USATF Board overturns 392-70 vote, will instead nominate Stephanie Hightower for IAAF Council

Clearly, the USATF board had this well planned from the start.

See changes proposed by the Board to Article 17:

http://www.usatf.org/Events---Calendar/2014/Annual-Meeting/Proposed-Bylaw-Changes-%281%29.aspx

The text between * was added.

IAAF Delegates and Alternates: USATF shall be represented in the IAAF Congress by the ((President)) *Chair*, the CEO and one (1) other delegate who shall be selected quadrennially by the Board from nominations made by the Nominating and Governance Panel at the annual meeting of USATF immediately preceding the IAAF Congress held in conjunction with the World Championships held prior to the Summer Olympic Games. *The President is eligible to be nominated for the third selected IAAF delegate position.* The Board shall name alternates for any of these three members who are unable to attend an IAAF Congress. If the Board is unable to name an alternate, the remaining delegates shall name the alternate.

C. IAAF expenses: USATF shall provide a budget for its reasonable share of expenses for attending meetings of its representatives to the IAAF Congress and of its nominees selected to serve on the IAAF Council and committees. *USATF will provide a budget for the President to attend the IAAF World Championships and the Summer Olympic Games.*

I was at the Closing Session this morning and the whole voting process was a total clusterf**k. They were totally disorganized and it took forever - which is the main reason I'm annoyed that they overturned the voting rights.

However there were hints that the outcome was predetermined. They seemed to emphasize prior to the vote that the Board could overrule the vote from the members. Nor was there any real explanation on why Hightower was running to replace Hersh - or anything from either candidate. I'm sure there is a good reason for putting Hightower on the IAAF Board over Hersh but that was never communicated to the members.

I can't figure out exactly who is an who isn't currently on the board - but like almost everything at USATF the thing no one wants to talk about is race - who wants to bet with me that the 1 of the 12 who voted for hersch was also white?

Chet Manly wrote:

I'm sure there is a good reason for putting Hightower on the IAAF Board over Hersh...

She has to get elected first, and I suspect that's not going to be a gimme.

Lowtower wrote:

Chet Manly wrote:

I'm sure there is a good reason for putting Hightower on the IAAF Board over Hersh...

She has to get elected first, and I suspect that's not going to be a gimme.

I'm assuming there is a legitimate reason for them to prefer Hightower over Hersh but they never communicated anything about the election. I talked to someone who went to the Executive Session and they talked about the coming vote at the Closing Session and never once mentioned that Hightower was running against Hersh. If they just would have explained the reasoning on why Hightower needed (in their eyes) to be on the IAAF Council people would have at least excepted the Board's overule (still maybe not voted for her though) rather than they way they did it.

The only anti-Bob comments that I heard were that he was old and that he wasn't doing enough to get Americans on the other committees.

As if Stephanie will have even a fraction of the political influence that Bob did and somehow have a better chance of getting the nominees on committees.

Stephanie loves power. She has wanted this position for years and has been working for a long time to make sure she had the board votes lined up to get it. She had at least a simple majority of board member votes lined up coming in to the Annual Meeting. She must have won a few more votes last night, because yesterday, they were going to have a floor fight over whether or not we even could vote between Bob an Stephanie, all over simple majority versus supermajority. Suddenly this morning they agreed to the supermajority and did not try to fight it. I think what changed is that Stephanie lined up a few more votes.

Not sure what Hightower has on everyone, but she really gets what she wants. She's an Ohio State gad, and USATF just scheduled its annual meeting for 2017 and 2018 in Columbus. Which is not normally the kind of place you'd want to be in December.

Weary wrote:

Not sure what Hightower has on everyone, but she really gets what she wants. She's an Ohio State gad, and USATF just scheduled its annual meeting for 2017 and 2018 in Columbus. Which is not normally the kind of place you'd want to be in December.

C-Bus weather isn't bad in December.

If I'm not mistaken, Hightower is a C-bus resident. She's been in local government there. Those also happen to be the first two conventions after she's term-limited out as president. Not ever having looked at the details, I'm just going to guess that the president gets travel expenses to the convention paid by USATF, and thus she won't have to pay her own way to these two--or wouldn't have had to if she hadn't gotten this new job.

One important non-USATF track person has told me that the typical level of maturity in the highest levels of USATF is "significantly lower than in the 6th-graders I used to teach" and that their understanding of "fairness" was right out of the Politburo.

