My experience with UW Hoofers
I want to tell my experience with UW Hoofers. I have never sat down and told it before: some of it is convoluted, hard to explain, or came to light after the events. I hope I can make all this clear and succinct.
I first joined Hoofers to SCUBA dive. (I'm a UW alumna, and was an LTE at my old student job at that time.)
I soon volunteered, and became more involved: I served on the Hoofer Council, joined Outing and Sailing, as well as Ski & Snowboard, and was "VP-Education" for SCUBA - I coordinated all the classes for the club. It's a big job, and comes with a lifetime membership.
People volunteer for things because they believe they are "doing good", as well as for the camaraderie, and for the appreciation.
People who volunteer would never have thought of requiring salary as a precondition for contributing to our organization.
One of the SCUBA divemasters objected to this debt forgiveness, saying the clubs would abuse it by overspending. This did not in fact happen. So, since SCUBA doesn't have a formal purchasing policy, and there was no treasurer to oversee things, he made his point himself, by placing a $4000 order with the club's instructors, for big ticket items that the club was not in need of (regulators, BC's, and an entire pallet of cylinders).
When I heard about it, I obviously objected - we didn't want to abuse the debt forgiveness, and the club really needed small things like gloves and dive flags.
However he had already placed the order, and you can't just rescind a large order from a small, low-margin SCUBA business without causing hardship, so I just let it go. Yet at the same time, the instructors became uneasy that I had questioned this purchase in the first place.
The next fiscal year, when the clubs presented their budgets to the Council, SCUBA still had no treasurer, so the whole thing fell in my lap.
It actually had not been done in years, and I spent two weeks pulling 18-hour days to straighten out all the problems - missing students, inaccurate invoices, missing receipts, etc etc.
In the end, $6000 was still missing. When I started asking where it was, I only incurred the wrath of then-Hoofer-adviser, Steve Schroeder.
He soon left the job, and it turned out that this adviser had disposed of the club's summer income, apparently by diverting the income (but not the expenditures) to the previous year, in retaliation for the divemaster's $4000 purchase. This, of course, also meant that whoever did the budget and found the money missing, would find themselves in the midst of a cat-and-mouse game between this advisor and the divemaster.
2) While I was VP-Ed, she once did not show up for a pool session, and we had Russ Clyde instead. This was when I first found out that Russ had lost his instructor's license.
We had uncertified students in SCUBA underwater with no instructor.
I kept quiet about this, for a couple of unreassuring reasons:
--My job as VP-Ed required having a productive relationship with the instructor(s), and I was already dealing with a persistent touchiness in the wake of the $4000 purchase issue. Furthermore, because I was the point of contact with the instructors, it was never possible for me to hide my shock when these thing would spring up, and their "touchiness" only increased.
--I was hoping that the divemaster who had felt the responsibility to inform me of Russ's status, would also inform the Hoofer advisers.
--The advisers, however, would have done nothing, because dealing with potentially license-revoking infractions of sitting instructors would be a Big Headache for them. Moreover, Jim Rogers' psychology was to ingratiate and reinforce existing power structures; he would very clearly squelch any negative news, and try to discredit the messenger.
3) Russ's racism, and Gaye-Lynn's excusing this behavior. Some examples:
--Russ and I were once bantering conservative vs. liberal, and he just segued into a rant about drunken, lazy Indians, and then into dirty spics and knife fights. It did not seem to faze him that he was standing in the middle of the UW, behaving in a manner that would draw censure on anyone.
--At his quarry in Watertown, he's much worse, letting out racial slurs regularly. One time his son-in-law's truck was stolen, and Russ spent the whole day cursing niggers about it.
--Gaye-Lynn makes excuses that, where Russ is from they just don't know better. She told of a toddler niece of Russ's, who pointed to black kids, calling them "monkey". Her explanation: well, she must never have seen black kids before.
SCUBA is a safety-first sport. Accidents are very rare, mainly due to divers having a healthy approach to it.
Horrifyingly, a Hoofer diver has died in this time.
* * * * *
Last week out of the blue, a couple of the Union's building managers came up to me while I was fixing bikes at Hoofers, announced to me that my Hoofer membership had been revoked, and summarily kicked me out.
They did not stop at that: after I left, they then followed me to College Library, and called the police - apparently to report the crime of working on 2 bicycles - who then brought me back to the Union, and fined me for being at the Union.
To make this Prozeß really Kafkaesque, I have no idea what's going on - I have tried repeatedly to get an accounting of this from the OPO, and only my first email was ever responded to, by a student who was perplexed that I showed up only once in the Hoofer database, and not at all for SCUBA. I have tried repeatedly to contact the OPO since then, and the office simply does not respond.
Obviously this circumvents the risk that active, involved UW alumni would actually defend themselves against unaccountable actions at their own alma mater.
7/18
I just now found out a student in Outdoor Rentals posted this: http://odrstaff.blogspot.com/2012/05/new-problem-patron.html
Horrifically, any random ill-informed student can just publicly slander a long-time Hoofer on a Hoofers site, given that the current string of interim "advisers" don't want to bother dealing with problems that hurt people other than themselves.
I first joined Hoofers to SCUBA dive. (I'm a UW alumna, and was an LTE at my old student job at that time.)
