One of the great things about COTH is that other people often say what I am thinking and do a much better job of it than I would. I started composing, in my head, a response to Marigold’s post as I was reading it, but now I can just say, “Yes. Exactly what @Horsegirl’s Mom said.”
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Except EN went to USEF first. Then EN/LW apparently weren’t satisfied with whatever was happening behind the scenes (please note that the USEA region rep had no idea about any of this mess until it blew up - so they circumvented the chain of command too) and then sent email to the BOD of PFEE. That led to the loss.
“I’m not sure it ever occurred to them (before they went down this road - it appears they realized at some point along the road, per John Thier in COTH) that he would respond by taking his toys and going home.”
Except they were told it could happen and chose to push their way in. They didn’t like the pace of change.
"In an email shared with the Chronicle, dated Aug. 28, Olympic rider and PFEE board member Boyd Martin wrote, “The worst case outcome for us in the Eventing world is that if the landowner gets so offended with this issue that he decides to kick the event off his land and we lose the venue for the sport we love and need.” Thier responded, “There are many worse outcomes for Eventing in the US than losing the PFI venue, such as the sport not standing up for what is right.”
PFEE board members also said EN invoked the threat of mainstream media coverage if the event did not change its name."
So that means there were emails sent by EN/LW to the BOD of PFEE. Otherwise, why would Thier have responded?
This was a total failure of imagination on the part of EN. Plus I don’t buy it. They say they are journalists. Surely they researched the backgrounds of the BOD of PFEE. They should have. If they had they would have known he had already been the subject of state and journalism investigations in the past. It was terribly unlikely that he would want more of the same and when the threat of wider media being brought to bear, they should have anticipated him folding the tent and sending them all away.
No one needs equestrians on their land. No one. He had already put in over 20 years and a great deal of money and effort to accommodate the demands of eventers and apparently, had had enough of it. This was the final straw for him.
If getting the name changed was the goal, they failed. It may have succeeded by 2021 but to start this in June and knowing the big event is in September and to still push for the venue name change was shortsighted. Plus it couldn’t be done as the legal name was already licensed and you can’t simply changed it that quickly. Alt_rider explained the process and the costs earlier in this thread. It can cost $50,000 - $100,000 to do it. That is a lot of dosh.
They wanted him to change the name (which would cost 50K-100K) and get the license changed to reflect a name that met their approval AND do it by September.
Why would you be surprised that as a consequence he told USEA, USEF and EN to get off his land and leave him alone?
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Is this directed at me? Because if so:
I’m not trying to be argumentative. Of course someone could understand my point and still disagree. There are 86 pages of proof of that.
I genuinely have no idea how I could make it more clear that I understand this. Please, if you have a suggestion, I would truly love to hear it. Going in circles isn’t fun for anyone.
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That is a great summary of my points, and I really appreciate you reading and thinking enough about them to summarize even though you disagree. Thank you.
I addressed upthread that I don’t think this expense should be borne entirely or even at all by the event. In my other life, I have managed the finances for a similar change and you are absolutely right that they are non-trivial.
To accomplish this, there are many way this event could have managed this. One such example would have been to partner with Eventing Nation. They could have announced in conjunction with this year’s running that they would be changing the name starting in 2021, in order to reinforce how welcome they wanted BIPOC equestrians to feel. They could have highlighted some of their actions that back up that goal (ex. donating to Work to Ride in the past, etc.), and could have increased engagement by running a contest to choose the new name. The new name could have consisted of options that honored the same traditions that the original name honored (ex. “Logan’s Woods” or “Pine Field”), emphasizing the history of the grounds and the proud tradition of the family. Given that this is an issue people are currently paying attention to, this would almost certainly have generated a significant amount of positive press and eliminated the marketing spend, which is a significant portion of the cost. They could have crowd-funded for the hard costs (signage, etc.) as a way for the eventing community as a whole to put their money where their mouth is on this issue.
To @MorganSercu’s point, they wouldn’t even need to change the legal name (the business I worked with on this didn’t). Since this is an optical issue, they just needed to file a DBA. Much easier and much cheaper.
It’s important to note that it doesn’t have to be either/or. As I outlined above, there are lots of ways that the property owner could rename the event while maintaining the family connection to the service project that is special to them.
