NACD Instructor standards violation

[nimoh]

I find it very laughable and an embarrassment to the NACD. It seems to me that this is highly political and I seriously doubt if any instructor was held to these standards that we would not have any cave instructors left in any organization. It seems to me that if they wanted him gone they could have just called and said so. I can't imagine anyone wanting to volunteer their time and energy for an organization that doesn't appreciate them. I think it would have also saved the NACD from getting a black eye. It was a very interesting read and is truly sad for the NACD that they have a BOD that is this incompetent.

I doubt it too. I don't see how holding one instructor to the standards would affect all instructors

 

[bamafan]

If the standards stay a formal complaint has to be filed in order to investigate, how can they proceed? I'm not saying it's right, but they have to follow their by-laws....

Rick and others on the BOD know that this has occured on many different occasions by many different NACD instructors. There is nothing preventing one of them from filing a complaint. It is selective enforcement. As long as you are in the clique you don't have anything to worry about. Heck I have heard about Larry Green teaching a cave class and only going to Ginnie, not doing enough dives for the class and even not doing valve drills in the class. It is all political and no matter how Rick tries to spin it nothing will change that fact. The NACD is definitely not a professional organization and after reading his ramblings I don't know why anyone would want to be involved with this agency. Hopefully things will change but I seriously doubt they will.

 

[karstdvr]

Heck I have heard about Larry Green teaching a cave class and only going to Ginnie,.

FWIW, the multiple site rule is waived when there is a lot of flooding of the rivers

 

[victorzamora]

Rick and others on the BOD know that this has occured on many different occasions by many different NACD instructors. There is nothing preventing one of them from filing a complaint. It is selective enforcement. As long as you are in the clique you don't have anything to worry about. Heck I have heard about Larry Green teaching a cave class and only going to Ginnie, not doing enough dives for the class and even not doing valve drills in the class. It is all political and no matter how Rick tries to spin it nothing will change that fact. The NACD is definitely not a professional organization and after reading his ramblings I don't know why anyone would want to be involved with this agency. Hopefully things will change but I seriously doubt they will.

Then submit a complaint. If you've heard of all of these standards violations, and the proof is all over these forums, then file the complaint yourself. If the BOD starts actively filing complaints, don't you think the Mike O'Leary fans will be just as furious as the Neto fans are right now? What about the rest of the membership?

I think it's funny how this thread went from "Well, it was just one incident in OG" to "Yeah there were a bunch, but at least one of those might not be completely true" to "So RN was violating standards, but so were Larry Green and Mike O'Leary!"

 

[Bennno]

Then submit a complaint. If you've heard of all of these standards violations...

Yeah, but maybe he's not into witch-hunting.
Don't you think it's a little fishy that Rick doesn't what to say whether the accusers were fellow NACD instructors/BOD members who took these courses, that were breaking training standards?
They might be witches too Victor.

 

[GDI]

First of all, as a member of the NACD I am completely appalled by the fact that you choose to share your dirty laundry with the membership and now with the public. Maybe having two lawyers work pro bono makes you think this is a good idea?

As to your claim above, I will say right now that this is not true and I know this for a fact.

Actually at the time the court summons were delivered, and weeks prior to that, I was staying at the house the papers were delivered to.
Let me tell you that they were not posted on the door, I was the one who received them directly from the server and handed them over to the defendant the same day.
This was also the first time I saw the server (or anyone representing the Sheriff) and I was there daily except during dives.

Now for the very important part that you chose not to mention. By the time these papers were served, the NACD property had already been delivered to the NACD in High Springs at the cost of the former TD. There are numerous witnesses that will confirm that the property was handed over to the NACD general manager who in turn, so I was told, handed it over to Larry Green.
In the light of that, the BOD decided to uphold that court hearing knowing that it was already in possession of their property, wasting members (and possibly taxpayers) money in the process.

Most of your remaining text is impossible for us to verify. But given your history of dealing with the truth and purposely choosing to ignore (or not reveal) very important aspects of it, I am doubtful that the rest of your account is anything close to truthful.



So basically you are saying that, in the case of RN, you felt compelled to act upon the alleged standards violations by pulling the most dubious ones out of the a**** of your own board and committee members.
And on the other hand, in the clear cut case of Mike O'Leary and Larry Green, you choose not to do anything even though the information has been laid out in front of you?
This is astonishing since YOU were the one bragging on this very forum that you wanted to do housekeeping and felt that you had to remove bad apples from your instructor roster.

