A view from the inside: The downtown Seattle YMCA in 2015

Is the following kind of 'playing hardball' a sport the YMCA champions?

"We need to speak before I leave for vacation.   If we do not speak this week, I will put your membership on hold until I return from vacation, which is Friday July 17^th.  Thanks and looking forward to connecting.      -Cynthia Klever, Director, Seattle Downtown YMCA, in email, July 7, 2015

The real reason I was kicked out of the YMCA in July 2015* was that the things I was revealing about the organization's practices, as well as the misconduct of those at the top, threatened them.

I consider it an honor.

I was foolish but I have a clear consicence.

     
DON'T JOIN THE DOWNTOWN YMCA as long as it blames the victim, not the aggressor.

My immigrant parents who suffered so much discrimination would be sad that their adult child has to struggle to be respected by other people.


* * * * *

The person at the top sets the standards for those below.

The present Executive Director is the worst I've encountered in 20+ years of being a member of the Y.  

People need to know that this young woman is not a truthful person.

I have spent much more time with her than most people, not just shooting the breeze in her office.

It seems she can size up people in an astonishingly short period of time and then figure what she can get them to do.  That was what I figured out she was doing with other people.  

Fine for a politician, but the question is:  Is that what we want in a YMCA director?

And that is the experience of the downtown Y that I take with me.  Everyone else will be fall for the facade.   And that is why I threaten her. 

* * * * *

A whistle-blower pays a price.

Gangrene has set in at the Y, and no one dares to talk about it.

* * * * *

It is very unsettling to have a conversation with a person who is chewing in your face a huge wad of gum.  This is a sign of disrespect in my culture.

I believe she discriminates based on people's physical appearance.

When she  decided I should be disposed of , she called me in and began to make false accusations to intentionally me off balance.

Cynthia Klever had few scrupules with me about making accusations that were patently untrue or blown way out of proportion.  Or she took things that happened years ago and pretended they were happening now.

I have swum at Evans, M Matthews, Seattle U., Coleman, etc., as well as in Honolulu, Boston, San Francisco...and at the downtown Y without any problems. Yet Cynthia K. insisted, without providing genuine proof, that I could not swim properly.

Never in my life had I been drilled so aggressively and relentlessly in my life--by someone who had no right to be talking to me that way.


* * * * *


I've been a member of the downtown YMCA since 2002, so it is with regret that I am leaving.

People have been leaving the YMCA in droves since Cynthia came on board.
  
It is not just that it is trying to balance its books (the middle class fleeing over the past several years) by attracting a larger and larger group of people on financial aid whose behavior sometimes is disturbing.

The main problem for me is that it has no genuine desire to uphold the principles on which the Y was founded:  integrity, equality, sharing.

You have rules posted that require members to allow others to work in when another member is doing multiples sets on a single machine.   They even state that members must yield a machine to someone who is circuit training.

And yet the actual situation is that some members hog machines, sitting there and resting after doing a set.  Or they leave their towel on the seat and walk over to the other side of the room to chat with someone else or lift weights.   These same persons explode at you when you politely ask if you can "work in one set while they're resting"!

I have witnessed members monopolizing machines for 10-15 minutes.  Rarely does another person dare to ask if s/he can work in.

It doesn't help that many of the people look as if they just recently got out of the county jail or some juvenile detention center.   This is not a "charity" I care to belong.

So the principles of the YMCA are routinely sacrificed in the name of popularity (numbers).  

You have the law of the jungle, whoever is bigger, louder or more numerous, prevailing, at this gym.

There are people in this world who are vulnerable to discrimination--and not always the ones most people would immediately recognize--and this YMCA, in all its politically correct wisdom, does not protect them.

ABC Asian-Americans don't come here much for good reasons:  They feel excluded and in subtle ways discriminated against.   If a bratty lifeguard tells them to REALLY scrub their body clean, Cynthia will not censure him.  Her insensitivity towards age, race, and cultural differences is profound.

There is too fear and innunedo among the staff, and in the public sphere, attention only to appearance.  On so many counts, this YMCA pays only lip service to YMCA values.

"Popularity, political correctness, expediency," should be the motto of this YMCA.


Deceit is not a core YMCA value.   Nor is hypocrisy.  Leading someone to believe that the meeting is about "a concern you have with an email" and to "resolve the email" when all you have in mind is provoking the other person to the breaking point is not being honest or caring.  Pretending that the grounds for immediate termination--when in fact the meeting was "set up" (in both senses of the phrase) to avert a threatened 7-day disruption in membership was actions in accordance with YMCA "core values," when you are violating them yourselves, smacks of hypocrisy.


Anyone who enjoys pushing a 62-year old person of color, older enough to her parent, close to crying, is unfit to lead.


I will never forget how condescending she was to me.  It was an insult and a wound that will take some time to heal.

  
When Cynthia Klever leaves, I do think there is a chance for this YMCA to move forward.
  

The Y community deserves better.


 But the outcome of this game of hardball was decided in advance.


http://www.yelp.com/biz/ymca-of-greater-seattle-downtown-seattle?hrid=LzEaeV5d1_rSOvuLfFKBIQ


* conveniently just days before young Ms. Klever went on vacation.