Hoofer Sailing Club

Hoofer Sailing Club [1] was founded in 1939 and is part of the Hoofers outdoor adventure clubs [2] at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and the Wisconsin Union Directorate [3]. It originated as an all-volunteer club where members maintained boats and taught each other how to sail. It has grown from a handful of wooden boats to the second largest inland sailing club in the country.

The club owns its own piers at Memorial Union on Lake Mendota along with more than 120 different boats and sailboards. Fifteen different types of craft are sailed, including the Hoofer-designed Tech Dinghy. There is an adaptive sailing program for individuals with disabilities, and a youth program for those who are not old enough to be regular club members. Over 300 youths from ages 10 to 16 attend the Hoofer Youth summer program yearly.[4]

In theory, members receive unlimited instruction and have unlimited access to go sailing once rated on a boat. However, lessons are often full, and ratings can be subjective. All club members are expected to volunteer at least 6 hours of work a year to the club or else must pay higher membership rates. The club has active socials and special events, although socials have dwindled in popularity since 2002 when, after several incidents, it was decided that alcohol would no longer be provided.

Famous Hoofer Sailing Club members include Peter Barrett, an Olympic sailing gold and silver winner, and the founders of Harken, a sailing-hardware manufacturer.

Criticism of the Club

There are a number of Hoofers and ex-Hoofers who are very vocal about problems they see in the club. Some things they would like to change include:

1) Instruction. In the past, anyone qualified to sail a particular boat could teach fellow club members and give ratings. Now, all paid and unpaid instructors have to apply and go through an interview process. Yet, instructors aren't hired based on sailing skills, and no practical test is administered. Instead, there is a written exam to test basic sailing knowledge, but the results are tossed when popular individuals score poorly. Qualified volunteer instructors are regularly rejected, resulting in more paid instructors and higher membership costs. Currently, only 80 instructors are allowed to teach each year, a limit that is plainly arbitrary. About half are volunteer instructors and the rest are paid because (a) it is difficult to find volunteers to teach in the Youth Program for hours at a time on a daily basis, and (b) there is a strong incentive to re-hire individuals who would decline to volunteer their time. The Youth Program is a money maker for the club, but the profits are not used to lower general membership fees; rather, they're used to hire more paid instructors.

2) Teaching skills. For some, there has been a controversy regarding the club's mission [5] [6]. The Hoofer constitution [7] recognizes that because Hoofers is part of a major university, club members should be able to develop not only their sailing skills but also their teaching skills. Yet, paid instructors are often selected to serve on the Board of Captains (BOC), which governs club operations [8]. At the same time, the BOC votes on issues such as pay raises for instructors, whom to hire each spring, and how many volunteer instructors to allow. Club members have been removed for complaining about this conflict of interest and other inequities in the administration of club resources, and club leaders have been taken to court. The courts have ruled that there was evidence of wrongdoing on the part of club leaders. Still, instructors continue to be hired based on popularity rather than sailing or teaching skill.

3) Membership costs. Prices have increased, although relative to inflation, not very much. Current membership rates are around $200 a year (which includes lessons and boat usage) and this is too much for some students.

4) Membership. In the 80's and 90's there were as many as 2,000 student and non-student club members. In recent years, the number of club members has declined to around 1,000. Many factors contributed to that decline, including the fact that Hoofers can no longer offer free beer at some of its social events.

5) Lesson availability. On some boats, there are not enough instructors and lessons fill up quickly.

6) Equality. Getting a rating on some of the larger boats can be difficult. An instructor's view of a student's sailing skill is not always as objective as it should be, and some instructors give ratings more easily than others.

An uncontrolled environment

Hoofers is a part of the Wisconsin Union which bills itself as the university's unofficial "department of social education". [9] [10] Yet, Hoofer Sailing operates unencumbered by any set rules, with only the general philosophies of the Hoofer Constitution [11] and individual ethics to guide it. The club's president, or commodore, is elected along with the vice-commodore. The commodore appoints the remaining 18+ BOC members, and he can remove individual BOC members at his leisure. Thus, the club's commodore has tremendous power within the club, and each new generation of club leaders can essentially do as they please. As in Lord of the Flies, civility is artificial, and in the absence of a consistent and enforceable set of rules, savagery takes over and the weak and unpopular are eliminated.

Wisconsin Union management may be at fault. The Union itself has been involved in controversy in recent years. Although it is a public facility, Madison residents are regularly ordered to leave, and in 2006, Union staff and UWPD made headlines when they maced and arrested U.S. Senate candidate Ben Masel after he declined to leave a public event at the Memorial Union Terrace. [12] Also in 2006, Wisconsin Union management slipped a $240 million fee increase past apathetic students, future legions of whom will now have to pay an extra $200/year in fees over the next 30 years. [13] [14] [15] This comes at a time when fees at UW-Madison were already skyrocketing at more than twice the rate of inflation. [16]

External links

• [17] *[18] [19] [20].