An Update Before Convention Begins Tonight
On the behalf of the co-signers of our June 16th letter that set up this petition, I would like to thank each you for your public support and your letters to our leadership in Missouri. I thought we might get 200-300 signatures. I hoped for 400. As I am drafting this update, we have 700. Unfortunately, we were not successful in this initial effort. Grand President Marla Wulf was quite clear in the second delegate training last week that our convention would proceed as planned.
She also addressed my interpretation of Proposal 3 and assured the participants that Illinois law gives Grand Council the authority to call a virtual convention. I had relied on our bylaws, which state that Grand Council will call a biennial convention “at a time and place”, and then on Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised (12th edition) (hereinafter RONR), which counsels against virtual conventions unless they are permitted by the bylaws. However, Illinois law, which is the controlling authority as our fraternity is incorporated in Illinois, takes the opposite position from RONR and allows virtual meetings unless expressly prohibited by the bylaws.
So we may legally have this convention, but as some of you stated in your messages to our leadership, just because we can does not mean we should. On this point, the reasoning in RONR is illuminating. Excerpted from Rule 9:30-34:
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Except as authorized in the bylaws, the business of an organization or board can be validly transacted only at a regular or properly called meeting—that is, as defined in 8:2(1), a single official gathering in one room or area—of the assembly of its members at which a quorum is present….
[I]n the case of a relatively small board or other assembly…a group that holds such alternative [electronic] meetings does not lose its character as a deliberative assembly so long as the meetings provide, at a minimum, conditions of opportunity for simultaneous aural communication among all participating members equivalent to those of meetings held in one room or area…
It is important to understand that regardless of technology used, the opportunity for simultaneous aural communication is essential to the deliberative character of the meeting. [Citations omitted. Italics theirs. Bold mine.]
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Our concern about debating our important issues at a virtual convention is clearly expressed by the excerpt above. Our statutes — which never contemplated electronic meetings — and our published procedures lack the elements that give a virtual deliberative body its consultative character.
The process outlined in the Convention Procedural Rules and discussed at the delegate training sessions is multi-step and technically complicated — and by RONR should have itself been discussed and voted on by the assembly. To properly attempt a virtual convention, we should convene a session to set our virtual procedures. More to the point, simultaneous communication, aural or otherwise, will not be available under the current procedures outlined. Participants will be muted unless they are recognized and given the floor. The chat function will be limited to viewing by the meeting organizers. The Q&A thread will be visible, but the convention procedures limit what can be typed in that thread to the relevant information to ask for the floor, such as, pro and con on the active item, or a privileged, secondary, or incidental motion.
There is not an option for simultaneous communication. Practically, how could there be? The number of voting delegates alone appears to be well over 400 women. Simultaneous communication opportunity for a virtual meeting of that size is not feasible, which is why RONR limits the options for proper virtual meetings to a “relatively small board or other assembly”. (Note, according to the introduction and the Robert’s Rules In Brief, the threshold of small to “full scale” meeting is 12-15 members.)
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the issues presented in the proposals, they are significant to the character of our fraternity. We need to have confidence in the process by which we decide them.
For these reasons, the Houston delegate will move to postpone consideration of the 27 proposals until we can meet in person. We solicit and appreciate any delegates’ support.
In Pi Beta Phi,
Leslie Arnold Loftis
VP Communications, Houston Alumnae Club of Pi Beta Phi
Texas Beta, ‘93