The Rachel Maddow Show received the following statement from The Big Mountain Club and Whitefish Mountain Resort:
Statement from the Big Mountain Club and Whitefish Mountain Resort regarding recent assertions
WHITEFISH, MT – November 21, 2014 – It is the mission of the Big Mountain Club affiliated with Whitefish Mountain Resort to provide a recreational experience free from every day stresses in a relaxed environment that allows people to connect with friends and family. We have in the past and will continue in the future to take steps on an individual basis to ensure that mission is being met including refusing service to those when we feel it is appropriate.
Whitefish Mountain Resort and the Big Mountain Club are not political organizations and will remain that way. That being the case, we won’t tolerate hate or inappropriate conduct. In respect to the above stated mission and with regard to the incidents surrounding Richard Spencer, Randy Scheunemann and the Big Mountain Club, those individuals have submitted their resignations and thus neither will be a member of the Big Mountain Club for the 2014‐15 season and beyond. The recent media coverage on this topic has included a number of significant errors. Had the media outlets contacted the Big Mountain Club or Whitefish Mountain Resort prior to publication those errors could have been corrected. As it stands, corrections to those errors have been distributed to those media outlets. Any suggestion that the Big Mountain Club has sided with a white supremacist in this matter is false, defamatory and contrary to what the Big Mountain Club and Whitefish Mountain Resort stand for.
What we do stand for beyond the mission mentioned at the beginning of this statement is to be an organization that has a consistent and positive impact on our community. To that end, we donate over $100,000 annually to non‐profits that directly impact our local community as well as a greater community. We are proud to be longtime supporters and hosts of organizations such as the Wounded Warrior Project, Team Red, White and Blue and the Montana Special Olympics among many others. Additionally, employees of our resort contribute countless hours of volunteer time to many of these same organizations and others.
Recently there has been an effort from a group known as “Love Lives Here” to bring awareness to the amount of love and tolerance that lives in and among the individuals of this community. Indeed it is the individuals of the community who can and should have the most impactful voice on a topic of this nature and Whitefish Mountain Resort and the Big Mountain Club appreciate, applaud and support their efforts to highlight the amount of love and tolerance in our community.