Born yesterday

Someone recently shared the comic at right on the HSC Facebook page (there's another HSC FB page that is a propaganda page controlled by club insiders, but that one's not linked here). Of course, comics are funny to the degree that they reflect reality, and this one certainly does. It seems it was drawn by someone with extensive experience in Hoofers. Interesting that she or she didn't sign it, afraid perhaps of what crooked club leaders might do.

You should be afraid.

Anyone who's been abused by club leaders, had their deposit illegally withheld, been subject to discrimination or unfair hiring practices knows how true-to-life this comic is.

Even if the artist didn't intend it to mock Hoofers, this might be the funniest comic ever created to the degree that it draws attention to the crooked nature of Hoofer Sailing. Certainly on par with the best of ours. :)

The fourth panel could equally show an ad for Hoofer sailing, the doors to the boathouse, or something like that.

IMPEACH THE COMMODORE!

NOV 24 UPDATE: Tough 37-8 loss for the meat Packers in San Francisco on Sunday night. The big question is: Who is management grooming to replace A-Rod at quarterback? As we've already predicted, the Pack will never make it back to the Super Bowl with him at QB, so they might as well trade him while they still can.

Not the current one necessarily, but former commodore Lukas Duddleston committed various abuses while in office, including inappropriate touching, according to at least one witness, and possible libel and slander. Now he has slipped into an opening at webmaster and still wields power and influence within the club.

When someone becomes commodore (or obtains any position of power & authority), their true nature is revealed. The good begin to help those around them, while the less scrupulous start abusing their new-found authority. Who saw Lukas's speech at the Tsong Marina inauguration? He sounded more like a politician than a grad student in M.E. Abusing the less powerful while simultaneously pandering to those above him, Lukas knows where his bread is buttered.

Other past commodores have also committed abuses, though in some cases they were not criminal acts--the commodore simply took advantage of the position and its inherent authority.

It would be in the club's interest to have a mechanism for investigating allegations against the commodore, and the ability to remove him/her if the allegations are supported. That means a procedure that won't expose honest individuals to retaliation. In theory, the club's constitution allows a recall, but that rule has never been tested and requires the participation of more general "club" members than have ever been together in the same room, making it a something of sham.

The Union can remove the commodore for various reasons (or no reason at all, just as the U.S. president can recall an ambassador at any time) and has done so in the past, although the Union doesn't like to get involved unless there's something in it for them. In fact, there is an official Wis. Union policy that covers the "Hoofer coup," as it has come to be known.

The policy reads: "He grabbed me from behind and slipped his hand down my..." Oh wait, that's from a complaint about something else. Here's the policy. It says "Dear Mom, I can't pretend to be straight any longer..." Oh wait, dang, that's from something else that I also found on the Hoofer computers. What the heck are people doing in here late at night? Okay, here's the policy. It says the Union can remove the commodore, or pretty much any other Hoofer employee, for any reason as long as it's not discriminatory. (If it is discriminatory, then they need to come up with an excuse that doesn't sound like discrimination.)

It's too late to remove Duddleston as commodore, but he can still be removed from the BOC. If anyone else witnessed inappropriate acts by him over the past year-plus, share the details here or on Facebook. Especially things like bad-mouthing people behind their backs that are easy for the commodore and other club leaders to perpetrate. Has Lukas dropped out of grad school yet? If not, that might be grounds to remove him--no one could possibly do an adequate job as webmaster while also working as a grad student in engineering.

The fact that the BOC must be led by students means in essence that club leaders will be inadequate for the job. This isn't the crayfish club, after all. It's the largest quasi-student-run "club" in Wisconsin.

NOTE: Lukas Duddleston is a current and former state employee and former presiding officer of the Hoofer Sailing Club, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The End is near

OCT 31 UPDATE: It's lucky lift-out wasn't postponed another week. I seem to recall it being as late as Oct 31 in the past. Usually there is windsurfing and racing team practice until the end of October, even into November sometimes. Basically, right up until pier-out. The normal average high for October in Madison is 60°, with the normal high for today's date at 53, normal low 37. The high today was 32°, with 4" of snow falling over the past 24 hrs. This is well outside two standard deviations from the norm--near record-low temps. Monday night's storm blew away the old record for snowfall--not just for the date but for all of October, and today's more than doubled that. If you didn't already hate Wisconsin,... see map above.

As another sailing season winds down and school takes over again, we can't abandon the lakefront quite yet. The big boats still have to be cleaned, prep'd, derigged, and lifted out this Saturday Oct. 26, and then winterized for storage. Like a typical keelboat cruise, most of the work comes at the very end.

If you find that at all depressing, a lot about the club is depressing these days. The new piers, the federal-penitentiary-style concrete-block hallways, the blanket surveillance, the locked doors with controlled access, the total prohibition on beer aboard the big boats (wink, wink), the seething discrimination, etc. There were some good comments on a lot of this on a recent Facebook post.

