Submitted by Richard Harrison on behalf of the Board
Dear Members of the Co-op,
Thank you to all who’ve written for the recent Special Edition of the Sunnyhill Voice, and thank you, too, those of you who’ve spoken or written to me personally since March 2. And thank you to the Board, who had an intense and lengthy conversation in its March 10 meeting to analyze the one on March 2 and craft a response to it. Thank all of you for your comments, and more, for your faith in Sunnyhill and our ability to deal with our current issues in such a way that we not only maintain but enhance our co-operative identity.
It’s clear that we don’t want what happened in March 2’s meeting to happen again. It is clear, too, that the method to make sure of it isn’t just Robert’s Rules, it’s the will to support and apply them for the good of the whole. I’ve been in this situation before, where a meeting completes its agenda, but misplaces its spirit, the fellowship that makes it the meeting of a community. Over and over, I hear that we can no longer allow individuals to turn the common purpose of the meeting to their own agendas – and do so without appropriate respect for their fellow members of the Co-op.
It’s widely accepted that each of us ought to have freedom, and at the same time, that the freedom we each have is limited by the freedom of others. But how that almost universally accepted principle works in practice is a political problem that requires constant thought. I think the Co-op itself is a metaphor for the answer: our homes are our own, but our walls belong to each other.
This is the difference between Co-op living and private ownership. In a stand-alone house, your walls are your own; you can enjoy your home by playing your music louder than you can when you share a wall with someone else. You can raise your voice along with the music. You can tend your garden, or not, as you see fit, without regard to the weeds you might spread to your neighbors. You can put up pictures in the middle of the night. You can let your place fall to ruin. You can refuse to volunteer time or money … you get the idea. In a Co-op all of those individual exercises of freedom are limited by the walls you share with others, giving you your own space, but holding up both your houses. Living in a Co-op means to willingly contract to give up the liberties and privileges that private ownership permits.
In return, we get community. We all know 10 or 20 or 60 of our neighbors. We share food and games and clean up duties in the common area and a financial future and the making of decisions. I love that. And while many of us might have come here at first attracted by the affordable housing charge and the view and the cedar ceilings, the ones who’ve stayed, I believe, stay here because the kind of love that’s found in a fellowship worth giving up stuff for.
In meetings, Robert’s Rules are our shared walls. The complete book of them is 716 pages long. It has been in print, revised and reissued since 1876. Its 11th Edition is the result of 130 years of study of the way collective decision-making can best be facilitated as times and technology change what we expect of each other. I’ve acted as Chair in various organizations for decades., and I know I’ve made mistakes with the rules, and I’ve learned that sometimes, in interpreting them within the boundaries that they themselves allow, I have erred on the side of letting unproductive things go too long. I’m sensitive to the accusation that that the chair can become dictatorial. We are all sensitive to the accusation that we aren’t offering respect or are limiting someone else’s freedom of expression – those two are two of the great sins of our age – but certain latitude with the rules here has led to alienation and disrespect. So for a while at least, listening to the voices I’ve heard rise to a chorus over the past few days, as Chair I am going to use Robert’s Rules in the strict sense.
So here is a quick guide to Robert’s Rules:
The Philosophy of Robert’s Rules
The Mechanics of Robert’s Rules
Robert’s Rules and the Agenda
Robert’s Rules, Civility, and the Mood of the Room
Robert’s Rules and Reading into the Minutes
Robert’s Rules and the Chat Function
The Philosophy of Robert's Rules
A: Robert's Rules are rules in favour of the shyest person in the room.
Robert’s Rules is a system of discussion that gives everyone their turn and no more than their turn. It appoints a chair trusted by the group to make decisions according to the rules but who also acts in accord with the group as a whole
B: Robert's Rules recognize that there are two kinds of votes.
Robert’s holds to the idea that some decisions require more "buy-in" than others. In some cases, a simple majority (half those who vote plus one) is enough to assure the group that the decision in question is supported enough to warrant their support. Things for us like whether we support the Rooftops initiative or what the Housing Charge will be are such decisions. In meetings, these proposals for action are debated under Ordinary Resolutions.
But there are matters -- like bylaws and constitutions -- that do effects on the way things are done that can outlast the participatory lives of the people who make decisions about them. For those decisions, Robert's argues, those motions express Special Resolutions which require a 2/3 majority vote.
C: Robert's Rules are only rules.
They're not laws, and they don't try to be. Admittedly, any group has its moments where the will of the majority, either expressly by vote or by extension through people voted into positions of authority, is imposed on everyone. In democratic institutions, there are protections against abuse of power, but such protections often take time to work.
But Robert's Rules are constantly in front of us while we are in a meeting. In a sense, they are the procedures for free decision-making, which, to my mind, is decision-making that can explain itself. They do allow for variations on themselves with consent of the meeting -- things like allowing the maker of a motion to answer a question during the discussion, or the raising of "Points of Information" and "Points of Order" that both break the flow of a discussion when they are invoked and reconnect when they're done.
It should be noted that Robert’s does allow a group to tailor things to their own needs, so even a consistent reference to Robert’s Rules will produce different results depending on how strictly or loosely the community chooses to use them.
2. The Mechanics of Robert’s Rules
Under Robert’s Rules, discussion is guided by a Resolution, which is expressed as a Motion. A motion is a statement about what the group should do. It is made by a member in the form of “I move that …..” . Once it is made, it needs to be seconded by another member in order to be discussed. If no one seconds a motion, it is dropped.