I soon volunteered, and became more involved: I served on the Hoofer Council, joined Outing and Sailing, as well as Ski & Snowboard, and was "VP-Education" for SCUBA - I coordinated all the classes for the club. It's a big job, and comes with a lifetime membership.
People volunteer for things because they believe they are "doing good", as well as for the camaraderie, and for the appreciation.
People who volunteer would never have thought of requiring salary as a precondition for contributing to our organization.
Fiscal games.
When I was on the Council, some of the Hoofer clubs were deep in debt, and the Wisconsin Union worked out a debt forgiveness scheme for Hoofers.One of the SCUBA divemasters objected to this debt forgiveness, saying the clubs would abuse it by overspending. This did not in fact happen. So, since SCUBA doesn't have a formal purchasing policy, and there was no treasurer to oversee things, he made his point himself, by placing a $4000 order with the club's instructors, for big ticket items that the club was not in need of (regulators, BC's, and an entire pallet of cylinders).
When I heard about it, I obviously objected - we didn't want to abuse the debt forgiveness, and the club really needed small things like gloves and dive flags.
However he had already placed the order, and you can't just rescind a large order from a small, low-margin SCUBA business without causing hardship, so I just let it go. Yet at the same time, the instructors became uneasy that I had questioned this purchase in the first place.
The next fiscal year, when the clubs presented their budgets to the Council, SCUBA still had no treasurer, so the whole thing fell in my lap.
It actually had not been done in years, and I spent two weeks pulling 18-hour days to straighten out all the problems - missing students, inaccurate invoices, missing receipts, etc etc.
In the end, $6000 was still missing. When I started asking where it was, I only incurred the wrath of then-Hoofer-adviser, Steve Schroeder.
He soon left the job, and it turned out that this adviser had disposed of the club's summer income, apparently by diverting the income (but not the expenditures) to the previous year, in retaliation for the divemaster's $4000 purchase. This, of course, also meant that whoever did the budget and found the money missing, would find themselves in the midst of a cat-and-mouse game between this advisor and the divemaster.
VP-Ed with growing misgivings about the SCUBA instructors.
1) The instructor Gaye-Lynn Clyde works in Milwaukee, and effectively commutes from there, after a full day at work. She does not have the time or the attention to properly devote to teaching these classes, and is frequently absent, leaving a divemaster, or other inexperienced non-instructor, to take over the class.2) While I was VP-Ed, she once did not show up for a pool session, and we had Russ Clyde instead. This was when I first found out that Russ had lost his instructor's license.
We had uncertified students in SCUBA underwater with no instructor.
I kept quiet about this, for a couple of unreassuring reasons:
--My job as VP-Ed required having a productive relationship with the instructor(s), and I was already dealing with a persistent touchiness in the wake of the $4000 purchase issue. Furthermore, because I was the point of contact with the instructors, it was never possible for me to hide my shock when these thing would spring up, and their "touchiness" only increased.
--I was hoping that the divemaster who had felt the responsibility to inform me of Russ's status, would also inform the Hoofer advisers.
--The advisers, however, would have done nothing, because dealing with potentially license-revoking infractions of sitting instructors would be a Big Headache for them. Moreover, Jim Rogers' psychology was to ingratiate and reinforce existing power structures; he would very clearly squelch any negative news, and try to discredit the messenger.
3) Russ's racism, and Gaye-Lynn's excusing this behavior. Some examples:
--Russ and I were once bantering conservative vs. liberal, and he just segued into a rant about drunken, lazy Indians, and then into dirty spics and knife fights. It did not seem to faze him that he was standing in the middle of the UW, behaving in a manner that would draw censure on anyone.
--At his quarry in Watertown, he's much worse, letting out racial slurs regularly. One time his son-in-law's truck was stolen, and Russ spent the whole day cursing niggers about it.
--Gaye-Lynn makes excuses that, where Russ is from they just don't know better. She told of a toddler niece of Russ's, who pointed to black kids, calling them "monkey". Her explanation: well, she must never have seen black kids before.
SCUBA is a safety-first sport. Accidents are very rare, mainly due to divers having a healthy approach to it.
Horrifyingly, a Hoofer diver has died in this time.
* * * * *
Last week out of the blue, a couple of the Union's building managers came up to me while I was fixing bikes at Hoofers, announced to me that my Hoofer membership had been revoked, and summarily kicked me out.
They did not stop at that: after I left, they then followed me to College Library, and called the police - apparently to report the crime of working on 2 bicycles - who then brought me back to the Union, and fined me for being at the Union.
To make this Prozeß really Kafkaesque, I have no idea what's going on - I have tried repeatedly to get an accounting of this from the OPO, and only my first email was ever responded to, by a student who was perplexed that I showed up only once in the Hoofer database, and not at all for SCUBA. I have tried repeatedly to contact the OPO since then, and the office simply does not respond.
Obviously this circumvents the risk that active, involved UW alumni would actually defend themselves against unaccountable actions at their own alma mater.
7/18
I just now found out a student in Outdoor Rentals posted this: http://odrstaff.blogspot.com/2012/05/new-problem-patron.html
Horrifically, any random ill-informed student can just publicly slander a long-time Hoofer on a Hoofers site, given that the current string of interim "advisers" don't want to bother dealing with problems that hurt people other than themselves.
Labels: Hoofers, Madison, SCUBA, University, University of Wisconsin, UW, UW-Madison, Wisconsin
posted by Carologue at 6/05/2012
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