Given my recollections of Northeast Philly, there is probably a street parade being held for the members.
I agree with you. However, there’s some history behind it I find interesting. Sam’s Club used to require membership in one of a number of other categories (government employee, self-employed, can’t remember what-all else) to be eligible for membership. I got my (now long expired) membership on the basis of having a Discover Card. The categories of membership seemed well-designed to discriminate* against the poor (not illegal), and possibly against minorities (illegal unless truly a private club). There was a certain irony in a discount club discriminating against the poor. I’m not sure whether legal risk or the color of money drove their change to only require payment for membership.
- By discriminate here I don’t mean completely bar people below a certain income level, but more like create barriers to membership that disproportionately impact the poor.
This.
some comments on this article
Give. me. a. fucking. break. And crack open a Webster’s. Oh, shit - Webster was the name of a 1980’s sitcom about a black adopted kid. I guess the PC police will have to issue a citation.
who gives a flying fuck about their greed? or placating “65 children” as if they’re a special group of humans. Does this author really believe that Augusta is “too greedy” to disallow nonmembers from playing on their course (except during the masters)? for real? this is the best she can close with?
Yeah, what she said. If this issue was really that they couldn’t handle that many kids at one time, the smart, customer service-type, retain that $1800 thing to do would be the explain that they had rules about how many kids could be in the pool at a time and the need for adult supervision, and then booked times for the kids’ group to come back in smaller numbers.
That they couldn’t offer this basic exchange means either they were racist fucks, and incredibly incompetent. And subsequent info seems to indicate the former (if not the club, then the membership).
It’s a day camp, right? Whacha gonna do with the other 2/3 of the campers when one set of them is in the pool.
I don’t recall Augusta accepting money from 60 nonmembers to play and then tossing them out when the members decided integration was fine in principle but not really something they were into…
That isn’t what she’s saying. Her point was some amalgamation of “well what about the children. the poor children!” and some neo-communist drivel that finds it reprehensible that private property owners can choose to do whatever the hell they want within the bounds of the law.
So we know they didn’t show up unannounced, and if there weren’t enough lifeguards the pool had no one but themselves to blame. I’d love to see the bylaws of the pool. How did the members overrule the board? Was there a pool meeting, and a vote? How did this happen so quickly? There are usually rules about time between calling a meeting and having it. Or were the members a subset of noisy bigots?
There seems to be no claims that the kids were misbehaving. No one seemed to be saying that the pool was overcrowded. Very curious.
The article did say that the camp paid on-line, but I suspect that this was easier for the pool, since they didn’t have to have an independent credit card account but could use PayPal.
Well, there’s a small problem with that, which is that by selling daily admissions they’re no longer functioning as a private club and are no longer within the bounds of the law when they toss out 60 kids for being the wrong color.
On the other hand, that article makes the club president sound like much less of a douche, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on the “complexion” thing now.
As far as adult supervision is concerned, this Philadelphia Inquirer article says there were 8 adults from the day camp supervising the 60 kids. I don’t know what sorts of ratios are normal, but that’s one adult per 7.5 kids, which seems to me to be a reasonable amount of adult supervision, at least for when they’re out of the pool.
I have no idea what contemporary standards are for how many lifeguards are needed per how many swimmers. When I was a kid, our community pool, which would have several dozen kids in it for most of the afternoon most days, had one lifeguard on duty at any given time, but a lot of things were considered OK back then that would get you into big trouble now, so that doesn’t mean much.
Problem is, of course, that “private property ownership” is not the same thing as running a “private club” under the law. Any restaurant owner is a “private property owner” in the sense that they and they alone own the restaurant, but the law is pretty rigid that they provide “public accommodation.” Point being, “private property owners” who provide public accommodation cannot “choose to do whatever they hell they want” if that includes racial discrimination." I don’t think it’s “neo-communist drivel” to argue that, and unless you have a legitimate challenge to the interpretation of PA law I cited earlier in this thread, I think it’s ignorant not to.
What they do with them the other 38.5 hours a week. Running the bus twice would be a pain, no doubt, but there is no evidence this was an issue for the board. If it had turned out to be an issue, do you think the day camp would have objected to splitting up the hours. The members might, because the pool would be polluted twice as long in their view.
And I thought Lester Maddox was dead. You just echoed the argument of just about every racist piece of trash who wanted to keep them black people out of their lily-white restaurants.
Kicking minority children out for being a minority is not within the bounds of the law as I understand it.
I am sure the inner city kids will be thrilled to be in a college gym, and kids that age will have fun no matter what, and I hope the campus is nice and the idea of being there or somewhere like it rubs off on them.
But I am also sure the irony of not being able to go out in the sun in the summer like the rich folks in “that” neighborhood will not be lost on them.
Is this the anti “Won’t somebody please think of the children” appeal?
It sounds like he’s a chickenshit, just not a racist chickenshit. He also has a poor turn of phrase.
Way up thread I showed that 60 kids fit in the pool.
And if you are short lifeguard, you let them use some other facilities on the 10 acre park like grounds. Sheesh.
and, just so people know, not_alice is not “she” 
Relevance?
What to do with the other 2/3 of the campers is the province of the people running the day camp. It’s not really a concern for the people running the pool.
How are we defining inner city here? These kids are from Northeast Philly. Which, is not as fancy or tree filled as Huntingdon Valley is still a bit further up from what most consider the “inner city”
Also, Girard College is not a college as we normally think of it but a K-12 boarding school for low income families.
Further. I grew up in NE Philly. I left after graduating high school. But, things must have change drastically from the time Philster is talking about to when I was there. I never even heard of a new black family moving in and requiring 24 hour police presence. There is surely a racist tinge here and there and it’s predominantly white - but I never found it as bad as he described. Which is why this story especially shocked me.