That said, I don’t have an opinion on what should matter more because it’s not my event. I know what would matter more to me, and to many people I know, but the property owner is not obligated to feel the same way and it seems that he doesn’t. What I very much hope is that the property owner was afforded an opportunity to understand how other people might be feeling, and that he made the decision he did knowingly. Otherwise, we have all lost for no reason.
I’m not saying they don’t, I’m just saying they won’t. I don’t know why Microsoft is named Microsoft, I just know that it is. When something reaches the scale of this event (an international level competition that draws competitors from all across the country and Canada), it becomes a brand name. People rarely investigate the reasons behind those names, they just make assumptions about what those names are meant to celebrate. That’s why I pointed to “lost-in-translation” brand like these ones – to me, the issues are very similar. I used these examples earlier (worth reading even if just for a laugh, if you need one):
https://gulfbusiness.com/top-10-brands-lost-in-translation/
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5241-international-marketing-fails.html
Again, thank you for taking the time to understand my posts and raise your concerns with my position. I appreciate the opportunity to move the discussion forward, even if we ultimately don’t agree.
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Okay. Do you see that changing the venue name would set him back a great deal of money? It’s not chump change to do this and particularly not when the venue name was already licensed with USEF.
So relative strangers, people he has tried to cater to and placate for 20 years, in addition to reaching into his own pocket, plus doing fundraising and smoothing over relations with the neighbors impacted when a bunch of horse trailers are crowding the back roads leading to the site and then to have threatened mainstream media coverage too if he didn’t placate EN may simply have led to his decision to throw in the towel.
There were multiple emails sent to the BOD of PFEE. Leslie posted them here and then deleted them. So it’s not as though there was only ONE email that may have upset the BOD. No, there were more than one and for all we know there may have been a flurry of them from USEA and USEF.
He didn’t need the hassle and whatever warm feelings he had for eventing and eventers evaporated.
Let us hope that the riders who went to his home and thanked him personally may yet persuade him to let equestrians use the land still. But I wouldn’t hold my breath; I would be very surprised if he renewed a business association with USEA and USEF anytime soon, if ever again.
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Eventing Nation could only come up with $1000 for those diversity scholarships. They were able to get donations of an additional $4200. That wouldn’t be anywhere near what is needed in this instance.
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they wouldn’t even need to change the legal name (the business I worked with on this didn’t). Since this is an optical issue, they just needed to file a DBA.
Not according to USEF they wouldn’t.
Other people who have years of experience with doing this have weighed in along the way and the costs were not trivial and none of this is easily done.
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And add, that I believe they wanted it done for this year, not next year. Makes it even more impossible.
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Also, we do not know what was said or written between June and September. We only know what was shared. If Mr. Walker did receive ugly insulting emails from people within EN/USEA/USEF regarding the name and calling his family and their character into question he may have darn good reasons for putting an end to the discussion. He has no obligation to share with the world, nor does he have to invite it into his life.
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Thank you for your very thoughtful post.
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Yes. I’ve acknowledged that several times – my response is here:
I know. I’m one of them (actually, I think I’m the only one on this thread that has claimed first-hand knowledge, but I apologize to anyone I may have forgotten). Hence me laying out one potential option for a transition plan above.
Do you have a source for that? I have never heard of someone requiring the legal name of a corporation to be anything in particular (not even when someone has purchased the rights to the operating name of a business). In the vast majority of cases, the DBA is all that people know or can find to identify the business (unless they look up filings). In a case like this one where the name change is for optics, the public nomenclature is all that matters.
I’m not sure of your personal experience, or that of those reading the thread, so I’ll add a bit of my own for context. A DBA saves a huge amount of money and time. You don’t have to change legal paperwork, which includes banking/financing details and government records that touch nearly every aspect of the business.
That said, you still need to change the signage and the branding (which can be on everything from the sign at the door to the cups you sell concessions in to the uniforms your staff/volunteers wear), you need to inform people officially (press releases), and you need to transfer brand recognition (marketing efforts in industry publications, etc.). These things are not cheap, but they also don’t all apply to this situation (upper level event riders will still know about this event even if it is called Unionville and will still bring their horses). Is it free? No. Is it doable? Yes, and there are ways of being creative to bring down the costs some. If that’s what you want to do, which this owner did not.
