Washington officials finally disciplined for charity pink whistles

[jfurdell]

Originally Posted by stratref

They didn't properly apply for the exception, the WOA told them don't do it (actually they told the entire WOA their ruling) and the PNFOA said we don't care what you say. This was not their first time breaking a WOA rule/policy/procedure on purpose so the WOA felt that the PNFOA needed to be punished. The reason for the punishment was only partially related to the pink whistles.

Again, I'd love to hear specifics. In the five years I've been here it seemed like we were generally sticklers for sticking to the WOA uniform/mechanics (well, except for this one time). If this really is for other stuff besides the pink whistles, I wish that could be made public as part of our punishment so we know what we need to change/look for.

I don't want to get us in further trouble talking about this here, but I will say that in the meeting where we decided to go ahead with wearing the whistles, we were told that a specific whistle color was not mentioned in the WOA uniform code. Personally, that gave me the impression that we might be in the clear if this eventually came to a head. In fact, in the e-mail sent to us last week, the bulk of the punishment (2 years probation and a reduction in playoff assignments for 2011 and 2012) is stated to be for our board "intentionally [ignoring] a direct policy interpretation given them by the WOA Commissioner". The actual "association-wide violation of the uniform code" only earned us a letter of reprimand. I don't have a copy of the WOA uniform code and I can't find it online, so I can't say for sure whether whistle color is actually specified. (As far as I know it's not called out in the NFHS rules or officials manual.)

We did go to a non-zero amount of effort to purchase and distribute the pink whistles to 100+ members. Hearing of this ruling and/or interpretation on essentially the eve of our benefit was probably a factor in our (admittedly emotional) decision to just go ahead with it anyway.

As a member of the WOA I am glad that the WOA finally told an association that has thumbed their nose at the WOA and the rest of the associations in the state to sit down and shut up. Heck, had they done this quietly and not been so public and rubbed Todd Stordahal's nose in it and brought the media in, no one would have known and there wouldn't have been a punishment, but the appearance of being generous and supporting charity was apparently more important then actually doing so.

We're in the Seattle metro area, where there's a lot of media; we've got officials who are members of the media. There's not going to be any way to keep a lid on this story. If the story breaking was one of the reasons we were punished, that wasn't explicitly stated.

-JLF