Here's how Hightower uses her power

From 2003: Like a Rock (http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/12/05/bad-words-bad-manners/)

Stephanie Hightower, president of the Columbus, Ohio school board, is taking heat for cursing at a 14-year-old boy who threw a rock at her car when she was driving with her husband and child. Hightower, a former Olympic track star, chased the boy to a nearby YMCA. George Hunter, the program director, stood between Hightower and the boy. The Columbus Dispatch (no free link) reports:

(Hunter) quoted Hightower as saying: "Do you know who I am? You hit my damn car, my f’ing car. I’m the president of your school board. You being a Columbus Public Schools student, it’s embarrassing for this to happen."

"We were just not going to let her hit him. And (the boy) is the kind that if she hit him, he would have hit her back," Hunter said.

The argument was moved into an office, where the boy eventually shed tears and admitted he had thrown the rock, Hunter said. The boy then went to another room and wrote Hightower an apology.

. . . Hightower said yesterday that she was rattled because the rock had thudded loudly against the car window, just inches from her head.

Hightower has apologized for using "inappropriate language." Her political opponents are accusing her of child abuse.

Too bad the YMCA guy got in the way. I'll take a 45-year-old woman in high heels over a 14-year-old punk any day.

kybaws wrote:

Torrence and Fleshman are sounding off right now on Twitter...

Lauren Fleshman ‏@laurenfleshman 29m29 minutes ago

A real leader understands when nobody wants you to lead them, and steps aside. #Hightower #USATF14

David Torrence ‏@David_Torrence 32m32 minutes ago

For USATF Board to relinquish the seat Hersh has earned over 16 yrs of serving as IAAF Council, after a 392-70 vote, DOESNT MAKE SENSE.

David Torrence ‏@David_Torrence 35m35 minutes ago

B) Hightower shows poor professionalism as President, & I ALONG with 392 other voting members, do NOT believe in her as IAAFcouncil. 5/5

Lauren Fleshman ‏@laurenfleshman 37m37 minutes ago

Turns out our @usatf board is full of shit (except one). Only one member voted with the OVERWHELMING constituent support of Bob Hersh.

WHOA! Fleshman goin' off! You go gurl!

Hightower doesn't want to get on LF's bad side. Perhaps Hightower should hold a tearful press conference holding her kid and explaining how hard she is trying to do a good job...she might just win LF over and get a sponsorship contract from Oiselle out of the deal.

Huge KG fan wrote:

Hightower doesn't want to get on LF's bad side. Perhaps Hightower should hold a tearful press conference holding her kid and explaining how hard she is trying to do a good job...she might just win LF over and get a sponsorship contract from Oiselle out of the deal.

LOL truth!

I believe it's excellent that Fleshman and Torrence have spoken out. Kudos to them. Unfortunately, this is far from enough. If change is to happen, as in getting rid of Hightower and her cronies, many more athletes have to stand up to this corrupt board. How many more athletes, if any, will stand up to this BS?

usatf removed the announcement post from twitter this morning.

Or do they support this?

Just lost all respect for Steve Miller.

Can you say dictatorship. USATF does not care about what it members think.

Where's TFAA wrote:

Or do they support this?

Just lost all respect for Steve Miller.

Steve Miller was also the only board member to vote no on reversing Bumbalough's DQ.

Can someone explain why there are so few voting members of the USATF? Do you have to fly in to some meeting in order to vote? Not that it seems to matter whether the members vote, but I'm curious.

does anyone have any view on whether this was actually a move that will help USATF?

Just because the incumbent won the election doesn't mean he is best for the job. IIncumbents almost always win elections.

Clearly the entire board minus one wanted a change - there might be a good reason for that.

I have no idea and am a complete outsider, but sometimes leadership has to make tough decisions for the betterment of the organization. Popular people get fired all the time. Doesn't necessarily mean the person doing the firing is corrupt - maybe the person doing the firing is taking an unpopular stand for the betterment of the organization.

sumdude wrote:

Can someone explain why there are so few voting members of the USATF? Do you have to fly in to some meeting in order to vote? Not that it seems to matter whether the members vote, but I'm curious.

Who gets to vote on what varies widely depending on what it is. In this particular case, the relevant votes are the delegates and the Board.

The delegates are made up of a certain number of representatives from each Association (based on the number of members in your Association) and a few other groups, most significantly AAC (athletes) who gets 20%.

Each Association is strongly encouraged to have a certain number of athletes as delegates, but they do not have to be elite athletes, a masters athlete or just average joe can count. But potentially athletes can have a LOT of representation in the room.

Athletes often leave before the closing session, I do not think AAC used all of their voting spots this year, but I don't know for sure.

Yes, you have to physically be present at the Annual Meeting to vote.

The Board of Directors is small because the USOC threatened to decertify USATF if they did not make it small (it used to be bigger).