For seconded motions, the order of the discussion is this: The person making the motion speaks in favour of it.
Then the Chair opens the discussion to the members who signal their intention to speak. The Chair calls on each in turn. Each speaker can speak only once until the speaker’s list is finished; only then can someone who has spoken speak again. Each speaker must speak only about the resolution under debate. The Chair’s responsibility is to make sure that happens. No speaker can speak longer than 5 minutes/time they get to speak.
When the speakers have finished, the maker of the motion gets a chance to reply if they wish to.
Then a vote is called. Motions for Ordinary Resolutions require a simple majority vote to pass; for Special Resolutions it is a 2/3 majority.
Everything in Robert’s Rules stems from this core. It’s orderly, and if followed, efficient.
That said, there are variations on this theme that can complicate it and, if not checked, derail it and the meeting.
During debate, members can Move to Amend a motion. The motion they are proposing to amend is then known as the Main Motion. The amendment they make (if it is seconded), is considered a Subsidiary Motion and debated and voted on. If successful, it changes the wording of the main motion, if not, the main motion is unchanged.
There are several other motions that can also be made once a main motion is under discussion (or, as Robert’s calls it “on the table”). These are called Incidental Motions. The most-often used of these is Point of Order through which a member can raise a matter of procedure during a debate. The member can raise this point at any time during the discussion. However, the point of order must actually be a point about rules and procedure. Members cannot use it to add information or make arguments about the content of a motion or presentation under consideration.
The other is a Point of Information. Like the Point of Order, this can be raised any time during a discussion, but can only be used to request information the member making the request sees as knowledge essential to the discussion at hand.
When the debate about a motion is finished, the Chair, or a member can Call the Question. This is the call to vote on the motion.
These are the most commonly used subsidiary and incidental motions. You can go through a whole meeting without needing much more than these. The rest are fine points of procedure, and the Chair will do their best, in future meetings – and in future writing on the subject – to familiarize the membership with these.
3. Robert’s Rules and the Agenda
We’ve had some recent difficulties with the agenda that need addressing. The Agenda is a proposal. The Chair puts it forward for the membership to approve the content and order of the items to be discussed.
Since it is a proposal, the membership can modify it at the beginning of the meeting. However, it should be noted that every such modification, should, strictly speaking, require a vote by the membership in favour of including it before it is added. Likewise with items suggested for removal. Addition of items to the agenda may be spoken to by the member proposing them, but they are not debatable since debating them would automatically be putting them on the agenda.
4. Robert’s Rules, Civility, and the Mood of the Room
One of the reasons Robert’s Rules become loosely applied is that the Rules themselves acknowledge that people get used to each other, and that it is possible to read a room. So often things that technically require votes, usually procedural things, are dealt with without the cumbersome making of motions and voting on them. For the near future, in order to preserve the decorum of the meeting from the outset, the Chair will go by the book on all such matters.
Robert’s also assumes that, once accepting of the rules, people will not speak over one another or break the decorum of the discussion. However, as noted below in the section on The Philosophy of Robert’s Rules, the Rules, from Henry Robert’s first writing of them in 1876 on, knows that it is those who can be shouted down who most need protecting by them.
So the Chair has certain responsibilities to maintain order and a dialogue of respect. If a member speaks more than their time, uses language outside the bounds of parliamentary respect, becomes antagonistic towards another member, or behave in a way that disrupts the meeting, the Chair can cite that member as Out of Order and ask them to desist. If the Chair names the member, the naming of the member and the reason for it is recorded in the minutes; likewise if an apology is offered, and if a withdrawable remark withdrawn.
Also, if the Chair does not reprimand a member behaving in such a manner by name, another member can ask for that member to be called out of order.
If the behaviour persists, the Chair alone does not have the authority to reprimand a member further. That lies with the members at the meeting. The Chair can ask that a member move that the offending member be censured. Such a censure may be a demand for an apology or removal from the meeting. The motion to censure is not debatable, and it can be passed by a majority, voting, given the sensitivity of the case, by ballot. Those who have pointed out in their articles in the Newsletter are in line with and find support in this aspect of Robert’s Rules: the decorum of the meeting the responsibility of the meeting itself.
5. Robert’s Rules and Reading into the Minutes
Until these past issues with minutes, it’s been customary here for the Chair and recording secretary to add to the minutes anything a member requests be added. However, this, too, is a loose interpretation of Robert’s on the matter.
According to a strict interpretation of the rules, which will be followed for the next while at least, only additions to the minutes requested by a member and voted by the membership to be accepted as additions to the minutes will be included.
6. Robert’s Rules and the Chat Function
Remember when passing notes in class got you in trouble? Now it’s not only allowed, Chat encourages it. We’re still getting into trouble, only this time it’s the notes themselves that often cause the grief. There is no specific mention of Chat in the 11th Edition of Robert’s Rules, but online updates to Robert’s extend the Rules’ warnings against sidebar conversations within meetings. They divide the attention of the room, and with Chat, they can set up their own parallel, un-chaired and un-minuted meeting within the meeting.
As long as Chat remains incidental, and private between members as they share information about matters at hand, it can be useful. However, in the case where a Chat thread becomes diversionary or its language unparliamentary, it will need to be restrained. The Chair of the meeting cannot consistently follow two meetings at once. It will be up to members to monitor Chat, and if it becomes a detriment to the meeting, to draw the Chair’s attention to it. The Chair can call members to order and return to the main meeting, or, if the membership finds that the Chat is harming the decorum or purpose of the meeting, it can be disabled for a period of time.