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Oh, WOW
THE WOW HALL’S ANNUAL MEMBER MEETING REVEALS A SPLIT BETWEEN
SOME MEMBERS AND THE NONPROFIT’S CURRENT BOARD
By Taylor Perse
T
he WOW Hall has been vacant of
people and music performances
these last few months; like other
music venues it was dealt a blow
by the COVID-19 pandemic. But
even as the venue remains empty,
the board of directors, some of its
members and a third-party group are disagreeing
on its future.
The third-party group, known as Friends of the
WOW Hall, say they are advocating for the nonprofit
venue to restructure its finances and diversify the
use of the building, but other members disagree, not
wanting to make drastic changes to the longtime
music stalwart.
Tensions between members of the Community
Center for the Performing Arts, as the WOW Hall
is formally known, and the new group Friends of WOW
Hall revealed themselves during a four-hour annual
member meeting on Sunday, Aug. 9. The membership
passed the annual budget and operating statement. But
the planned election of new board members failed when
a new voting system, brought in by one of the feuding
factions, didn’t work.
“The board members scheduled a meeting. But was
pretty much run by Friends of Wow Hall acting as a ‘shadow’
board,” member Mayo Finch says. Finch was also previ-
ously on the CCPA board, until around 2015, he says.
Finch also said that Friends of WOW Hall implemented
their own voting system for the board election.
The system, which comes from a national software
company called EasyVote Solutions, was intended to be
used as a way to vote virtually. But Finch says that the
voting system was not approved by the board, and that
a board candidate had set it up.
Bob Fennessy, publicist for WOW Hall, says that the
owner of EasyVote said during a Saturday night meeting
that payment to use the system was coming from Friends
In an opinion column published by Eugene Weekly
on July 30, Friends of WOW Hall founder and fromer
CCPA board member David Zupan alleges the venue
struggled with financial issues at the beginning of
the pandemic.
Friends of WOW Hall say they seek to reorganize the
music venue, diversifying the performances and the
target audiences. This includes adding more classes
and hosting shows for different age groups. Zupan
also wrote that the finances would be structured
more modestly, focused more on “giving back to the
community” through service.
In a statement to EW, Zupan wrote that the meet-
ing brought hostility towards candidates over the
voting system. He adds that without Friends of WOW
Hall efforts in creating their own procedures for a
Photo courtesy WOW Hall
voting system, nothing would have gotten done.
“A number of staff members and their supporters
of WOW Hall, instead of using WOW Hall’s money. A can-
heckled, were verbally abusive and often defamatory
didate for the board of directors called Fennessy before
toward anyone expressing a different perspective than
the meeting on Sunday morning, he says, letting him know
the one they shared. This included statements asking
that they would turn over the EasyVote account to him,
candidates they disagreed with to drop out of the election.”
as an administrator.
Another WOW Hall member, Fran Chylek, who says
“I never got that account,” Fennessy says.
she was at the annual member meeting, says that the
In order to vote, Finch says that a moderator of the
meeting didn’t seem to be well planned.
meeting said that people could also vote publicly for who
“There is a schism between this particular group calling
they wanted to elect, or by email.
themselves Friends of WOW Hall and a lot of WOW Hall
“They were creating the guidelines and procedures on
supporters,” she says. Chylek adds that she has also heard
the fly, which were not approved by the board of directors.”
a lot of hearsay and misinformation about the struggles
Friends of WOW Hall, on its own website, asks for a
between different groups.
change of direction for the facility. The group is composed
“Things were not clear on what people wanted,” she
of current CCPA members who are unhappy with how the
says of the meeting. After the meeting ended and no one
current board of directors are operating CCPA. A lot of
was elected, she says that people were not really allowed
them have not been members prior to this year.
to ask questions and didn’t get answers.
“Most of the people who joined the suggestion of
Though new board members were not finalized,
Friends of the WOW Hall have not previously been
Fennessy says that the board of directors will determine
members or volunteers,” Fennessy says. An individual
when a new meeting will take place to vote again, within
can become a CCPA member by volunteering 10 or more
30 days. ■
hours or by donating $15 or more.
HAPPENING PEOPLE
by Paul Neevel
Willa Bauman
Born and raised in Eugene, Willa Bauman is the daughter of Dana and Colleen Bauman, who
opened their Dana's Cheesecake Bakery booth at the Eugene Saturday Market in the summer
of 1980. They opened a booth at the Oregon Country Fair two years later, and Dana's Cheese-
cake has been a treasured treat at both locations ever since. “I was a month and a half old at
my first Country Fair,” says Bauman, who was home-schooled through high school and also
took courses at Lane Community College. She spent four years in Portland to earn a degree
in English literature from Reed College, where her graduating class was 300 students, then
returned to Eugene and resumed seasonal work at Dana's. She also worked with her dad to
turn a 100-year-old barn on the family property into a house. “I moved in in 2014,” she says. “I
was into power tools. I built chicken houses and raised pullets.” In 2018, she began a master's
degree program in nonprofit management at the University of Oregon and also responded to
a job listing as operations manager of the Eugene ToolBox Project, a community tool library
that was started in 2015. “I got the job,” she says. “It seemed like a good fit. I know how em-
powering it is to build something for the first time.” Toolbox Project membership is open to all
residents of Lane County over the age of 18 and provides access to a library of more than 1,500
hand and power tools. Visit EugeneToolBoxProject.org to learn about membership, to view an
illustrated catalog of available tools, and to reserve tools by email or phone. Bauman received
her UO nonprofit management diploma in June, as the Toolbox Project began to reopen after
two months of pandemic closure. “It feels great to be open again,” she says. “We're growing so
much and taking on new projects. It's really a lot of fun.”
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