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Some questions were the same from quiz to quiz, meaning Ruben could be repeating his own errors with no chance to understand his mistakes. Candidates got frequent quizzes and exams but no feedback on what they got right or wrong, his lawsuit said. He also struggled initially with academics class as well. “It shouldn’t matter how many times I needed to learn a new skill - what matters is that I had it perfected by the end of the academy,” Ruben noted. Any time Ruben took the drill but didn’t make the single side knot correctly, it counted against him, his suit said. The FDNY formula for scoring practical skills, according to Ruben’s lawsuit, is calculated by taking the number of times a probie does a drill correctly divided by the number of attempts. The first time he made a single slide knot it was like he had “two left hands,” Ruben said. But what he didn’t know, according to his lawsuit, was that every time he attempted one of the practical drills, the result mattered. And he had to pass either academics or the practical skills test with a 75 or above. Ruben knew that he needed to have an overall passing score to graduate from the academy. In the practical segment, they learned the mechanics of life-saving techniques, like how to fashion knots to rappel down burning buildings. In the academics segment, probies learned about the science of firefighting. The days were divided between physical fitness training - which Ruben had no trouble handling - and academics and practical skills. Classes started at 6 a.m., but the instructors told the probies, “If you aren’t an hour early, you’re already late.” to get to the academy by 5 a.m., arriving clean-shaven and neat as a pin. He was sworn in on Jas a probationary firefighter. It took roughly five years for Ruben, who was about to join the State Troopers, to get called to the department’s 18-week training class at Randall’s Island.
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He scored a 98 on the entrance exam - a great score, but one that was barely good enough to make the cut in the highly competitive FDNY. “It just seemed like something that I would enjoy - you know, helping people,” Ruben said. He’d never even heard of the Vulcan Society, the association of Black firefighters who, in 2007, successfully sued the FDNY over its hiring practices in a landmark discrimination case.īut he frequently walked by a firehouse a few blocks from his home, and it dawned on him that was a job he would like to do. He had no knowledge of the FDNY’s past troubles recruiting and retaining Black, Latino and women firefighters. He didn’t know an FDNY firefighter typically makes over $100,000 after five years on the job. He didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a firefighter. He didn’t know anything about New York City’s Bravest. Ruben, a Brooklyn native who briefly attended Canarsie High School but finished his studies in North Carolina, sat for the FDNY entrance exam in January 2012, not long after he moved back to the city and settled in Crown Heights. “The whole process is just wrong to me,” he said.