Hoofers/ASA spending opportunity

June 21 UPDATE: No one signed up yet so the testout is rescheduled for June 25.
June 24 UPDATE: Cancelled again--no takers! One wonders if it's because of the assigned instructor, or perhaps people are wise to this scam.

Hey everyone! There's still time to sign up for this year's ASA 101 testout scheduled for June 11! The cost? About as much as an annual membership in Hoofers! ($200 for non-students--plus the cost of HSC membership.)

Passing this worthless course qualifies you to take more worthless ASA courses (and more importantly, at least to paid HSC instructors, helps to support their drug/alcohol habits). Seriously though, ASA ratings are worthless. They're for people who aren't good sailors but who want to be able to say, "Look, I'm a good sailor... I got an ASA rating! (or two) Whoo hoo!"

Good sailors, i.e. competent, experienced sailors, don't need ASA ratings, e.g. to charter a boat. The last thing I would ever do when reserving a charter is to tell them I have some ASA ratings from Hoofers. If you do that you're guaranteed to get extra scrutiny from the charter master when you arrive, and probably a testout too. Charter masters can smell the fear.

If you want to be able to go and charter, say, a 37 ft. cruiser (monohull) in Florida, just learn as much as you can on regular Hoofer keelboat lessons, get a skipper rating or two, and then start teaching keelboat lessons! Alas, that last item isn't up to you--the club simply won't let some people teach. You have to be either (a) super party boy, (b) a groveling workaholic who loves fibreglass resin and power tools, or (c) butt-buddies with the right person(s). Seriously.

Nor does teaching keelboat lessons guarantee you'll become a good Hoofer sailor, but it sure helps.

The legacy of Jim Rogers

As promised, here's a plot of HSC instructor pay over time. Compare this graph with the previous post. It should be pretty obvious why membership dues have outpaced inflation over the past 15+ years.

Note: (1) "Total instructor pay" includes the head instructor's salary as well as the Youth program and instructor training (i.e. all wages), but does not include things like manuals, lifejackets, etc. (2) It also doesn't take into account the free club membership that all sailing instructors get (a $200+ value in 2011), which is a total cost to the club of around $200 X 75 instructors = $15,000. May or may not be significant depending on your point of view.

Note that instructor hourly pay has doubled since 1994, far outpacing inflation. WHY? And total dollars going to instructors is "off the chart." This seems to imply more paid instructors working ever more hours. Not coincidentally, over the same period of time, the price of a general club membership has climbed much faster than the rate of inflation. Aichee wawa.

If you want to do your own analysis or check ours, ask Margaux or Michelle or another BOC member for the relevant data. I couldn't find info for all years (some disposed of perhaps by Mr. Rogers?), but I didn't spend that much time in the files either. However, all years aren't necessary to plot the overall trend.

Milking the Cow

Alright... after a mostly successful lift-in, it's finally time to start thinking about sailing!! And the first thing that comes to mind is how much it's going to cost. If you're not buddies with current club leaders (in which case it costs nothing), then it's cash up front, and non-refundable.

The graph shows the change in membership prices since the early 1990s, compared to the overall rate of inflation. Ouch. The numbers plotted are the price of a regular annual membership. It's apparent that the cost of joining Hoofers has far outpaced the rate of inflation. But why..?

Next time, we'll plot instructor pay over time and find out. :)

NOTE:
1. Some (but not all) years offered an "early annual" discount which explains the apparent dip in 2001. Most people took advantage (the regular price, if you waited, was typically $30 more), so the discounted price is what's plotted.
2. The prices include the "deposit" since fewer than 10% of club members ever get that money back.
3. Some years had additional fleet-specific fees (e.g. J skipper, Keelboat, short board, etc.); these were problematic and are not included here.
4. The cost for current students and non-student Union members was the same until the 2003-04 fiscal year, at which point they decided to really stick it to Union members.
5. The fiscal year doesn't match the sailing season, so in a sense, the years are +/- six months either way.
6. The chart was generated using CricketGraph for Mac.

Daddy's watching

The law says you can't expect privacy in a public place, and in that spirit, the new Union South--which is now officially open for business--is saturated with security cameras.

A quick, cursory, non-comprehensive count found 27 security cameras on the first floor alone, plus at least three outside. The actual total is likely higher than that assuming some of the cameras are mounted discreetly. Given that Union South is five stories tall, it's quite possible that the building contains more than A HUNDRED security cameras.

Does that sound at all unreasonable or scary to anyone..?

Next, we'll count security cameras at Memorial Union and Hoofers.

Sailing toward oblivion

With so much off-topic stuff lately, I have to at least try to make this sound like it relates to Hoofers.

The subject line refers to the oblivion for lower and middle class Wisconsinites that will result if Chancellor Biddy Martin is successful in her efforts to separate UW-Madison from the UW system--which, it turns out, have been going on for quite awhile, probably since she took over as chancellor. Martin's intent is to privatize UW-Madison so that tuition and fees can be raised at will, with no more interference by the state. Martin also wants to be able to downsize (or terminate) any professors (and departments) who aren't raking in the big grant money. Hello Art, Anthropology, and Philosophy!

The more you read about Martin's plan, the creepier it gets. For example, her secret New Year's memo to Gov. Walker listing her goals which at their base include a 20% (or higher) tuition hike over the next two years.

Martin herself states: "The goal would be to keep tuition increases under double digits." Well, we all know that goals are rarely met, so we can expect tuition hikes of at least 10% per year if Martin succeeds in her "New Badger Partnership" plan. They're already rising at 9%, or four times the rate of inflation (between 2002 and 2010, tuition and fees more than doubled while inflation, cumulatively, was just 21%). This publication lists UW-Madison's annual tuition over the past 20 years and compares it to the CPI (consumer price index).

Indeed, all Martin talked about in her Madison Magazine interview last fall was raising tuition as much as possible! Here is a much more comprehensive (and scary) website on her whole privatization plan. And for the legal-minded, here's an interesting side-by-side comparison of existing law, Martin's plan, and the UW System's counterproposal, the "Wis. Idea Partnership".

In short, Martin's belief is that if people can't afford to attend UW-Madison regardless of the cost, then they probably shouldn't be going to college anyway.

Live and let die--Wisconsin style

More semi-off-topic news, but there's not much going on at Hoofers this time of year, and this is incredible....

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has proposed doing away with Medicare and Medicaid. Incredibly, in the same bill, he proposes substantially cutting taxes for the very rich. So let's get this straight.

Ryan wants to toss the poor (along with their children), the disabled, and the elderly under a bus while grabbing their cash (before they land under the bus) and giving it to the rich people who donated to his campaign. Oh, and Ryan also wants to get rid of food stamps. The words blatantly and outrageous come to mind.

It's obvious that Ryan is trying to make a name for himself, but threatening tens of millions of Americans is a strange way to do it. In any case, it's the same as in Hoofers: when you're in a position of authority, and lacking any moral compass, try whatever you think you can get away with.