And how about those two chairs from the old Hoofer lounge, now stuck in the hallway like some sort of half-assed museum pieces--with surveillance cameras directly overhead!

If it all has you teetering on the edge, you can get free mental health care at UHS if you're a student (others are outta luck). Please do get help before committing social faux pas like libel, slander, false police reports, inappropriate touching, and so on. These are all ongoing problems in Hoofer Sailing, especially with staff, but counseling may be all that is needed. Hey, at least no one is stealing outboard motors anymore! (Did they ever?) In a police state, theft generally isn't a problem, but things like libel and slander that are harder to spot persist and flourish.

If you choose to seek help, contrary to what you might assume you'll impress friends and colleagues alike with your strength and maturity. There's a 94% chance they'll think more highly of you for it^†.

As for the piers, I personally had more than one person tell me this summer that they didn't quite feel safe--wet, slippery, sloping surfaces bouncing up and down in the waves, with nothing to grab on to. In all fairness, they don't bounce as much as I thought they would, but the old piers were level and had posts every 15 feet or so (also great for tying up keelboats). Now all we have are cleats at toe level. Maybe over the long winter, someone can dig up stats on how many individuals went into the water unintentionally this summer...

†According to UHS promotional flyers.

Our Their new marina

The official coronation of the Peter Tong Family Marina finally took place Friday evening on the lakefront, between the scows and the imaginary crane.

The T'ongs and their offspring spoke in turn about how thrilling it was for them to be a part of this expensive project that would bear their name, and then it was time for the christening. In an act of rather extreme irony, former Grope-a-dore Lukas D. took part in breaking a bottle of champagne to formally inaugurate the "marina". Given the strict prohibition on alcohol in Hoofer sailing, shouldn't it have been a bottle of sparkling grape juice or Kool-Aid? Anyway, watch your step in that area as there may still be glass shards around.

If you had any doubts that the motivation for building the "marina" was to benefit the reputation (and tax returns) of the T'ongs and other donors--and not to benefit Hoofer sailors--look at who was allowed to attend the ceremony: invitees only, with security guards keeping everyone else at bay. (A few Hoofers did manage to sneak in or scored an invite.) Of course, the reason for soliciting big donors to pay for a "marina" in the first place was to give the Union an excuse to take control of the club.

The chancellor was present along with Wis. Union brass and lots of other old prunes, mostly people with money. Even the ones dressed in jeans had $100 bills falling out of their pockets as they slurped alcoholic beverages under a makeshift tent and gave dirty looks to anyone they suspected of sneaking in.

The "Welcome invitees" sign next to the "Disabled people go away" sign was especially fitting (see photo).

It's interesting that in the U.S., tong means an Asian gangsta.

So, is a Peter Dong like a John Thomas? Who was responsible for decorating the lakefront with four foot high concrete phalluses?

At least the new piers are holding up after half a full season.

†We've seen it spelled Tong, T'ong, and Dong. Subtly different, each.

How to make him go away

Are you a female club member, possibly a cute one, and some guy has been harassing you? He talks to you at the lakefront, he says "hi" to you on campus, maybe he even asked you out sailing, but you're not interested. He's just not your type, or maybe he's too old for you, or you've heard bad things about him (slander is the modus operandi in HSC, after all). Hoofers advertises itself as a social organization (see screen at right), but you don't have to be nice to every guy who comes along, even it's the commodore!

The solution? Make a false report to UWPD! Here's how it works:

   1. Start by complaining to a sailing instructor or other HSC staff, and make sure to embellish everything (after all, the target hasn't actually done anything wrong). For example, if an undesirable guy said "hi" to you, exaggerate that into something like "He followed me home" or "he rubbed his junk against me under the canopy". Nobody will have any way of knowing that he didn't do that. This will get the instructor on your side.
   2. If possible, pick an older male instructor who has daughters. There's always a chance he abused them in the past and will therefore be sympathetic to your plight (out of guilt or whatever).
   3. Make a scene on the lakefront at least once so others can see how upset you are by the undesirable guy.
   4. Be sure to exhibit symptoms like annoyance, distress, anxiety, fear, panic, angst, discomposure, and discombobulation (choose any three of the above).
   5. Whatever you do, don't ask the guy to leave you alone. If you do that, he'll still be around and might talk to you again at some point in the future. You want him gone, as in permanently (or at least until you graduate).
   6. Once you've got the instructor (or other Hoofer staff) on board as an accessory, call the cops! It will be extra effective if you can get the instructor to call them first--that will paint you as caring and virtuous before you ever even speak to police.

Like hungry piranhas, UWPD will gobble your story up, in part because of the current #MeToo climate where a woman simply can't tell a lie, and in part because cops are child abusers themselves and like to stalk women too. Crooked cops can't blow off a stalking/harassment report or it might make people suspicious of them. If at all possible, make the report to a female cop--she was likely abused herself in the past and will be doubly sympathetic.

