The USATF's Crimes: The Disfunctionality of the United States' Fastest Governing Body

The USA Track & Field Association has become a problem over the last few years. At the USATF Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California in early December of the same year, the USATF Board of Directors ignored the USATF Membership in an election, and overturned their decision without cause. What has happened to the most important Track and Field organization in the nation, and how can it be fixed?

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To be able to further look into this issue, we may need to describe some things first. First of all, the USATF is the national governing body of track and field, much like the NFL for football, or the MLB for baseball. The way that the USATF is run is that it is divided into two different groups: the Board of Directors who have the final say in matters of elections and policy changes, and the general membership which consists of current United States athletes and track activists that are knowledgeable and interested in the sport. According to an Article in "Track and Field News", until 2009, the Membership directly chose the IAAF Representative. This policy was changed in 2009 when the Membership decided to place the final decision into the hands of the Board. When a decision such as an election is up for debate, the Membership acts much like regular American citizens do in an election, and the Board of Directors acts much like the Electoral College. The Membership vote is representative of what the decision should be, but the final decision is up to the Board. They are supposed to vote in consensus with the general Membership of USATF. Problems occur when the Membership vote is ignored.

According to an article in the Times of San Diego on December 5th, 2014, the USATF Membership voted to reelect Bob Hersh to the IAAF Representative position. The IAAF is the International Association for Athletics Federation. It is the world governing body for Track and Field, similar to FIFA for world soccer. Bob has served the USATF as a representative in the IAAF for over sixteen years, and is the sitting Senior Vice President of the IAAF, as well as heading numerous committees. He was the obvious, and in my opinion best choice. His competitor was Stephanie Hightower, who served as USATF President from 2008 to 2012. While a good choice, the United States athletes (and myself), felt that Stephanie was not nearly as qualified for the position as Bob Hersh, and as Hersh was the sitting Senior Vice President, he was much more likely to be accepted again as a representative than her. The way that IAAF Representatives are chosen is that they are elected to be representatives by their respective national associations, but then the IAAF Members must also vote to accept them. Since Bob Hersh has been a Representative for many years and is a leading official in the IAAF, it follows that he would be accepted. There is much more uncertainty as to whether Stephanie Hightower would be chosen. Therefore, the USATF athletes as part of the general Membership voted to nominate Bob Hersh as their representative for the IAAF.

The Board has always followed the "electoral college" theme in the fact that, while they technically could overturn the Membership, they have always voted in a way that their constituents have decided. This sadly did not happen during the election. According to a Press Release on December 5th, 2014, the Board of Directors of the USATF overturned the general Memberships nomination of Bob Hersh and elected Stephanie Hightower to be put up for position as the IAAF United States Representative. This was the first time that the Board of Directors overturned the decision of the Membership, and the first time in the history of the USATF that the Membership's decision for IAAF Representative was not accepted. In a 12-1 vote for Stephanie Hightower, this decision completely undermined the vote of the Membership. Many members went to this meeting solely for this vote, and by overturning their decision, the Board of Directors effectively said, "You're vote is worthless, and you are no longer needed here." This created a huge fallout of people blasting USATF for their injustice and poor policies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94n5PqDclDE

(Interview with Curt Clausen, the only dissenting vote on the USATF Board of Directors. He voted against Stephanie Hightower's nomination.)

People demanded rational for this complete disregard for the Membership vote. What they got was a press release from the USATF Board of Directors four days later. According to the Letter from the USATF Board of Directors, the first point that was made in the letter was that "very few organizations in our everyday lives are pure democracies". This is the kind of argument that a ten-year-old would make. "Everybody else was poking the dog, so I decided to as well." The point of the Board was to make the election and voting process simpler, not to complicate matters. The next reason is the apparent shift that will happen in the IAAF when the President of the IAAF has completed his term in 2015. In 2015, Lamine Diack will step down as President and Sebastian Coe or Sergey Bubka will be elected to the office. The likely new President Sebastian Coe has explained that he plans to make a lot of changes to the way that track and field operates on the world stage. The Board of Directors rationalized that since Bob Hersh had been a part of the previous set-up for so long, it would be more difficult for him to undergo the transition and thus create problems for USA Track and Field. Since Stephanie Hightower has not been a part of Lamine Diack's policies, it is thought that she would be able to undergo this transition easily.

Bob Hersh had some strong words to say about these petty reasons. In a response to the USATF's letter in Track and Field News, Hersh broke down many of the Board's reasons against his re-election, and misconstrued facts about his time with the IAAF in general. It was stated that Hersh was elected as one of four IAAF Vice Presidents in 2011, when in fact he was elected first in 2007, and reelected in 2011, winning the most votes of any candidate

It was also said that since Hersh has been actively serving, there have not been any big actions by the IAAF that have advanced American athletes' interests. This Mr. Hersh also denied and gave evidence against. The 2014 IAAF World Junior Championships and the 2016 IAAF World Indoor Championships were both decided to be held in the United States, which gives American athletes huge advantages to run on home soil. Bob Hersh worked hard together with the host cities to have these bids given. The creation of the Diamond League, which is a series of professional international track and field meets, two of which are held on American soil in Eugene and New York, was also something that the IAAF did that advanced American athletes' interests. This, Bob Hersh also was directly related to, and in fact serves on the Diamond League Board of Directors.

Finally, it was argued that since Hersh was a member of the outgoing power and leadership structure, his re-election would be seen as "backward-thinking", and would be perceived negatively by the IAAF community. The problem with this argument, according to Hersh is logic. Both candidates that are up for election were part of the "outgoing power and leadership structure", but their election would not be considered "backward-thinking". Also, according to Hersh, the decision by the Board to ignore the Membership's vote for Hersh, and the decision to elect Stephanie Hightower has already been perceived negatively by members of the IAAF that Hersh has spoken to directly. Personally, the exact time that the USATF would want a Representative in a place of influence and power would be a time such as this, when there will be many changes in the IAAF. This is the perfect time to not introduce someone new to the floor. For example, if a football team has had great success for a long time, but the head coach decides to step down, you don't drop your starting quarter-back. You need someone to help the new coach transition into the team. This is exactly the situation that will be going on in the IAAF, and exactly why Bob Hersh should have been re-elected.

So what should the USATF do to structure the system in a way that fixes this problem, and how can they rectify this specific injustice? According to an article from Flotrack.org, there are many USATF state chapters that have sent petitions and letters urging the Board to reconsider. I think that the most important thing in general for the USATF to do is to give back the main influence in voting matters to the general Membership. In the same way that the Electoral College works because they vote the way that the regular population wanted them to vote, the Board of Directors is supposed to act. If the Electoral College suddenly began overruling the votes of the country to put in place leaders that they feel are the best, the first thing that would happen would be that the entire Electoral membership would be removed. The next thing would be that serious talks would begin of giving the influence directly to citizens. This is what needs to happen in the USATF. The first resort would be to remove those Board members who declined to listen to the Membership, and if this doesn’t work, the last resort would be to take away any voting privileges of the Board permanently. The most informed people on subjects in track are track athletes, and they should be the ones making decisions on who and how they are represented to the world.