The USPA Board spent a bit of time at its last meeting discussing diversity, justice, inclusion, equity, sexual harassment and many other subjects regarding how welcoming our sport is or isn’t.
The roots of sport skydiving formed many years ago, when returning World War II paratroopers sought to continue jumping outside of their service duties. They established parachuting clubs and formed the backbone of USPA's predecessor organizations. Times were different then, and some behaviors that may have been socially acceptable are not so much today. I think there is no doubt and little debate that things like harassment or bigotry have no place in our sport or on our drop zones.
I was in Target the other day and thought, “If an employee here patted a coworker or customer on the backside or made a derogatory comment about their gender, sexual orientation or race, would that employee keep their job?” Not a chance. So why would our drop zones accept this? Should a customer’s experience at Target be more welcoming than that at a drop zone where they are going to experience the life-changing moment of jumping from an airplane? No way.
USPA is developing online training tools and currency requirements for its professionals that are broaching topics related to harassment. This is a great step in the right direction, and I think discussing these issues head on will help bring them to light.
Some folks are also asking about DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) efforts, and this is somewhat different than anti-harassment efforts. One of the tougher things I’ve had to do is try and separate these two ideas in order to productively discuss each of them individually.
Conceptually, the idea of promoting DEI is not difficult to support. But when you get down to the granular level of creating a vision, statements, policies, action plans, benchmarks, metrics to evaluate, goals, disciplinary measures and many of the other parts and pieces that go along with these concepts, you begin to see that it is not quite as easy as saying, “We support DEI.” I am happy that our board of directors is having these difficult conversations and finding where it is appropriate for USPA to take action and where it is not. They are also seeing places where our role may be to help to empower our Group Member drop zones to act and create appropriate policies.
Together, I think we can all take steps to make our sport welcoming to those who have the desire to get a taste of the sky.
Blue skies,
Albert Berchtold | D-27832
USPA Executive Director