From there, just sit back and let your lies work their magic! The undesirable guy will soon disappear, and you can get back to flirting with the dude (or dame) you really want. Hoofers is a social organization, after all!

NOTE: For entertainment purposes only. We aren't actually recommending that anyone do this, even though several Hoofer women already have. Making a false police report is a serious crime on par with hitting someone in the head with a baseball bat. Hoofer employees will be glad to help, though.

Btw, interesting statistics in the recent comment by Mr. Math, Thx.

UW: rotten at the top

We hate to turn the page from our previous post where the discussion is still going at 80 comments, but this news is not unrelated in that it also deals with misrepresentation. (comments can still be added to the previous post, or just comment on the same issue here.)

A recent UW press release claims that UW-Madison is rising in overall university rankings. In the CWUR (Center for World Univ. Rankings, based in United Arab Emirates), the UW rose from the 27th ranked university worldwide in 2018 to 25th in 2019 (21st to 19th nationally). But has the UW really improved? A rise of two spots doesn't even surpass the margin for error, and we were unable to find any other ranking in which the UW has risen or in which is ranks as highly as in the study cited by the UW.

In the highly respected Times Higher Education (THE) rankings (image), the UW slipped from 33rd to 36th in reputation score from 2018 to 2019. This score is important because, although it doesn't focus on measurable attributes like student acceptance rates, faculty/student ratio, library quality, and research output, it does measure the perceived quality of a school among academics--which is important for getting a job or getting into grad school.

More significantly, THE ranks UW 43rd overall among world universities. Thus, the UW isn't quite as good as its reputation.

Even worse, THE now ranks UW-Madison as the 23rd best U.S. university (note that this is consistent with the CWUR ranking of 21st in 2018). That compares to rating as the 10th best U.S. university in the 1980s (that includes private universities such as Harvard, Stanford, etc). Also, UW-Madison now ranks as only the 8th best public school; that's not bad, but in the 1980s, it ranked 3rd, trailing only Berkeley and Michigan. In the new US News rankings of public U.S. universities, UW-Madison doesn't even crack the top 10.

In the widely cited QS world university rankings 2019, the UW is even further back at 53rd (20th among U.S. universities), ranking behind such venerable bastions of scholarship as Fudan University (China), the U. of British Columbia (Canada), and the U. of New South Wales (Australia). Ouch.

Finally, the Princeton Review's list of top party schools. Not that it means much, but the UW has slipped to #13 this year. But hey, we still rank higher as a party school than as a place to get a degree!

In citing the CWUR study, it is obvious that UW administrators cherry-picked the study that would paint UW-Madison in the best possible light--and it's still a big drop from a few decades ago. Elder UW administrators must be dreaming of the old days.

The $64,000 question: Is the UW's slide driving Hoofer Sailing Club's slide..? Someone ought to climb Bascom Hill, find the chancellor, and slap her in the head with a copy of the Princeton Review until she gives a straight answer. Or rip that ridiculous sifting and winnowing plaque off the building and use that.

Culture of dishonesty

On Friday, former UW wide receiver Quintez Cephus was found not guilty of sexual assault (rape). Prosecutors argued that the two women who accused him were too drunk to consent to having sex, but it took the jury just 30 minutes to agree that the prosecution was full of shit.

Cephus and former teammate Danny Davis, both of whom are black, testified that the two women, who are white, were not as drunk as they claimed and that they spontaneously undressed after entering Cephus' apartment. Incredibly, the UW-Madison detective who interviewed one of Cephus' accusers in her dorm room shortly after the encounter didn't even note how drunk she was. And this guy is a detective?

The moral is: if a woman voluntarily goes into a man's apartment, gets naked, and then signals for attention, those actions amount to consent.

The Cephus case appears to be yet another instance of women with emotional problems refusing to take responsibility for their actions and making false allegations to try to throw the blame.

Certainly sexual assaults do occur, as with former student Alec Cook who was expelled and subsequently convicted of felony sexual assault. Yet, even in that case, it is evident that one or more of his accusers lied. One has to wonder how much of the truth got lost in the vitriol of that case.

False reports

The Cephus case has eerie parallels in Hoofers. Former commodores have been accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment but were not convicted--probably for lack of any wrongdoing.

False reports may be more common than generally believed. In a 2016 case, a woman reported that she had been sexually assaulted by three men near Memorial Union. Her story turned out to be utter crap--possibly induced by lingering trauma from a supposed previous assault years earlier. For all anyone knows, that one was bogus too.

Former Wis. Union student building manager Abby Panozzo also claimed that she was raped, in 2006. However, her story falls apart to reveal not a rape but a deeply disturbed woman. No charges were ever filed.

The rate of false reports of sexual assault is supposedly 5-10% but may actually be much higher. Moreover, that number doesn't include baseless reports (where a person reports something that actually occurred but is not a crime) or the far more prevalent and insidious problem of embellished reports. The vast majority of reports are likely embellished to some degree. As a dumb but honest cop once said, everybody lies.

