Cliff notes: Nice people in a student run organization are leaving/gradutating/being scared off; scary people are scaring new members because of the "style" of car they drive, creating an environment that is only friendly to domestic car drivers. I myself drive an Accord and still fit into this club very nicely, but find that many "import" drivers are scared to join our club because of its reputation of scaring off/snubbing "import" people.

So I'm a very active member of a sports car club at a big university (student organization). We do autocrosses and navigational rallyes, and I've had a lot of fun attending them. They recently started a new forum, in which we've had fun doing stuff just like here on HAN.

However, there is a lot of drama bull**** going on that doesn't need to happen, especially in a student run organization. For example, some members of the club want to discuss/introduce drifting, but there are other members who just throw fits, get angry, and start attacking people until the discussion is dropped. When one member drove his car in major drift events in 2 major cities, he posted a picture of the 6 ft tall trophy he won, in a domestic car. That thread turned into a 4 page long flame fest about how drifting is ghey/evil/bad, instead of congratulating him on his win, and good representation of our club (our logo and URL was plastered on the side of his car).

I for one am not entirely fond of drifting (not my thing), but I can respect it for what it is: A fun+safe car related activity. I can't see our club doing any drift activities due to major logistical issues. What pisses me off is that whenever the word "drift" is mentioned, people get pissed and start yelling.

It's not really the drifting that is the issue, its the willingness of our club to accept new ideas, and change with the times. After a few years of fighting and arguing, we finally got our forum, and there are still idiots running around making life miserable for others (they still think we shouldn't have a forum), when over 95% of the club has clearly accepted and understood how a forum works and what it can do for our club.

We currently use a site that is owned by the university for our autocrosses, and we do have to go through a lot of red tape to use it. What worries me is that with all of this fighting that is going on, our organization's ability to run events properly is beginning to suffer. I fear that we could perhaps lose our autocross site one day

The newly elected officers don't know how to moderate, and let flame wars explode before locking threads, allowing new and potential members to see what asshats we have in the club.

Just this past weekend, we had a 2 day practice autocross weekend. Now, from what I heard, some of the officers were yelling and acting very rudely towards "certain" people, causing some very good members to not feel welcome at all. There were also a few people that just moved to the area (to attend our university), that drive "imports," but were basically ignored by the officers and the "inner circle pow wow" of club members. Mind you that there only about 25+ people in attendance at this event, so it wasn't like they were too busy to socialize and make new people feel welcome.

Here we have new members that are willing to come to our events and take part in our activities, yet the people who run the show chose to ignore them because they didn't fit their ideal profile.

To make things worse, we have an ex-ricer in the club that is a very nice guy (introduced a lot of new people to our club), but never fails to make himself look like an idiot with his poor use of grammar, and idiotic posts on our forum. However, in real life, he has been a VERY big positive influence on our club (introducing new people, helping out at events). Unfortunately, a lot of officers have a personal vendetta against him, and they want to "ban" him from the club, which is illegal. This guy just bought a 240SX with no front swaybar and crappy tires in the rear, so his car slid around a little at the autocross practice, yet he got decent times just like everyone else. The officers got together and accused him of "drifting" and basically voted to "ban" him. On numerous occassions, officers have come up to him and accused him of drag racing on one of the other runways (he did not such thing), jsut so they could kick him out!

Our former autoross chair is a big tool who thinks he's god. On numerous occasions he's randomly lashed out at other people for no apparent reason, including me for "posting too much." This guy has been making life miserable for a few members, but he's here to stay since he's a grad student that won't be gone anytime soon. He feels as though his work as an autocross chair (very good work at that) gives him the right to boss people around and yell at people that don't fit the ideal profile. I don't want to see this guy leave, but his attitude needs to change. Others feel as though he needs to get a life, move on, and hang out with people his age.

We have some really cool members (and former officers), that are still around, but they are all about to graduate and move on with their lives. That leaves us n00bs as members, and a bunch of new and unexperienced officers and some satanist rednecks who think they're still running the show.

So, is this normal for student organizations? Is a big coup necessary to steer our precious club (which has been around since the '60s) into the right direction? I myself can just limit myself to attending autocrosses, going to better ones in the surrounding cities if possible, without having to deal with all the drama/politics these idiots subject themselves to.

I for one think that certain people are taking things way too seriously, and are losing sight of what is important I myself am in a very rare position where basically the ENTIRE club likes me, except for the autocross chair. On numerous occassions, the former officers have apologized for his behaviour towards me.

Sorry for my incoherent post, I guess I jsut wanted to give you guys something to read :banana:

 

post a link to the forum. That way all the post whore from here can go in, wreck shop and put the dumb @sses in their place :rick:

 

Its the import scene...of course there is going to be drama because its all a bunch of immature assholes involved in it most times.

 

It's a private forum

nope not in our case. Most of the "import" drivers are normal car enthusiasts; It's just that we have rednecks that don't like "them thur imports"

I don't care, if this shit keeps up I'm just going to pay my membership dues (save $5 off each event) and just go to their autocrosses while they last

 

start your own club. Tell anyone who doesn't want to join to suck a fatty and run things the way they should be ran. It's all about having a good time, not political drama.

 

it's kinda hard to start an alternate SCC without any money and a place to auto-x

I'm just waiting for certain key people to graduate so we can start having fun again.