Five
SENSITIVE ISSUES

The Club has always prided itself on its good fellowship. According to Oscar Fernandez (writing in 1974), the Club had become 'notorious' in Rotary circles for its 'uproarious cordiality'. 'The Rotary Club of PJ', he continued, 'is not by any means the best club in District 330, but it had deservedly won the reputation of being the "noisiest and liveliest" club in the District'. This is an opinion with which P.P. Rupert Goldman heartily concurs. He says that at that period it was 'fun' to attend a club occasion, 'when members were of the same age group... as everyone took part and were game to do things'. One of the first ways in which the Club made its presence felt at District gatherings was its role in starting the singing, led for many years by P.P. Ray Hardless, whose voice was also heard loud and clear in other directions. This, and as will be seen, the remarkable contribution that the Club showed that it was able to make to the needs of the PJ community within a couple of years of its launching helped put it on the Rotary map, and provided a model of what the fellowship and good works of a Rotary club should be. But like all human organizations, the Club beneath the surface did have its fair share of problems, although by and large these were problems shared in common with most other clubs in the Rotary District 330.

In essence these problems or issues can be placed under three main headings. First comes the perennial problem of membership and attendance; second, that of the difficulty in securing adequate Malay participation; and last but by no means least, the most sensitive issue of all, the question of the admittance of women as members of the organization.

The problem of membership and attendance is basic, because the Club as a voluntary organization is wholly dependent on its members and on their devotion to its service for its survival and progress. The official minimum current membership of a club, according to Rotary Intentional, is twenty-five. The PJ Club started well above that figure, and although its numbers declined in the early years to as low as twenty-seven, they never touched rock bottom. However, by the end of its first decade the Club had found its feet and membership steadily rose so that by 1970 it was comfortably in the mid-forties. The 1970s was the golden decade, for the membership figure had risen to a peak of sixty-three by its end. But during the course of the decade of the 1980s itself numbers once again fluctuated considerably, dropping at one stage back into the forties. However, towards 1990 there was another recovery.

The fluctuation in membership was always a source of concern. The reasons for the resignations of members were invariably ascribed to either 'transfers' (plausible) and 'heavy business commitments' (open to doubt). But whatever it might be, the rise and fall in membership had widespread implications which affected practically every aspect of the Club's activities as well as its future development.

It is common wisdom that the barometer of a Rotary club's health is the attendance at the regular weekly lunch sessions. In the first place, there can be no doubt as to what the obligation of a Rotarian on this point is. Weekly attendance is a basic requisite. The Rotary Manual says so, though it also eases condition by allowing for a certain leeway of absence. Nevertheless, it is laid down in black and white that any member who has failed to show up for four consecutive occasions without reasonable excuse will be deemed to have ceased from being a member, and all Rotarians are required to attend at least 60 per cent of the weekly meetings held within a given six-month period. The atmosphere created by constant poor attendance can have far reaching effects on a club's morale and on its effectiveness as a service organization. At the same time, the factors involved and their ramifications are complex.

Taken at its most obvious and superficial level, the reasons for poor attendance may be unsuitable venue, poor programmes and weak fellowship. In the case of the PJ Club the periods when attendance had been below par were to some extent affected by problems of venue and also to a certain degree, at one stage, by weak fellowship, but hardly by poor programmes, for being located where it is in the heart of PJ, there has never been a dearth of good speakers available. Nor can the blame be laid at the feet of poor fellowship. It is true that P.P. Keith Randall did in the early 1970s cite a case where he was obliged to introduce one PJ Rotarian to another as a consequence of insufficient pre-lunch mixing! But, on the whole, the reverse was the case.

However, the venue problems of the Club, alas, did not end with the move to the Cellar in 1970. There was nothing wrong with the Cellar, but when PJ acquired its first international class hotel with the opening of the Jaya Puri a couple of years later, the Club thought it proper to move to this more up-market location. While the plusher surroundings were all right, the food and the price were not, and for the best part of a decade the Club fought a running engagement with the hotel's management in an attempt to obtain a better menu and end the constant escalation in price. There was some success in the first direction - the fare provided did improve - but by the time that the Jaya Puri itself closed down, ostensibly for renovations (in fact, the closure was final) the Rotarian lunch had almost doubled in price. With the Jaya Puri closed (in 1982), resort was then had to the Subang National Golf Club, about conditions at which no one seems to have complained. But when the Jaya Puri reopened its doors under new ownership, new management and a new name, the PJ Hilton, which sounded more prestigious still, the Club returned to its former pasture, which after all was more conveniently situated for most members. And there it has remained, although the battle for a good meal at a consistent price has continued unabated.

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