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!