Bullying or hazing or what?

My son will be heading to ROTC next fall. He, however, is currently a C/Major in the Civil Air Patrol and on the leadership side of training cadets. Learning to lead. I feel for you as a mom. It is sooo hard seeing our kids hurt. I feel like your son learned two lessons...1)To stay on top of his grooming and 2)How not to be an effective leader. I say the latter somewhat conditionally. Rewarding in public and correcting in private is an effective and more positive leadership tool. Humiliating someone...even when they are in the wrong doesn't build respect or trust. So maybe your son leads differently when put in the same situation.

The caveate...from an enlisted Army wife's perspective.... All of the strict rules and regulations of the military exist for a reason. From the grooming to the schedules to the protocols and everything in between...there is a purpose. Above and beyond that purpose is to protect and defend while bringing every single member of the unit home safe and sound.

Life in the service is hard. If your son won't stay on top of his grooming, will he stay on top of the care and inventory of weapons? Also, in the battlefield, there is not time to do things twice...it literally could cost lives. Following the rules and doing your best the first time is the best chance of everyone coming home safely.

2LT's are notoriously referred to as "Butter Bars" in the Army. Why? They are nice and shiny and new...they are in charge of enlisted soldiers who may have seen combat not infrequently...and they think they know everything. The enlisted soldier is sworn to uphold the orders given by that 2Lt...even if it is the wrong decision. All the lessons learned will help strengthen and maybe weed out leaders vs. those that may not be the best fit for the position. Officers need to lead by example. Trust is so important. And equally as important is learning to listen to those ranking below you.

A new 2LT once led my husband's unit on an 18-hour convoy driving in circles...this was before smartphones...all because he was lost and refused to ask for help. Instead he berated those around him and continued to assume he was the 2LT and was in the right. How does this correlate? Rules and protocols. Trust and respect. Imagine if this was in the middle of Afghanistan during the war. The entire convoy most likely would not have returned home.

It feels like ALOT when they are in the middle of it. But as people mentioned above, making the correction, not taking it personally, learning so he doesn't repeat the error and moving on is the best way to look at this experience. Easier said than done, for sure!!! I am already trying to prepare my son for this.

So although correcting in private is 100% the best way to go to earn trust and respect. It is equally important to follow protocol correctly the first time knowing that on the battlefield, there is no time to be nice and loud in your face corrections need to be listened to and adhered to the first time or someone...or everyone could lose their lives.

I honestly worry about the sensitivity of this with my son. He strives to do things right and I have no doubt I will get a phone call at some point with him upset and maybe even in tears. The reality is that I want him to learn these hard lessons now...even if it hurts in the moment...because I want him and everyone he leads to come home safely.

Kudos to you for reaching out to learn. And kudos for raising a son who will reach out when he needs to.

Hope this made sense.
 
As a college professor, I constantly stress to my students the importance of attention to detail. They know my obsession with the story of Van Halen and the brown M&Ms (look it up). As a famous college football coach said, “If we can’t trust you with the little things, why should we trust you with the big things?”
 
kinnem said:
First, let your son handle it.

Second, while you could be right, you don't know it's bullying. He may have used your son as an example to educate the other violators.

My DS was "educated" on something recently by his Commanding General, in the presence of several other junior officers. DS felt pretty stupid when he realized he had put his foot in his mouth. Later, when the CG was alone with DS, he explained that he was doing just that, using a teaching moment to educate the group. He also told DS, "We're OK "

In any case, your DS better clean up his grooming. He should use this s motivation, which may be how it was intended

Just one man's two cents. None of us on the forums will ever know for sure.
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Tough but you gotta let him handle it. One way to look at is if a group were messing up, the MSG could have thought your son was the one who could handle the tongue lashing to educate the whole group. I know that sounds crazy, but I coach kids and you know the ones who can take it and the ones who will dissolve and you sometimes use those tougher kids to get your points across.

Keep your ears open and let him vent. But this is a different culture and give command the benefit of the doubt til you know more.
 
There are two ways people learn:

-Repetition
-Significant emotional events

It's OK to make a mistake in the Army, but it's not OK to make the same mistake twice.

I can personally tell you that individual soldier discipline takes you a very long way. Showing up early, shaven, in the right uniform, and being loud and motivated is 90% of what it takes to make the next rank. Seriously, if you do all that you will make colonel.

The way I could see this becoming an issue is if it happened repeatedly (then it's an issue with the soldier) or if it continues to happen despite your DS not being out of regulation (then it's a problem with the cadre.)

I hate shaving before I workout, and shaving in the field. But, thems the rules.
 