How many women end up naked in a guy's bed because their parents never taught them how to say "no"? It may indeed be the parents' fault; the problem is that innocent men are often harmed by the ensuing false police report. And how many young women are damaged goods as a result?--time bombs waiting to wreck some guy's life. If you're a young woman and you don't want to have sex, JUST SAY NO. Don't get drunk, take your clothes off, and then say no.

Speaking of taking your clothes off, keep in mind that over a dozen surveillance cameras now observe part or all of the lakefront area. No doubt Union administrators, most of whom have never seen a live naked human before, are hoping that someone does take their clothes off...

Hot & slippery

At right is a photo from this year's C-Cup, taken on Friday July 19 when the temperature outside was a sweltering 93ºF. If anything, it's even worse out on the water on hot days because the air is extra humid. Look at those faces--these are not happy campers.

If club "leaders" and Union managers aren't careful, they'll find themselves in court, being sued for negligence. Requiring people to wear lifejackets when it's that hot out--especially when it's not windy, as was the case for much of last Friday's "all fleets race"--is negligent. We aren't five year olds. Yeah, somebody drowned in 2015 while not wearing a lifejacket, but it wasn't his fault; it was the skipper's, for letting him jump off the boat in very cold water without a lifejacket, and then sailing away.

It's triply bad because club "leaders" are discouraging anyone from swimming off the boats, maybe because of what happened in 2015. Oddly enough, the reason given isn't usually the toxic algae, which might be a reason. It's more like, "I wouldn't swim off a boat"--so you'd better not either, the implication being that it's dangerous (it's not) or you might lose your ratings if you do. Funny how even a hollow little threat like that can provide a small rush to someone in authority.

The algae hasn't been as bad this year as in some past years, but obviously you don't want to jump into a mass of iridescent blue-green slime near shore. However, swimming off a boat out on the lake is usually fine. Still, people shouldn't have to go swimming just because they're on the verge of heat stroke from being forced to wear a lifejacket. Why do we like to wear lifejackets in October..? Because they help keep you warm.

Tribal conflict

Commodore's Cup '19 is here! Among other things, that means the new piers are about to get their first real test. C-Cup also seems a good time to take a look back at a slice of Hoofer history.

It will be 20 years ago next month that Nathan Salowitz became commodore. Why an engineering student would ever want to become commodore is unclear--the meetings, the problems, the infantile pomp and circumstance. All of that distracts from schoolwork and from actual sailing. Perhaps it was because Nate coveted a keelboat skipper rating and didn't want to have to take hundreds of lessons to get one. Others, too, wanted to obtain skipper ratings the easy way, and they desperately wanted to get paid to teach on the big boats. With that in mind, Nate decided to grab control of the fleet.

Ever since the 1980s, the heavy keelboat fleet--at that time consisting of Maria and Soma--had been an autonomous program wherein instructors were unpaid and all rated skippers could teach lessons. In some ways it was a perfect system because a full skipper rating on Maria or Soma meant you were qualified to teach. The full skipper rating requires (or used to) the ability to manage crew effectively, which means mastery of the boat along with good communication skills. This isn't to say all keelboat instructors were good teachers. Some were lazy, and their lessons were basically cruises, complete with popcorn and beer (can you believe it?!). The important thing is that any skipper could instruct if s/he chose to do so; thus, everyone had equal status in a true 'club' environment. It was a sharp contrast to the other fleets, including the J's, where paid hacks grudgingly doled out ratings to customers--and still do.

Unfortunately, there was little oversight, which naturally led to occasional problems. Head of Paid Instruction Jim Rogers wanted nothing to do with the keelboats because he didn't have authority over the instructors. When there was a problem, good luck! However, he was intrigued at the thought of gaining control, and Nate could help him do that. Nate and Erik saw the personality conflicts as an excuse--and an opportunity--to grab control of the fleet. Doing so would let them water down the ratings requirements, and it would let them exclude individuals they didn't like. It would also pave the way to paid keelboat lessons, every J instructor's wet dream. So it was that Nate spent the year collecting dirt on people and planning his coup. Instead of doing anything to smooth rough edges in the program, he threw a wrench in at every opportunity. Instead of intervening when there were disagreements, he would let the situation fester. The worse it got, the better his chances of taking over.

Evidence of Nate and Erik's intent comes from their ratings--neither had ever earned a skipper rating on any Hoofer large keelboat. Instead, they began chartering private cruises in Florida under the handle "Catastrophe At Sea", amused and inspired by the club's last official cruise (1993) which ended in actual catastrophe. Due to his lack of experience skippering big boats, Nate needed letters of support for the charter company, which his new friend Jim R. was happy to provide.

