open to certain groups of candidates. This is not a defense of the above policy which the Navy was forced, correctly, to abandon. It is merely a note: if quotas and discrimination offend you, avoid recruiting duty.
General point: Whistleblowers are never perfect. That lack of perfection is no reason to discount the facts of what they’re whistleblowing about.
In this case as I understand it the man was wronged entirely disproportionately for any imperfection in going up his proper chain of command and he had a reprisal against him that would have sent him home as a civilian this year with a 2xFOS.
Mr. McLaughlin–your conclusion does bother me. Is perhaps the other answer to shine light on the practices and get them out in the open outside the small group? Relegating a job with potential wrongness to people who are comfortable with the wrongness isn’t good. If something needs explained, sure; we take the time to explain it. If it’s wrong, though, it’s wrong and needs fixed.
“If it’s wrong, though, it’s wrong and needs fixed.”
Take a job in the Recruiting Command and fix it, then.
Good luck.
What Mr. McLaughlin left out was that the discrimination is most often at the expense of males. Especially white males. And no one at CNRC (or in Congress, where these policies ultimately originate) is going to bat an eye at something like that.
Bingo