{"id":136121,"date":"2023-01-18T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=136121"},"modified":"2023-01-17T19:22:36","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T00:22:36","slug":"ft-gordon-youth-challenge-academy-class-cancelled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=136121","title":{"rendered":"Ft. Gordon Youth Challenge Academy class cancelled"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Military.com<\/a> reports that on the third day of a youth academy\u00a0 sponsiored by the Georgia Guard, things got a bit out of hand last October:<\/p>\n

A massive brawl broke out on a parade ground at\u00a0Fort Gordon<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Augusta\u00a0one afternoon last fall, when about 70 teenage recruits of the Georgia National Guard\u2019s\u00a0Youth Challenge Academy\u00a0slugged it out. Some used homemade weapons, including metal shanks, crudely sharpened toothbrushes and tube socks filled with metal padlocks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tube socks? Really?<\/p>\n

Within 24 hours of the brawl, a second melee involving more than two dozen teenagers broke out in one of the barracks and senior military leaders shut down the five-month boot camp in its first week, sending all 170 cadets home and barring them from\u00a0Fort Gordon\u00a0for a year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution lays the blame on the program administrators (who, it should be noted, blame the out of control kids.)<\/p>\n

Leaders rushing to meet a new enrollment quota last fall skipped their normal vetting process. That led to a failure to properly screen recruits for behavioral and mental health challenges, leaving the program\u2019s small staff with the task of dealing with uncooperative and violent youths who were only later determined to be \u201chigh-risk\u201d candidates, the AJC investigation found.<\/p>\n

Problems with the\u00a0Fort Gordon\u00a0camp began immediately when large numbers of unscreened applicants showed up at a public park pavilion in\u00a0Martinez\u00a0for orientation on\u00a0Oct. 10, creating confusion, long lines and delays.<\/p>\n

Lines snaked out of the building as parents tried to fill out forms and students had their bags inspected for contraband.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe word of the day describing the intake process was: chaos,\u201d staffers wrote in an after-action review obtained via open records request.<\/p>\n

Camp Director Jarvise Reid later said she had orders to increase the number of applicants, even if it meant not screening until they got on campus. In an\u00a0Oct. 25\u00a0email to\u00a0Wallace Steinbrecher, state director of the\u00a0Youth Challenge Academy, Reid said that meant they let students in without reviewing \u201ccritical documents\u201d about their backgrounds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now this is starting to sound like an old, old song. Maybe it should be entitled SSDD?<\/p>\n

Fort Gordon\u2019s YCA program has had its own history of trouble, the AJC has learned. Incident reports for the past two years detail massive fights, violent outbursts and serious mental health issues among cadets requiring the intervention of military police, ambulances or both, including:<\/p>\n