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Lets Have Real Democracy

By John Leonard

It is abundantly clear from the results of the round table evaluations of the findings of the Governance Task Force and the consultants hired by USA-Swimming, that only two items are of “negative concern” by the existing delegates to the USA-S convention. Those are; the make-up of the USA-S Board of Directors and the make-up of the House of Delegates. Predictably, those chosen and selected by the “present method” support the present method. Duh.

It is equally clear that the most important “piece” of the organization that is USA-Swimming is the Club.

The club builds the sport. It’s the entity that recruits new athletes to our sport. The club promotes the sport, by conducting training, swim meets and running the education for athletes and parents that makes our sport popular and growing. The club achieves. The coach at the club is responsible for the development of the athlete to all the achievement levels possible in our sport.

     The club does everything.

      Except govern the sport.

The sport is governed by a left over from the old AAU, called the Local Swimming Committee. The LSC does not recruit athletes, does not promote the sport, and does not “achieve”. In other words, it is completely and totally outside the mission of USA-Swimming.

To the credit of those at the Dallas round-table (the delegates from those same LSC’s), they recognize that, and want to change all the action items of the LSC’s that the governance study recommended. That support was  overwhelming and gratifying.

But we need the clubs involved. And there is a simple and direct way to do it, proven over 226 years. Its called Democracy. It gives the little guy and the big guy one vote.

We should assign “one vote per member”.

Every member of USA-Swimming represents one vote.

If we have 280,000 members of USA Swimming, there are 280,000 votes in the House of  Delegates.

Each club  has the opportunity to send a representative or representatives to the national convention. Each club carries the number of votes equal to its club registration numbers from Sept. 1 of that year.  Some clubs will carry 1,000 votes, some will carry 50 or 10.

Each club can send one rep with all 1000 of its votes, or they can send 20 reps with 50 votes each. That’s the choice of each registered club.

But each member of USA Swimming is directly representative of a  vote. Every small club can come and express itself and vote.

Lets do one more thing; lets recognize the importance of our top end high achievers…..they help build the dreams of our sport after all. (how many young girls wanted to “be Janet Evans”, young boys “be Josh Davis”?

For every Senior National qualifier on your team, you get 5 more votes. For every National Team member, you get 10 more votes.

What would  happen ?

Every club would have direct voice in the decisions of USA Swimming. Some clubs would chose to exercise that vote. Some would not. Just like every other American democratic institution.

But every club would have direct voice. Real democracy.

Every athlete, every volunteer, every coach….represented directly by those they know best…their own club.

The national convention would grow. That’s good. More involvement,  more excitement about our sport.

Each club intending to attend the national convention would name its delegate and alternates 60 days following the close of the prior convention, so we’d gain the opportunity (as recommended by the Governance Commission) to have the most educated possible delegates to the convention.

So I agree, the recommendations of the Governance Task Force are not strong enough, not democratic enough. Lets do it right. Lets get this on the floor for the  2003 Convention as an alternate to governance proposal, and lets get it passed. I recommend we start with an explanation of this plan to every club in the USA with a direct mail campaign through USA Swimming and have them ask their LSC delegates to support it.

What do you think? Let me know! Jleonard@swimmingcoach.org