Updated review of YMCA February 22, 2016

Eek!  Still methinks not.

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After having filed complaints with the Washington State Attorney General and the Better Business Bureau, this week I finally received a rather robotic response from the downtown YMCA ("the facts were documented and do not align...").

Instead of a formal apology and a reprimand, much less the dismissal, of its director Cynthia Klever, I was offered a prorated refund of a month's membership dues.

This was an egregiously insufficient response.

It took one person's refusal in the Deep South to sit at the back of the bus to change things in this country.

I refused to accept being treated as a second class citizen at the YMCA.  In the 13 years I was a member, I witnessed over and over again this YMCA (1) not living up to its own self-professed values and (2) not enforcing its rules impartially.

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"Why is that towel there [still in the locker]?    Is it clean?  Yes?  [smarmily], YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT [put it in the tub]."

[The floor of the locker room is often or usually covered in wet, used bath towels; the lockers full of half used towels hanging down.  Yet I never observed this same staff person admonishing anyone else over taking half a dozen towels at a time or throwing their used towels right and left].

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Me:  "This man really chewed me out at the pool."

Membership director, 1/3 my age, (raising voice, pointing, scolding):   "BUT THAT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO. ["You're being unreasonable.  You don't have the right to set your own boundaries with people.]"

Me:   "He's been stalking me ever since.  Please talk to him."

This kind of disrespect really hurt.  It still does.

Is this what the YMCA should be teaching?  

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Carefully documenting my experiences, I pointed this out in my Yelp updates.  Pressure was placed on Yelp to have those ten years' reviews expunged from the public record.

In the end the whistle-blower was punished.

Cynthia Klever needs to be dismissed.

The last incident at the YMCA in itself warrants a lawsuit against the downtown YMCA for psychological trauma and humiliation.

Being uncomfortable--and eventually angry--about being mistreated--and going public about it (on Yelp) is not an ethical reason to terminate a membership.   

Except at the downtown Seattle YMCA.   

Thank you, YMCA, for strengthening my resolve to continue to fight racial discrimination and prejudice the rest of my life.

Even if I cannot see changes within my lifetime.


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"J'ai assez vecu pour savoir que la difference engendre la haine." 
--Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir

May my words benefit other sentient beings.