Day Camp Director Overwhelmed by Offers of Support for Her Kids

This story is very upsetting but I am not sure where you got that the kids were "asked to leave" as that is not the account relayed by Creative Steps Camp director Alethea Wright or any of the mainstream media reports.  While there is no doubt that MEMBERS acted horribly in this case I can not seem to find anything to back up the statement that pool staff stated minorities were not allowed at the pool and that the kids needed to leave as you write here:

"The children from the day camp were informed by pool attendants that minorites were not allowed in the pool and asked to leave."

Can you post a reference link? Or are you referring to the third party account given by Horace Gibson, one of the parents who was not present at the pool that day?

The original NBC Philadelphia article, linked here at NowPublic in the article, Day Camp Kids Told Minorities Not Allowed in Phila, PA Pool , states:

"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."

I am unaware, nor can it be determined from the article, whether Mr. Gibson was poolside at the Valley Swim Club or whether he was relaying what was told to him by his child or children, other children or parents that were there that day.   
 

when we re-post a media article from the main stream, whether it's here on NP, our blog, or some other site we have to accept the article for what it is. We are not full time paid journalists with the resources to verify every single fact of every single post. 

The poster on NP is not responsible for the contents of any story posted. Only the original author can be held to account for the story. If a story is on someone's blog well may be we should check to see if the main media is reporting on it, but if it's not, it does not mean its not true or incorrect.

Last year, when there was the terrorist attack in Mumbai, there were so many posts on NP which contained quotes from so called eye witnesses but it would have been impossible for a poster to NP to track down all those witnesses to verify that they said what was reported.

I do believe a serious incident/event took place at this private swimming club which needs a full investigation and the findings made public. No NP member has the resources to do that, so we will wait and see if some one will do just that!

If it's a private club I wonder why then, they even opened it to non members. I suppose if it's a private club they are entitled to decide on the membership but once they offer it to the general public without vetting, then it's no longer a private club.

Karen I think you did very well to get this story out and we will have to wait to see what becomes of it. Hope I'm not rambling on here but I actually think the staff editors are asking for a bit too much on this story.

once the swimming club accepted the fee from the camping group, they entered into a legal contract. After the start of the contract the club decided to rescind it without proper justification, such as, the camping group had broken the club rules.

The way the club rescinded the contract was legally wrong and can be sued for damages. It was all handled very badly by the club, whether it was because the camping group happened to be a bunch of black kids trying to enjoy their summer, or because the club members were complaining about over crowding, it really does not matter, because the club should have considered all those points before entering into a legal contract with the camping group.

It is not clear if the statement attributed to the employee is an interpretation of what the kids thought they understood the employee to mean or whether it was a word-for-word quote.

I have experiments I could post where they take kids who go to the doctor and question them. The kids get led into making statements that would put that doctor away for years very easily.

This is exactly how witnesses' testimony is corrupted and innocents end up in jail, accused of heinous crimes, released years later when the kid grows up or the DNA test is finally in.

Kids and adults were make their memories conform to authority's expectations without much prompting.

One social psychologist I met told me she can get any group of children to produce a statement that makes it seem as if the kids were hurt without suggesting, just by phrasing the questions the "right" way and all in less than ten minutes.

And, after a while, the kids spontaneously "remember" the events as adults wanted them to.

Thanks.

The kids may indeed be right, both literally and in terms of interpretation, but I doubt we will ever know.

I will say that my experience on the more ethnically-oriented East Coast is that all groups have more prejudice there than on the West Coast.

I remember the reaction in the '80s when my wife, African-American, and I were at the Philadephia Zoo. There black people just stared at us.

Then, days later, we could feel the somewhat negative vibes in suburbia from some white women when we were going to a restaurant.

There are in America today, private country clubs, like for tennis or golf, which do not accept membership from non-whites. I think this was high lighted when Tiger Woods became the No1 golfer.

Does this swimming club have non-white members or workers? I did read somewhere that's it's in an area which is 99.99% white, so on that grounds alone there could be no non-white members.

On a lighter note, the other day I read something about, "It's the business of newspapers to sort the wheat from the chaff, and ensure the chaff is published!"

There are also clubs that only take Jews and only take blacks. One white congressman wanted to be part of the congressional black caucus because he was the congressman for a district which was a black district.

Hey, guess what! The black caucus wouldn't let him in.

Actually, the snobbiest "cricket clubs" and such now take all races and creeds. Frankly, when I learned that that had all changed in suburban Philadelphia, I was pleasantly surprised.

The question of racism is the main one here. Clubs that are only for Man, Woman, Christian, Muslim, Jews, Black, White , Homo Sexual or others exist every where and in every country except for a few European Countries where this is outlawed. Wish causes a new set of problems and another sort of discrimination.

Mismanagement seems to be secondary. Many businesses make falls assumptions and over extend them self to the point that they have to go back and cancel a loot of contracts.

Every Air line over book and hopes it will all work out and usually does. 

This time it did not and action where taken that may have been badly handled.

I was on an over booked flight in Chicago two month ago and truest me people where not happy no matter how the Air line staff tried to handle it. First they asked for volunteers to take the next or even next day flight, after they did not get enough responses to that request, they had to make the decisions and make some people wait.

Children and Families as well as Business people had priority and what remained was taken off the plane list and put on stand by, many said some very ugly things in the heat of the moment and in one couples case security had to be called in.

Of course they where right to be upset, however, today this is common business practice in order to keep prises down and make certain that you are always booked to max.-capacity to cover the cost.

Imagine all the Gym members showing up at the gym at the same time? They would have to close the gym and kick every one out. 

It could very well be that this has been mishandled and blown out of proportion by both sides.

Last year we had an open house for our Farm and B&B and as usual I expected about 50 people since I have done it a couple of times. Only this time in order to increase our exposure we decided to sign up with a tour guide organization and their add campaign . They organized annually an add campaign for tourist to find out new spots to discover.

So we expected maybe 500 people at the most and so the tour guide organization believedas well. 

We ended up with over 3000 visitors for that day and it was crazy, had we not managed to pull the entire community together to come and help with out notice on a last minute call, I would have no choice but to kick every one out and close doors.

Trust me it was stress and I own our community a great deal of gratitude for all their shipped in that day. Because even though we had extra staff on hand no one expected this sort of turn out. 

Some thing similar could have happen here as well.