Eventing Nation didn’t ask for donations to that fund, nor did they crowdfund it. Some donations were volunteered from private donors, which is how the scholarship increased, but it was never sought out. I agree that more funding would be required for a name change, but the diversity scholarship is not a sufficient test of what the market would bear in this instance.
It’s clear to me that they wanted something done for this year. That said, I don’t think they would have turned down the plan I outlined above if the event had said “You know, we are also concerned about the potential for misunderstanding. It’s too late to carry out a full rebrand for this year, but what if we worked together to use this year’s event to raise awareness and funding for a change in time for next year’s event?” Again, I get that the owner went a different way, but that is just one of the many ways this could have gone.
I understand all of that. It’s not the action I would personally have taken, but every camel’s back has a straw. It is his land, and he is allowed to draw the line anywhere he pleases.
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You say it wouldn’t have been costly, but Atl_rider and at least one other who have decades of experience in the matter stated otherwise.
Eventing Nation said that they were told $1000 was insufficient. Donors volunteered. That’s nice but why didn’t EN continue to put the work into getting still more money and what are they doing today to have scholarship money to offer next year?
We don’t know what EN wanted this year but apparently, it was too much.
“I don’t think they would have turned down the plan I outlined above if…”
Do you know them personally? I don’t know any of them, so I won’t speculate if that would have been acceptable to them. We do know they (EN) weren’t happy with the pace of change via USEA and USEF, so why would they be any happier with your proposal? Whatever was happening behind the scenes didn’t suit EN and they pushed the issue.
Or maybe they insisted that they have a place at the table and whatever USEA and USEF were doing wasn’t to their liking.
EN reached out to USEA and USEF in June to express our concerns about the Plantation Field name. But change is often a slow moving train, especially with organizations where there are multiple channels of bureaucracy to move through. As the event drew nearer it became clear that a name change would not materialize.
[B]
On Aug. 19,
[/B]
Eventing Nation editor Leslie Wylie took the topic to Denis Glaccum, organizer and owner of Plantation Field Equestrian Events.
As they proceeded, Wylie and EN owner John Thier knew the loss of the event might be the outcome. In an email shared with the Chronicle, dated Aug. 28, Olympic rider and PFEE board member Boyd Martin wrote, “The worst case outcome for us in the Eventing world is that if the landowner gets so offended with this issue that he decides to kick the event off his land and we lose the venue for the sport we love and need.” Thier responded, “There are many worse outcomes for Eventing in the US than losing the PFI venue, such as the sport not standing up for what is right.”
So easy to dismiss the destruction or loss of something you didn’t build.
Amy Ruth Borun
After all the letters you wrote Lesley and this article you actually say you were just trying to start a discussion?!! That was not part of your letters to the USEA to the USEF or to Denis. You were very clear you wanted something and it wasn’t a discussion
(redacted) Please publish the letters. I think that’s a fair response to this situation as EN are clearly trying to paint themselves as the good guys here.
Amy Ruth Borun
(redacted) can’t not allowed sadly
So sad.
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Boyd, a board member, explicitly warned Thier of the risk. Thier blew it off as worth the risk.
A fawning editorial does not make up for Leslie’s (and Jenny Autrey’s) rush to require a quick solution to their Cause of the Moment. It was too little too late. Better to plant the seed of the idea with Boyd and other more open-minded and deeply invested board members and people of influence. Let it take a minute and see if it sprouts over the winter and don’t worry for one second about who gets the credit in the end.
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Found elsewhere on the interwebz
“Walker could have assisted the board in filling out the DBA form for the name change, worked with sponsors and designers to get a couple of jumps re-done, and promoted the name change as a tribute to the abolitionist history of the area.” - Jess Clawson
…What? No, it’d be thousands of dollars to rebrand everything, change logos, change signage, change ads, change jumps, etc, etc. It’s NOT “get a couple jumps redone.” Everyone keeps saying “just change the name, it’s no big deal!” Well, it is a big deal financially, it’s NOT just that simple, and it might have been possible had EN approcated this as a conversation instead of an activist campaign. The owner wasn’t even brought into the conversation until after they talked to the USEA and USEF. That’s not how you start a converstation. Instead of listing all the things the owner or PFEE could have done differently, it’d be refreshing for someone to actually admit what EN could have done differently.