They would not succeed in weakening the ratings requirements, not right away, but their efforts would inspire others to take up the cause. By 2009, JustinC & Co. had finagled a light (day) heavy keelboat skipper rating, an oxymoron to be sure, that would allow incompetent individuals to skipper the keelboats too. Most passengers would never know or care that their skipper was a lackey, prohibited from sailing the boat after sunset, so long as the beer kept flowing.

In the old days, the only skipper rating had been full skipper, the reasoning being that a storm can always come up while you're out on the water. If you only have a light rating, then what? Big boats can do big damage and are categorically different than dinghies or even J-boats. Hence any skipper should be a full skipper. Today, that reasoning has become: get as many yahoos out on the water as possible. Nate's efforts also led directly to paid instruction on the heavy keelboats. Alas, giving people money to do something doesn't make them more competent at it.

In an upcoming post, we'll look at other commodores who used the position to pursue members of the opposite sex. We'll also take a closer look at the new piers which, it turns out, are not as bad as some people expected!

Hoofers: A dominance hierarchy

With Commodore's Cup approaching, we thought it would be a good time to reflect on past commodores and some of their achievements.

It's common knowledge that former commodore Carl Stenbol met his future wife in Hoofers. Lots of commodores and instructors meet their future mates in Hoofers. From the 75th Anniversary anecdotes:

Stenbol met Dawn at a Hoofer Kickoff late 1980’s, when Carl picked her out of a membership signup line and announced she had won a free cruise on Maria (Hoofer heavy keelboat) for being the 1000th member. It wasn’t even close to the truth but it gained Carl his first date with his future wife. Married August 1992, at their wedding we drank the Union out of Mount Gay Rum. The current instruction program at Hoofers (with paid instructors, instructor training, standard lesson content, reviews) was pretty much all built by Carl – before Carl, instruction was volunteer and haphazard.

A rum fest, wow... wish I could have been there. Alas, I can only imagine what the old days must have been like.

Anyway, it's a cute anecdote, but think about what it says: The first thing Carl ever said to his future wife was a deceit. Of course, we all tell white lies from time to time. I did it myself once, although it was more the trivial variety, e.g. "Didn't I see you at Sammy's party last week..?" Not a terribly clever line, but all I could muster on a hangover, and it worked--it got me a date!

But when you're in a position of authority, then you can really take advantage (more on that in a forthcoming post). Was it an abuse by Stenbol? It was someone taking advantage of his position. The point is, practically no one else in Hoofers would be in a position to do that. Nor is it only white lies that are told in Hoofers. Some people deliberately tell blatant, malicious lies to attack people they don't like.

The second thing Carl did was to start building a stronger caste system in HSC. Paid instruction created a vested interest in hanging on to your job which, in turn, created an incentive to hire your buddies in place of more qualified individuals. No longer was everyone expected to teach others in a club environment. Now it was us (paid "staff") and them (payers). A natural evolution of the elevated status enjoyed by instructors is the incentive to water down the requirements for ratings, at least for insiders. Hence "instructor ratings weekend" and "fast-tracking". HSC instructors pretend to know what they're doing, but many are incompetent (LINK2, LINK3, LINK4, LINK5, LINK6, LINK7, LINK8, LINK9).

Such shenanigans by Stenbol and other club "leaders" highlights the fact that HSC is now a club within the club. That is, the real club consists exclusively of club officers and instructors. The rest of you are just cattle, here to be milked for cash (and sex). This model works, more or less, because so many around the UW are used to paying for instruction.

The easy-ratings-for-instructors policy has had serious repercussions including the death of a passenger in 2015 caused by a skipper who got her rating from her boyfriend after a single lesson. Makes you wonder if it was even a sailing lesson.

Feel free to share more anecdotes, but remember that personal names are strongly discouraged except when discussing state of Wisconsin (e.g. Hoofer) employees or former employees.

In a forthcoming post, we'll look at other commodores and Hoofer employees who used their position to pursue a member of the opposite sex, not always successfully.

And you thought Hoofers only taught sailing?

The Hoofer Sailing Club, established in 1939, is a collection of students and community members working together an unsupervised sociology experiment authorized by the Wisconsin Union, UW-Madison. Here you can learn the arts of manipulation, how to slander people to advance your own position or harm rivals, how to "cook the books", and so on.

As a paying "club member", you won't actually become a club member--you'll be a customer, but that's okay (for us). We are the instructors and club officers who have been selected for our superior party skills and/or alcohol tolerance.* Fortunately (for us), we have immunity from prosecution should you be injured and want to sue. People shouldn't be held responsible for their actions if they're state employees, right?

Luckily for you, sailing is safer than rock climbing or bungee jumping, but injuries are to be expected. In the past, we've had students get hit in the head by the boom--hundreds of times, on various types of boat, with some of those resulting in concussions and permanent injury. Do a google search for "flying jibe" if you want to learn more. Since 2015, there have been two deaths in Hoofer Sailing. One was caused by an instructor, the other by the UW Rescue service. But hey, hundreds of other people went out sailing and didn't get killed. Those are pretty good odds, right?

