It looks to me as if your club's program is simply the intro pilot program. My club does that, too, though it's nothing like what you described at first. What you call "splitting hairs" is what most people call accuracy. The intro pilot program does not allow "any dues paying member" to fly with the non-AMA member, and it requires a buddy box. The person we are talking about said nothing about a buddy box or about the intro pilot program. I'll concede that you didn't just make this up; you just seem to have misremembered or misdescribed the facts.