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(redacted) I am one of the ‘they’ you keep referring to as part of the organizing committee. You were not in any of our meetings nor have you seen the very ugly unprofessional letters Lesley- the editor wrote. You do not know any of the conversations which occurred. Karen Rubin is correct. I wish you would try to get information from all sources
Amy Ruth Borun
(redacted) thank you. Unfortunately this article is written as if it’s journalism but it’s actually simply an editorial. A lot of important information was left out. Sadly people are taking it as if it is all factually accurate and it is not
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Boyd, a board member, explicitly warned Thier of the risk. Thier blew it off as worth the risk.
A fawning editorial does not make up for Leslie’s (and Jenny Autrey’s) rush to require a quick solution to their Cause of the Moment. It was too little too late. Better to plant the seed of the idea with Boyd and other more open-minded and deeply invested board members and people of influence. Let it take a minute and see if it sprouts over the winter and don’t worry for one second about who gets the credit in the end.
And given this thread, where the landowner is being consistently painted by people as a white supremacist at best and a gasp! republican at worst, why on earth would he want to let these same people who hate him vehemently and personally on his property ever again?
And as always, why would people who abhor this man want to frequent this event on his property, regardless of the name?
guys, come on.
The cognitive dissonance is real here.
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Please show me where I said that. In fact, I have consistently said the opposite. I have worked on these transitions professionally. I have managed the finances. The one I am thinking of did not run in the tens of thousands (your estimate), but hundreds. I’m simply not willing to break confidentiality to give a stranger on the internet any more details than that, and I apologize for the limits that places on our conversation today.
What I did say is that there are ways for this particular event to reduce some of those costs. As an example, I said that they could have crowdfunded the rest or asked Eventing Nation to crowdfund the rest if it mattered so much to EN. I’m not sure if anyone else asked them to bear the costs personally, but I certainly would never ask or expect that of them. Unfortunately, the event was unwilling to consider the change, so we will never know if the community could have come up with a way to fund it or not.
Fair enough. I don’t know them personally. Perhaps I should have said “I would like to think they would not have turned down the plan I outlined above”. Either way, we will never know.
I have never said it’s not a big deal. It’s a pretty big deal, but more specifically it is a royal pain in the rear. I am of the personal opinion that it is worth it in this case, but not everyone shares my opinion (nor do they need to).
I must say, this frustrates me. They have said that the board cannot legally release their email correspondence with EN (although apparently they can allude to it), but the one email that we do have (from Cuyler Walker to Rob Burk, copying Denis and Mary Coldren) was clearly released by Denis or someone with access to Denis’ Plantation Field email account (the email address of the account is listed above the bold black line). So either the board cannot legally do this, at which point they’ve already done something wrong by releasing the email that is out there, or the board can legally do this, but is choosing not to for……some reason. Either way, it doesn’t seem like they are playing by the rules as they have stated them.
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I’m simply not willing to break confidentiality to give a stranger on the internet any more details than that, and I apologize for the limits that places on our conversation today
I take offense at your insinuation that I had or would inquire.
They have said that the board cannot legally release their email correspondence with EN (although apparently they can allude to it), but the one email that we do have (from Cuyler Walker to Rob Burk, copying Denis and Mary Coldren) was clearly released by Denis or someone with access to Denis’ Plantation Field email account (the email address of the account is listed above the bold black line).
Or they were given permission to release that email but no others.
You keep pushing that it would have been a pain but …
Cuyler Walker had had enough pain and hassles so the “but” doesn’t matter. “But” and “just” negate whatever was said or written before.
“It’s expensive but…:”
“It’s a hassle but…”
He had had enough. I suspect after 20 years of people demanding more and more from him this was too much. He is an attorney himself so I suspect he was on a nodding acquaintance with what a name change would entail.
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You don’t have enough evidence to make that claim. Perhaps the issue is that the emails cannot be released without the consent of the person who wrote the email. Perhaps Denis had permission from Mr. Walker. Perhaps board members do not have permission from Leslie Wylie (which seems likely, given what board members have said about how bad LW comes across in those emails). No conflict with the rules there at all - all parties are following them.
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