NOTE that the club's official site falsely advertises many aspects of "club" membership. For instance, the site states that:

1. you'll be joining a "club". This implies you'll have equal say, standing, comparable benefits, or something like that, but nothing could be further from the truth. You'll be a customer, giving money to other individuals who have lots of benefits, none of which you will have.

2. That you can "teach others to sail". In fact, you are not allowed** to teach anyone how to sail unless formally approved as a Hoofer instructor! If you try it, you'll be kicked out of the club, and we'll keep your money.

3. That you can get your deposit back. Good luck with that because Hoofer employees actively scheme how to keep customers (paying club members) from getting their deposits back^†.

4. That HSC is a social organization where you can make great new friends. Mostly that's for instructors and club officers--the real club--who take advantage of their positions in every way possible. If you're just a plebe (a customer), heh, good luck impressing anyone in a dinghy or as crew on a keelboat. If you can somehow manage to become commodore, you can really take advantage and get the girls (more on that in our next post).

5. Most people who join only want to take a few lessons. That's absurd. Most people want to take many more, at least initially, but either the lessons they want are always full, or they get scared away (see above). The real club (instructors+BOC) love those people because we get to keep their $200 membership fee!


6. That Hoofers doesn't discriminate. Unfortunately, the club does discriminate illegally. For one example, see the comments here.

So join Hoofers now! Just don't sign up for sailing--try kayaking, SCUBA, or something else instead. Better yet, get the heck out of Madison this summer and go see the world!

*Alcohol has been officially banned on board Hoofer boats since 2015, although there's no law against getting hammered on shore and then going sailing. Nor has the no-alcohol policy stopped some club leaders and instructors from taking beer and liquor on board.
**Hoofer Sailing has been changing web URLs, removing documents, sanitizing BOC minutes, and so on, perhaps to cover their tracks. That is how crooks operate. The link in #2 above is to the 2014 Ground School Manual--the latest that's online as of the date of this post (which alone should tell you something). As of June 2019, the club's official manual site has removed all manuals, ostensibly to be revised (why didn't we do this in the off-season??). If the above link to the 2014 GS Manual becomes disabled, let us know and we'll post a copy someplace.
†Not all BOC and instructors are criminals, but too many are.

A penny bonus!

JUNE 4 UPDATE: Pirate's Day 2019 has been postponed until August 24 due to the total lack of piers. Who wants to bet Commodore's Cup will also be postponed? PD after C-Cup would be very odd in any case. Note that "If you are removed from the event due to behavioral misconduct, a refund will not be given." Behavioral misconduct? In Hoofers..? Aww, c'mon.

Do you desperately need a job? Are you willing to work for a pittance? Do you get off on harassing people? If you answered "yes" to all three of these questions, then we have a job for you!

The Wisconsin Union is hiring for various summer positions, including dishwasher and building manager. Student building manager is a highly coveted position that not only pads your resume (if your career objective is to be a bouncer or a prison guard) but authorizes you to harass people at will. You'll get your kicks by: carding anyone who looks underage (read: cute chicks and their boyfriends), ordering people to take their non-Union food elsewhere, telling people you don't like to leave, and calling the police to come and harass people professionally. Be the enforcer on the Terrace!

It's too bad some people are so shallow and petty, but not everyone has what it takes to become a scientist or engineer.

And it gets even better.... Student positions are now paying an extra 0.50/hr. Yes, you read that correctly--that's 50¢ over and above our normal low wage! You won't get rich, and it won't pay your tuition, but fifty cents will buy you a piece of bubble gum, half a candy bar, or a postage stamp! (Does this offer include sailing instructor positions? We're not sure.)

For comparison, the Union director's salary is $160,000 per annum. Holy greenbacks, Batman! For you non-engineers, that's 320,000 times the 50¢ bonus.

So apply now and join the brotherhood of Wisconsin Union staff! Sailing instructor applications are here. Note that sailing instructor offers some of the same perks as building manager, e.g. authority and immunity to mess with people you don't like.

In other news, the estate of Yu Chen finally filed suit this week against the UW Rescue employees responsible for his death.

Pirate's Day cancelled!

JUNE 7 UPDATE: Pirate's Day isn't cancelled after all. It's just postponed from June 8 to August 24! That will be weird, but August is a good time for an event.

It's almost June, there are keelboats in the water... and there's no place to land them (see photo). At least, there's no place to land them at Hoofers. Alumni pier is an option, but is it really any surprise that the piers are behind schedule?

The new piers were supposed to be ready by May. That's difficult to prove because all the construction timetables seem to have disappeared. The whiners were right, of course, that they wouldn't be ready on time. Perhaps the "marina" plan was so eagerly accepted by club leaders (hi Mills!) in the first place because they were told the piers would be ready for the 2019 season. Still, it seems like the plan was rammed down our throats.

