Constitutional unconvention
Yesterday the CSUCI math club had a meeting to adopt a new constitution. As advisor, I have been loosely advising the process over the past week, and the document was pretty good. The document was a completely new one, but the main fundamental changes were to shift most of the details to bylaws instead of the constitution itself. Then things could happen faster, more efficiently, and I could skim money off the top we could have better provisions for emergency appropriation.
So we spent nearly two hours going through it debating points, mostly changing the president's power and shunting details to the bylaws (still yet to be adopted - see later). Since at that point we were operating under the previous constitution, we had to abide by its rules. The first thing we had to change was the membership since according to the old constitution, strictly speaking, the math club had no members. So we all had to sign a paper and give it to the secretary to establish some members, and then we would have a quorum (which needed to be at least 51% of the membership) which then could vote on the constitution.
Toward the end of the debate, the secretary had to leave, but that was ok, since we still would have a quorum for the main part of the meeting. So we finished the details, including that this constitution would supersede and make null and void the previous one. Additionally, it would be enacted immediately upon passing. No problem. We liked how it was turning out.
So we put it to a vote. It passed easily. Then we continued with the next business. . . until someone pointed out that without the secretary, we only had two of the officers, which under the new constitution meant that we no longer had a quorum. This meant that all business had to be stopped. At this point I lost it, laughing until I almost fell off my chair. Up until about 30 seconds before, we could have passed whatever we wanted, and then the new constitution, which made things easier, prevented us from passing anything.
So instead, we decided to make a provisional calendar for the semester.
All in all, it was a good process. In particular, I think that it was probably good that the provision for a betting pool on when I would get kicked out as advisor was not included in the constitution, even though I volunteered to be a naked goalie in the next faculty/student soccer game.
So we spent nearly two hours going through it debating points, mostly changing the president's power and shunting details to the bylaws (still yet to be adopted - see later). Since at that point we were operating under the previous constitution, we had to abide by its rules. The first thing we had to change was the membership since according to the old constitution, strictly speaking, the math club had no members. So we all had to sign a paper and give it to the secretary to establish some members, and then we would have a quorum (which needed to be at least 51% of the membership) which then could vote on the constitution.
Toward the end of the debate, the secretary had to leave, but that was ok, since we still would have a quorum for the main part of the meeting. So we finished the details, including that this constitution would supersede and make null and void the previous one. Additionally, it would be enacted immediately upon passing. No problem. We liked how it was turning out.
So we put it to a vote. It passed easily. Then we continued with the next business. . . until someone pointed out that without the secretary, we only had two of the officers, which under the new constitution meant that we no longer had a quorum. This meant that all business had to be stopped. At this point I lost it, laughing until I almost fell off my chair. Up until about 30 seconds before, we could have passed whatever we wanted, and then the new constitution, which made things easier, prevented us from passing anything.
So instead, we decided to make a provisional calendar for the semester.
All in all, it was a good process. In particular, I think that it was probably good that the provision for a betting pool on when I would get kicked out as advisor was not included in the constitution, even though I volunteered to be a naked goalie in the next faculty/student soccer game.