Roly Stankevicius - 2026 Quadra Alumni Weekend

Um, any regrets from, uh, your quadrant time? Like, do you wish you could have done something better?

Uh, probably a thousand things, you know, uh, you know, you, you, you sometimes a whole idea of the command structure and, uh, you know, the hierarchy tends to get in the way of, uh, you know, the idea of more empathy.

Uh, I think it would have changed everything.

Um, it would be a completely different experience.

What we did in the 70s seemed to work, but there were probably some real casualties emotionally because We were, you know, I'm going to say we were tough on people.

You know, the saying is be hard on issues, soft on people.

But we were just hard on people.

You know, and you had to, you know, when they said you're going to jump off this jetty now and you're going to stay in the water until the last person jumps in, we weren't kidding around.

You know, not much empathy for somebody who's afraid of heights or afraid of the water.

Right.

So probably, knowing what we know now.

But I think that's a good way to look back at it, right? I often think the same way in your career or whatever you do.

And you think, sure, I could have done things differently.

But at the time, you think you're doing the right thing.

And sometimes here, you can look back and say, ah, I should have maybe been better at that.

But hey, that's hindsight.

We don't always have that.

I don't know, Quadra brought a lot of, it did, it brought a lot of good out of, or brought a lot of good into my career, I think, because it gave me those experiences and past experiences, but like you talked about, you know, you helped out in the teacher's union, I got involved in union work at the police department, and And I think that's actually where some of my empathy came out in to say, look, we need to help our workers with some better working conditions, et cetera, et cetera, right? And you can say that with some experience behind you.

Well,

I agree.

You know, in my role as a teacher, I had to change a lot of what I did in the classroom as opposed to being a cadet officer.

It doesn't always translate that directly.

But I found with my union work, a lot of my... what I consider to be my judgment skills or character.

You know, we got to get this done.

We have to, you know, we have to bring this together.