All these docs are now part of the public domain, NACD members as part of a communication and transparency plan have been informed and sent copies.

It appears the process server attempted several deliveries and according to the last entry "Posted"

SO how is it you were handed the summons again?

 

[nakatomi]

It appears the process server attempted several deliveries and according to the last entry "Posted"

SO how is it you were handed the summons again?

Call him and ask him about it, he will remember me. He didn't have anything to write my name down and I usually don't carry business cards on my dive trips. So it seems as if he took the easy route and just wrote "posted".
Maybe I should have given him one of my NACD cards, since chances are I will be too ashamed to ever put them in my dashboard again.

 

[ucfdiver]

If the standards stay a formal complaint has to be filed in order to investigate, how can they proceed? I'm not saying it's right, but they have to follow their by-laws....

Oh I don't know, someone on the BOD who's interested in enforcing these standards could file a formal complaint fairly easily, and get the investigation started?

If I posted "out at xyz bar getting smashed with Joe Smith the trucker before his cross country drive", I would certainly expect the trucking company to reach out to me and initiate an investigation.

 

[nakatomi]

I think it's funny how this thread went from "Well, it was just one incident in OG" to "Yeah there were a bunch, but at least one of those might not be completely true" to "So RN was violating standards, but so were Larry Green and Mike O'Leary!"

No, there are not "a bunch of incidents."

To summarize, here are the allegations against the former TD.

1. the lower orange grove class (no dates, no details on the students)

This specific allegation we already talked about on this thread in great detail.
Many people are ok with it, others are not. We have no evidence whatsoever that it is against the standards of any of the agencies the class was taught under.
If you ask me, it is not even in violation of the NACD standards.
As to Mike O'Leary (and others) teaching the exact same thing.
My personal opinion is, Mike O'Leary did well in teaching what he did.
Kudos to him!
Apparently he teaches advanced and serious cave diving classes for students who know what they are doing. More power to him!

2. the Twin Caves "silting" episode

This allegation is from 2012. The NACD complaint says the floor of the cave was touched and damaged during a class, which is not true. The sediment, in this case the floor of the Subway tunnel at Twin was disturbed by carefully fanning with a hand "over" it, not by touching.
For all we know this is not against the NACD standards.
And again we have no dates or details and do not know if this even happened in an NACD class.

3. Several funny allegations regarding one and the same (cave) Sidemount class.

These reports are concerning four students learning how to cave sidemount with RN in late 2011 or early 2012.
Three of them were actually cave instructors at the time, two of them are or were on the board of directors of the NACD and actually cave instructors for the NACD. Student number three is in charge of the NACD membership.
Student number four is another cave instructor who is not listed as a witness. Please allow me to express my blessings at this point for his common sense.
Sounds like a pretty high profile group of people in the class, doesn't it?

Anyway, to summarize the allegations surrounding this sidemount class. Apparently three of the guys taking part now feel that they damaged the cave during the class (duuuhhh!).
And who do they blame for it? Of course their instructor who "ordered" them into these tight spots.
They also seem realize, three years after the class, that they were mistakenly told it was an "advanced sidemount" class, which seems to be a no go since the NACD has no such "advanced" class.
What they may not realize is that other agencies do consider the cave sidemount/no mount class to be "advanced".
This about sums it up, although I think they may have generated an additional allegation or so out of the "not so advanced" SM class.
Oh yes, and there is video proof of this class on Vimeo.

4. Allegation number four is about the former TD allegedly teaching a class while using a rebreather, his students being in another configuration

This report is based on a picture supposedly posted by the former TD on Facebook. Sadly the picture was not included in the papers. We also do not know what type of class this may have been, if it was a class at all. Of course we have no dates, witnesses, nor the standards for that class or any other useful information.
As a result, this allegation is even more useless than the others.

What we end up having here, is a bunch of highly questionable accusations that look like someone was desperately trying to assemble just about anything to serve the purpose.

 

[bamafan]

Call him and ask him about it, he will remember me. He didn't have anything to write my name down and I usually don't carry business cards on my dive trips. So it seems as if he took the easy route and just wrote "posted".Maybe I should have given him one of my NACD cards, since chances are I will be too ashamed to ever put them in my dashboard again.

Oliver, weren't you staying at Rob's hostel? If you were it is no wonder they are claiming Rob was dodging them. He doesn't even live there so he would hardly be there at all. You would think they would have used his home address instead of some rental property that isn't occupied permanently. I guess that explains a lot.