Otago Golf Club storm in a teacup

Otago Golf Club storm in a teacup

By Neville Idour

A recent special general meeting at the Otago Golf Club to overhaul the club constitution stirred up what amounts to a storm in a teacup because of various spurious accusations aired in an Otago Daily Times newspaper story with a staged photograph on the front page.

This produced an avalanche of hundreds of uncalled for vitriol on social media platform Facebook. Some of it was abusive, scathing and disparaging such as “what a bunch of upstart tossers” from a woman.

There was also: “Snooty entitled snobs”, “Stuck up snobs”….and much worse. Many obviously just followed the mob mentality and jumped on the big cosy bandwagon.

Thankfully there were several sensible postings from people who knew a little about clubs and their difficulties. The saddest thing to come out of this were postings from several people who should know better, associated with other Dunedin clubs, suggesting the student members at Otago GC should join their club.

It certainly serves as a warning to golf clubs that misplaced perception can be a dangerous thing. It is completely understandable why many people completely shun social media, especially Facebook.

The club's general manager Shelley Duncan was rather nonplussed by the story which contained certain statements that were not backed up by fact or evidence.

Duncan explained the purpose of the meeting.

“The meeting was about the constitution – we had last looked at the constitution in 2016 and the meeting was to go through the constitutional changes. If you look at it you will see there is a huge raft of changes. One of which was moving our age group category percentages.”

The percentages were set 16 years ago – then the age group of 19-24 was at 33 percent of the full subscription. At the meeting that got moved to 50 percent of the full sub.

The age group of 25-29 moved from 40 to 60 percent of the full sub and the 30-34 group moved from 60 to 75 percent of the full sub.

Duncan: “The shift was because these were done 16 years ago when we didn’t have a lot of younger members under the age of 35.”

So while the dollar increases are a significant shift across all classes they are a reflection of a more equitable membership price spread.

``So we did something to recognise that these people financially were not in the same position as our full playing members although some of them are. Some 18-24 year olds have very good paying jobs.

``The changes were not targeted at students, it was a broad stroke across the age groups and that is what I said to the reporter. Nineteen to 24-year-olds have moved 17 percent so there is a shift amongst all age group categories not just the 19-24 bracket. But that was lost in translation with our reporter.”

So it is clear students as such were not targeted. All of the age group categories received similar financial increases. In fact there are actually 12 categories of membership.

How did the meeting come to be held on February 14 when according to Zac Cran, the Otago Student Golf Association president, “many students could not be there as they had not returned to Dunedin for the start of the new university year.”

Simply not true. Most Dunedinites were aware of the large student numbers who were in Dunedin as evidenced by the many large parties of 300 students or more in the city that were super spreaders of covid-19 that had to be shut down by police.

Duncan explained: “We promoted the meeting two weeks in advance, remembering we tried to have the meeting in December, 2021, but we couldn’t get a quorum so we then pushed it to now.

``It certainly wasn’t about trying to not have the students here, it was about trying to get this done before the AGM because it is quite a big thing to get done. It was advertised as it should be, to all members via our newsletter which includes all age group categories. So every member had notice of the meeting and they all have voting rights and they all had the ability to attend the meeting.”

There was an inference in the Otago Daily Times story that the voting rights were dismissed. In fact student members have full voting rights.

As Duncan says: “Potentially they could have overturned the vote had they attended in numbers. There were only 37 members including some younger ones in attendance, but no one that I would say attends university. There were some members in the 19-35 age bracket but those members voted in favour of what we are doing.”

The other accusation in the story was that many of the older members don’t like having students around and that ‘there is a distaste that a lot of the older members have for younger people at the club.”

Duncan responded.

“To be fair no one spoke to the older members of the club so how could you take from whatever that that is the case.

``There was a social media post that went around before the meeting from some of our younger members saying that the older white men of the club were trying to put up their fees and would they go to the meeting. And none of them came to the meeting. All of our members, men and women, want everyone to look after it, everyone to take care of the golf course and respect everybody else’s rights.

“There is nothing about what we are doing that says we don’t want younger people here. I am the chairperson of the Futures Dunedin Golf Club, I am an avid promoter of junior golf, our members want young members of the club, that’s why we put these categories there in the first place.”

Ironically, it was Duncan who helped the university set up Cran’s Otago Student Golf Association which enables it to get funding through the university along with other similar university sports clubs.

What happened on the day that produced the photo?

“The reporter rang me on the Tuesday, the day after the meeting and then Wednesday night we were here finishing up after the tournament which didn’t finish till about 7pm and I saw one of the other ODT (Otago Daily Times) photographers here about 5.50pm and I had already had another photographer (one that I know) here in the morning so I said are you here to take another photo? He said no, I am here to take a photo of the students for this article that is going in the ODT tomorrow morning.

“Three students arrived from the carpark who hadn’t been playing golf, saw me and you could tell they turned up then because they thought I wouldn’t be here. It looked like they did it on the quiet. Why would you not do it during the day?

``So that photo was taken at six o’clock and one of the guys was in jandals. Since when do you go and play golf in jandals?”

The photo of the three boys with one in jandals has the appearance of them actually playing. It is no wonder they looked sheepish when Duncan encountered them.

Duncan concluded: “ The thing that really disappoints me is that (a) there is no way that story should get in the newspaper and (b) that it was on the front page.”

It is somewhat difficult to disagree with those sentiments.