The Valley Club, a private swim club in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb, was thrust into the national spotlight in early July after refunding money to a day camp from the city of Philadelphia that had contracted for 65 children to use the club’s pool each Monday afternoon during the summer. The camp director charged that the club’s change of mind came after members objected to minority children using the facility. The club denied that was the reason, saying that it had “underestimated the capacity of our facilities.”
The story first broke in local Philadelphia papers, after the camp director, Alethea Wright, and some of the children told of hearing racial comments from members after they arrived on June 29 for their first day of using the pool. The story was then picked up nationally, including reports by the Associated Press and on the NBC Nightly news. That led to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (D, Pa.) separately saying they would investigate the situation. “If the allegations prove to be true, this is illegal discrimination,” said the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission’s Chairman, Stephen A. Glassman.
Wright said that during the campers’ first day at the pool, “some of the members began pulling their children out of the pool and were standing around with their arms folded. Only three members left their children in the pool with us,” she noted, adding that she heard one woman say she would see to it that the group, made of up of children in kindergarten through seventh grade, would not return.
Several days later, the club refunded the camp’s $1,950 without explanation, said Wright, who added that some of the campers’ parents are “weighing their options” on possible legal action.
The Valley Club’s President, John Duesler, told Philadelphia television station WTXF that several club members complained because the children “fundamentally changed the atmosphere” at the pool, but that the complaints didn’t involve race. In a statement released on its Web site, the club called the allegations of racial discrimination “completely untrue” and claimed overcrowding from more than one outside camp was the problem.
“We had originally agreed to invite the camps to use our facility, knowing full well that the children from the camps were from multiethnic backgrounds,” the statement said. “Unfortunately, we quickly learned that we underestimated the capacity of our facilities and realized that we could not accommodate the number of children from these camps.”
“Whatever comments may or may not have been made by an individual member is an opinion not shared by The Valley Club Board,” the statement added.
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