Plebe summer the detailers didn't let us use the 5th basic response of "sir no excuse sir," instead we rated "sir I lack what it takes," usually having to yell it over and over until it was time to leave for an evolution. When someone messed up, they'd make that person stand up and drop the entire rest of the company and we'd chant "thank you mr ___" while we made eye contact with them. A normal punishment seems to be singling one person out and trying to pit everyone else against them. Nothing personal just the common way to go about it
 
navy27hopeful said:
A normal punishment seems to be singling one person out and trying to pit everyone else against them. Nothing personal just the common way to go about it
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Another way to look at it is that one person’s transgressions can affect the whole unit — that one person can be accountable for the consequences faced by others. In other words, much like the leadership role held by officers. When you screw up, it doesn’t just impact you — it impacts those who report to you. That’s why it’s called the “burden of leadership.”
 
When my DD runs into mysterious or unexpected leadership moves like this I remind her that in addition to becoming a proper member of the service she's supposed to be learning leadership. That means a few things, primarily including the responsibility to understand why an approach was chosen and what the goal was in choosing it. This could be an effective arrow in the quiver or a lesson in how wrong it feels on the receiving end. In the case of cadet leaders, there's also the quiet understanding that they're learning too and not all examples are positive ones. I'm glad the MSG took the time to explain things so OP's cadet knew the Why and could take the intended lesson from the experience.
 
severn said:
... so the MSG was teaching him grooming 101. And that's normal.

* Jump School. A candidate beside me forgot to shave during 0630 inspection. An Airborne instructor asked him, "who do you think you are, Jesus Christ?" He answered, "yes." Airborne instructors tried to "kill" him in the gig pit for 3 hours.

*Plebe Summer. Detailers eyeballed (1 inch) my DS's whiskers daily. He learned the art of grooming eventually because during his leave last Summer he asked for razors, shaving scream, body spray, Listerine, deodorant, and body scrub.
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FaithIG2022 said:
What happened a few days ago was, several cadets had grooming issues (shaving), but only my son got picked by the cadre who is an MSG (someone educate an ignorant mother what MSG means please). This MSG asked my son to repeat multiple times, loud, what he did wrong in front the whole group. He even said something like “I don’t know why you’re in the Army.” To me, this is very humiliating, insulting, and offensive. Something that had never happened to my son before.

The issue is, this MSG ONLY picked my son, but no one else, why? If this is the way he trains the cadets, he should have done the same to all the cadets with grooming issues, but he didn’t. He only singled out one person.

My son was totally shocked and intimated as he had never experienced this. I heard him weeping on the phone, and the next thing I did was, I booked the next flight to meet him at school. My son would probably stop calling me mom if I were to get in touch with his PMS about this. He wants to deal with this all by himself. But after consulting with a retired brigadier general from the Air Force, I’m worried this might be some type of hazing or bullying.

Need advice on what should be done.
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Mom of 4/c Mid here; someone gave my DD a small book by retired 4-star Admiral William H McRaven, "Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life... and Maybe the World." I recommend you buy this short book, read all of it, then give to DS if he hasn't read it.

McRaven mentions accepting consequences which seem unfair: "As one of the 'punishments' for failing uniform inspection, a SEAL trainee is ordered into the surf to get good, cold, and wet, and then to roll around on the beach until they are completely covered in fine white sand – resembling a 'sugar cookie.' They stay that way for the rest of the day. SEAL trainees would put in tremendous effort to get their uniforms perfect, but still got sugar-cookie’d – their efforts went unappreciated despite their dedication, one of the many mental tests to which they were subjected. ... Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie. It’s just the way life is sometimes."
 
Mom_SZ said:
Mom of 4/c Mid here; someone gave my DD a small book by retired 4-star Admiral William H McRaven, "Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life... and Maybe the World." I recommend you buy this short book, read all of it, then give to DS if he hasn't read it.

McRaven mentions accepting consequences which seem unfair: "As one of the 'punishments' for failing uniform inspection, a SEAL trainee is ordered into the surf to get good, cold, and wet, and then to roll around on the beach until they are completely covered in fine white sand – resembling a 'sugar cookie.' They stay that way for the rest of the day. SEAL trainees would put in tremendous effort to get their uniforms perfect, but still got sugar-cookie’d – their efforts went unappreciated despite their dedication, one of the many mental tests to which they were subjected. ... Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie. It’s just the way life is sometimes."
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Or “the way military life is sometimes”, perhaps.
 
Yeah, pretty normal. Will happen a lot. Doesn't get better after commissioning, kinda just gets worse because expectations get higher. Don't think an E-7 or E-8 is shy about dressing down an O3 or O4.

Minor? Yes. But right time, right uniform is just such an easy rule to not mess up. Pretty dumb for an officer candidate to get that wrong past training day 3.

Maybe the shave was that bad or maybe MSG was tired of a guy a year into the program missing something so easy. There isn't a magical switch that flips on commissioning day. Get it right, or there will be consequences.
 
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