Does a USCF affiliate club have the right to deny (within communicated reason) a person with valid uscf membership from attending it’s club in order to play a uscf rated tournament that is being run by that club?
USCF Official Rules of Chess, 5th edition, Chapter 6, section 5, pages 233-235
STANDARDS OF CONDUCT
…
The following is a list of actions and behaviors that are considered unethical…
b. Attempting to interfere with the rights of any USCF member, such as by barring someone from entering a USCF-sanctioned event for personal reasons. Generally, no individual should be barred from a USCF-sanctioned event for which he or she meets the advertised qualifications, without appropriate due process, and for behavior inconsistent with the principles of this code and/or the rules of chess. If a ban on future participation is imposed, the individual should be notified of the ban prior to his attempting to appear at future events.
Of course one of the “advertised qualifications” could be that you have to be a member of the club to participate and the membership form could state that any membership can be denied for any reason, etc.
Well, that’s not right. The USCF should not be able to dictate what an individual group or organizer/director does per individuals playing in their events.
If I want to direct a tournament and do not want a specific individual in it because of a number of reasons, I should be able to ban him from my event.
For instance, there is one fellow that goes around barefoot and has been seen nude in his vehicle in the parking area of the playing site. He even brought newspaper clippings about himself as a proclaimed nudist and put those newspaper articles on a table in the tournament area telling of him and his “lifestyle”. He was at the site wearing cotton sweat suit pants and a t-shirt. His toenails were painted different colors and of course he was barefoot. I certainly would not want him in any of my tournaments.
There are also incidents of people with extreme and foul body odor.
There are also times where a person has been put out of a chess club for either poor behavior or something else.
These are all instances where telling the person that he cannot play in my personally run event is not only called for but necessary. I vaguely recall a hotel not wanting someone in it and the person being put out, otherwise the tournament would no longer be allowed in that hotel. Now that I think of it, it was a tournament I ran back in the late 1990’s. The person wanting to play had a poor reputation in the town, rightly so.
I pay rating fees for my events to be USCF rated. That doesn’t give the USCF the right to say who I must let play in my events, at all.
They are the individual organizer/TD’s tournaments, not the USCF’s. If the USCF wants to run their own tournaments, that’s fine. They can have anyone they want playing, even the nudist.
But at what point does that end, Ron? You and I might agree to some common-sense limits that are beyond the pale for denial (race, religion, sex - even though we allow women-only restrictions by convention…) But would everyone? Would it be OK for a TD to say, “This tournament is for whites only…”
TDs and Organizers already have a de facto ability to refuse entry. The rule exists as a de jure check on that ability - someone who denies entry to a valid USCF member had better be able to make their reasons stick on an ethics appeal should that happen.
(And, those boundaries are tested only if the person who feels that they have been discriminated against files an ethics complaint.)
Given that the rules of chess forbid annoying behavior, it should be possible and even reasonable to exclude someone like Ron Suarez’s creepy dude. The only question is what constitutes “due process.” I would hope that nothing resembling a courtroom trial would be required. But perhaps encouraging players who are put off by his behavior to lodge their complaints in writing, followed by advising him of those complaints and asking whether he intends to change his behavior (a guy like this, I’m guessing, would probably refuse to do so, or maybe just mutter something noncommittal and then continue to act the same way), followed by official notification in writing that he’s no longer welcome at local events, would suffice.
Darren, you and I probably agree on quite a bit on what we would want and have in our tournaments. The fellow I wrote about earlier really did come to Peoria from Iowa and did and wore all the things I said, even the nudity part while driving. We were all in a state of shock at the time. The tournament was at the Lakeview Museum auditorium where, as you know, there are quite a few tables with chairs above and beyond what is taken up for the tournament. He did have newspaper articles that he put on one of the tables, and he did have various colored painted toenails with his feet bare. He also did wear the cotton sweat pants with a t-shirt. Fortunately he never came back to Peoria for a chess tournament since, and that was about 7 or 8 years ago. But what would you do in Bloomington with this character? Also, it’s not too far for him to drive to Freeport either…
The real issue is that clubs, tournament directors and organizers should not be forced to accept any player by the USCF in their events. This is akin to an unfunded mandate. As the rule reads though, it appears the USCF is saying that the tournament is the USCF’s domain for control, not the individuals’ running it. And if that is the way it is interpreted and administered, it is wrong.
I really don’t see this as a problem in practice and reality at the grass roots level. Really, I haven’t had this problem in any of the tournaments I have run or attended. The occasional problem character is usually handled. The answer for the above example, for me, is that the place where we are having the tournament has rules of what is acceptable and what is not. The ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ motto applies most usually. I would simply enforce that on this dude and summarily have him either wear clothing and shoes or leave.
Also look at a lot of the larger tournaments and directors. I don’t see Bill Goichberg and his crew or John Hillery, in the LA area having these problems and not handling them with relative ease.
This is like a few of the rules in the USCF rulebook; if you apply them literally there are problems, but if you apply them with common sense you’ll be fine.
Looks like it didn’t play in Peoria, even if he did.
Ding! Ding! Ding!..We Have A Winner!
thanks for everyone’s feedback, is anyone on the current thread a member of the ethics committee?
Thank you to Ron Suarez for the thoughtful replies.
I cannot imagine a situation that would force me to allow a nudist, a pedophile, a slanderer, or a person who is trying to destroy my chess club to play at my chess club! I am not sure I can list offensive body odor in that list, but that is why we can each have private clubs! I believe a private club has a right to deny someone membership. And in the case of the USCF rules, I believe you are simply required due written process.
If it’s a private club, can’t you just run a USCF-rated tournament and invite or not invite whoever you want, without any kind of due process? Does every USCF member have a right to participate in every single USCF-rated tournament? Can you show up at Sing-Sing and demand to be paired for the next round? The due process probably refers to USCF-rated tournaments advertised in Chess Life.
If they could then Yury Shulman or Gata Kamsky would have good chances in the US Senior, US Junior, US K-6 championship, US All-girls, etc.
if your tournament is on private property you can deny anybody just about anything including the right to be on the property and you don’t have to give a reason.
edit and legally, you’re most likely better off not giving them a reason. You can just say that they’re not welcome at that time and would appreciate it if they would please leave. and if they refuse you can have the police escort them off the property and issue them a no-trespassing warning.
(sorry to get off topic a bit, but i thought there’s a small chance this information might help, since if you don’t have to resorting any uscf rules to deny admittance this way there can be no legitimate complaint of any wrongdoing.)
I agree that a private club can deny someone membership, but if the tournament is advertised as a USCF rated open, I would allow anyone to play. As TD we represent the USCF, How would it look as mention in an earlier post if someone ran a whites only tournament, Chess would probably get some exposure in the news, but probably not what we need. Or how about a director decides he doesn’t like people in wheel chairs for some reason and ran a tournament that didn’t allow handicapp to play, the problem is where do you draw the line. I would think that if you have strong feelings about who you want to allow play in your tournaments run them as closed events only open to club members.
Last night, the Sussex County Delaware GOP passed a motion to censure its State GOP Chairman. He famously said Christine O’Donnell couldn’t be elected dogcatcher. Unfortunately, she was running for US Senate. Which she also could not be elected to.