Given that we have no piers and will be forced to launch boats by shoving them off the boardwalk, this year's Pirate's Day is in dire jeopardy of being cancelled. It won't be cancelled entirely--people can still dress in drag and come down to the lakefront boozefestKool-Aid fest, but there won't be much sailing, and no treasure hunt without Badger sloops.

We'll be lucky to have piers by Commodore's Cup, and by then most people will have forgotten how to sail.

Will there be an adjustment, e.g. a membership extension, for people who purchased annual memberships last May or June?

Special election for special guyz

For those who've been asleep at the wheel, the commodore election this year is much earlier than in the past--it's next week. Actually, it was supposed to be in March, but no one who got nominated wanted to be commodore! So, we try again.

The reasoning behind the change to early-season elections was that many students leave town in early August, right around the time the election has traditionally been held in the past. At least, I think that's the reason, but I'm usually asleep at the wheel and/or drunk during BOC meetings.

This Friday, May 10, is now the last day to nominate someone for commodore, vice-commodore, or (heh-heh) rear commodore. That last position, a new one, is something like a$$ queen, I guess, but hey, it gets somebody else another free membership, and Hoofers is all about getting free stuff.

Here are some of the benefits of being commodore:
• A FREE annual membership.
• Power, and lots of it.
• No responsibility.
• Superuser login to the website, letting you remove ratings anonymously, collect personal info, and generally f@#k with anyone you don't like.
• 60% tuition stipend worth up to $6,000 (I still can't believe we added that, or Union management did when they took over.)
• Help shape the future of the club and pad your wallet at the same time!
• Free lifetime membership so you can "stay until you're grey".
• You get to be featured on this blog!

So nominate yourself now, or better yet, nominate someone you don't like!

Note: Next year's commodore has already been selected by Union administration, but we have to go through the election process anyway for appearances sake.

Down the slippery slope

MAY 3 UPDATE: Lift-in has been postponed from May 4 to May 18 because, as you may have noticed, we still don't have any piers yet! (Who wants to bet it will be postponed again come May 17?)

Lift-in is now scheduled for next Saturday, May 4. As of this past Friday, the National Weather Service was forecasting 5–8" of snow for yesterday, April 27; Madison got half an inch. Nevertheless, the forecast and 35° temps were enough to suppress turnout at the annual Mifflin Street Block Party (photo at right), and it would have been an awful day for lift-in. Yesterday's mini-blizzard did get us thinking, though...

As Hoofer Sailing completes its transition to a draconian kiddie fest where everyone in any position of authority has plausible deniability, the UW-Madison continues its slide into mediocrity. One alarming symptom of the slide: library closings. The Biology, Business, Chemistry, Geography, and Engineering libraries have already been shuttered, with many more to come. They are being turned into "book free zones" where students can go to hang out. Engineering (Wendt) was a major campus library.

Not only is the UW closing libraries; the idle minds in Bascom are canceling journals by the truckload and have been for some years now. Not just the printed journals, mind you, but the electronic (PDF) versions as well. In academia, technical journals are the only thing more important than books.

“I think it’s very sensible and practical,” said Ed Van Gemert, vice provost for libraries. And much cheaper too.

The reasons for "consolidating" libraries are two-fold. One is budgetary--as fewer and fewer full-pay (read: wealthy) students, e.g. from out east and overseas, choose UW-Madison, and as the Republican legislature continues to slash funding, something has to go. Why not the libraries? The second reason, which is entirely unadvertized: it's much easier to manage surveillance at a smaller number of large libraries (with their smaller number of entry choke-points) than at three dozen smaller libraries. In other words, the savings obtained by cancelling hundreds of important professional journals is being used to install more and more surveillance cameras. The self-serving fearmongers at UWPD are pushing this, in part through their campus-wide poster campaign. Of course, cops who can barely read or write have no use for technical journals.

One has to wonder what the UW's priorities are. As UW-Madison plummeted from the 10th ranked U.S. university overall in 1982 to 44th in 2017, the football program has gone from a perennial also-ran to a powerhouse, and the UW has become the top party school in America. Libraries may be crucial to academics, but they aren't needed for football or parties! The overall plan is to get rid of an astounding 75% of research materials.

The latest proposal is to turn Memorial Library into an all-season, multi-level playing field for frisbee golf.

But seriously, how about a climbing wall on College Library with some zip lines leading down to Hoofers?! Meanwhile in HSC, responsible adults are prohibited from taking beer on cruises and are required to wear their lifejacket at all times lest they stumble overboard in an alcohol withdrawal-induced catalepsy and drown.

'Judgment' has officially been removed from the requirements for a keelboat skipper rating.

