Such Sweet Sorrow
Below is the text of the letter of resignation that I sent to Julie Ordner rather than keep paying dues to support a corrupt Board. The embedded Facebook post was included in the letter. At the bottom of the page is a screenshot showing the date of the invoice referenced in the text.
We are not renewing our membership in the Skye Terrier Club of America. We came to this decision last spring and summer after dealing with the Board’s ill-considered and improper actions to support a spokesperson whose racist postings were an embarrassment to the club, and well before the Board decided to further ignore the By-Laws to rig a complaint and hearing to drive us out.
We believe that there is no benefit to being a member of a club whose president, among other things, seems to enjoy not knowing the difference between being elected and being appointed, and who grandiosely claims that she is the descendant of George Washington through his sister. Unless she has some proof of an incestuous relationship resulting in a child that is otherwise unknown to historians, this claim is simply not true. Or perhaps it means that the STCA president doesn’t know the difference between sire and littermate?
Rather than functioning as a group dedicated to the improvement of the Skye Terrier, it looks like the STCA is in danger of degrading itself into a cult of personality around the president. Why else would some members be threatened to “get in line with the Board” and warned that they should write to the president and pledge their loyalty? Indeed, we have heard that at the Montgomery weekend Board meeting, it was decided that we knew more about the coming kangaroo court proceedings than we should, so the president forced each Board member to swear that they were not the leakers. I can’t know for sure if that particular detail is true, but it certainly is believable, as the unwitting source of the information is one of the president's most trusted lieutenants.
Further, the club often seems to barely function even at the most basic level of service to its members. For instance, the renewal notices are required by the By-Laws to be sent out in November of each year, but are routinely delayed until sometime in December. Our renewal notice covering dues for 2016 was dated December 9 and postmarked December 10, 2015. November was on the 2015 calendar as early as last January, so its arrival should not have been a surprise.
Therefore, for those reasons and others, as of 1 January 2016 we are no longer members of the Skye Terrier Club of America. Rather than simply going away, however, over the coming weeks and months we will be publishing the details of this story and others on our website. After all, the president and her team have been using gossip and the Bulletin to tell their version of the events of this summer and fall; we will have our say too, and thanks to the Board, we can document it.
Steven Spicer Becky SpicerThey can’t say I didn’t warn them.
Illustrations
Links in the discussion above may bring you here.
Click on the picture to return to the reference.
The renewal notice