The Hoofer TOP 10

APRIL 11 UPDATE: Hoofer Sailing Club (i.e. BOC, paid staff, and instructors) wants to assure customers (a.k.a. "club members"), potential customers, parents of potential customers (youth sailing), and UW-Madison's Chancellor Blank that we are doing our best to weed out incompetent instructors. At this point, most of them either became alcoholics and disappeared, or else club leaders used the latest keelboat insurance money to exercise the buyout clause in their lifetime contracts and sent them to work for tech start-ups in the San Francisco Bay area. Oddly enough, the club is still paying some of them, but at least it's not to wreck Hoofer keelboats anymore.

We've added a handy new menu button on the right--check it out. These are the result of a couple of us talking the other night, possibly after a few brewskis, so it is a work in progress. If you recall a good one that's not on the list, leave a comment!

Hello Yellow Brick Road, or Why we hate Wisconsin, Part 3

No one can argue that there aren't a lot of dogs around campus. It seems like almost everybody has a dog, though in reality it's probably every third or fourth house.

Twice a day, each dog's owner takes poochie out for a "walk", whereupon it leaves a yellow stain in the snow. No one wants to make their dog wade through deep snow to a tree, so most of it gets deposited right at the edge of the sidewalk. Now let's do a little math.

Most people don't walk their dog more than a few blocks, so let's assume a 4x4 block home range. That's 16 square blocks or roughly 480 houses. If we use a conservative estimate of one dog every four houses, that's 120 dogs, each depositing some 8 oz of liquid twice a day. This occurs throughout the winter, with continuous snow cover typically from December to March. Hence, in a given 4x4 block area--your neighborhood--that's:

120 dogs X twice a day X 8 oz X 90 days = 1350 gallons of dog pee.

Enough to fill a swimming pool! Now divide by 64 (16 square blocks X 4 sides on each block) = 21 gallons of dog pee right along your block, i.e. the 6-8 houses in a row that are your neighbors.

We can zoom in even closer: 21 gal / 8 houses = 2.5 gallons of other people's dog pee right in front of your house. About now, this all starts to melt and flow straight onto the sidewalk. You may think you're wading through melted snow on your way out the door, but....

Go, Wisconsin!

What does this have to do with HSC? Sometimes people bring their dogs on board the keelboats, and sometimes, poochia has to do something that just can't wait. Some may recall this happening just last summer. There are also some other, more ephemeral links between pee and Hoofers, but we'll let you Mull over those.

The above calculation can of course be reduced to: 2 dogs/linear block X 16 oz/day X 90 days / 128 oz per gal = 22.5 gal along your block. But that 1,350 gal figure is impressive! And we haven't even mentioned the other stuff each of those dogs deposits once a day...

Overpaid

FEB 22 UPDATE: We've switched to embedded comments so it's easier to reply to particular comments, and this will allow sub-threads on those topics too (and possibly make it easier to ignore certain other comments). Let's see how this works.

A comment on our previous post inspired us to do a little research. Here's what your favorite (or least favorite) Hoofer staffer gets paid per annum:

• Outdoor Programs Dir. Joe Webb: $52,570
• WUD Cultmaster Jim Rogers: $47,922
• Hoofer Advoosigator Dave Elsmo: $46,205
• Director of Kiddies Susan Dibbell: $121,899
• Wis. Union Führer Mark Guthier: $158,500

That last one is almost eighty dollars an hour--to sit in his office on the fifth floor and come up with new ways to waste money. For reference, a full professor makes around $100K, although that can vary somewhat.

A sailing instructor? $10/hr, give or take a buck (which would translate to $20K/year if full time were possible)--to go out and risk our lives, get sunburned, cut, bruised, yelled at, and hammered. We do it all for a fraction of what the office minions make. We might as well be volunteering.

And do we really need an advoosigator? Hoofer Sailing always managed itself in the past. Why pay one individual $46K/year to tell us to be sure to tie our shoe laces? As far as Jim's returning as advoosigator, that's unlikely, but not because it would be a pay cut. As of 2010 Jim was making a cool $46K--about what he's making now (that's what is meant by stag-nant wages). There just isn't a whole lot of opportunity for advancement at the Wis. Union, unless you aspire to become Union director, which in fact is Jim's stated goal. (are you grooming him yet, Mark?)

Another comment questioned the need for a Head of Instruction. Alas, someone has to organize and schedule lessons, and a rotation, like we have for security, would be a mess IMHO. But that doesn't mean HOI has to be a full time position.

Note that the above are 2017 salaries, so they've probably all creeped up a few bucks since then.

Why we love summer (and hate Wisconsin the rest of the time)

JAN 29 UPDATE: Okay, this has to be a first--two days of classes cancelled in a block:

UW cancels classes through noon Thursday

I'm going ice skating! Let's have a snowball fight! Er, holy crap it's too cold out... How can there even be classes this afternoon? (there are)

Friday night's sailing weather recap:



That's -29 degrees celsius.

Sailing seems awfully far away right now, even sitting here in the lounge writing this. It's too cold to even go ice sailing, although there is plenty of ice out there.

'Nuf said.