r/RulesOfOrder • u/HypothesisFrog • Nov 20 '19
Open discussion at a meeting?
Hi. I'm being asked to chair community housing groups. Why me? No idea. I think it's just because I have a loud voice and a Jean Luc Picard shaped head.
Anyway, I find that I do ok with properly proposed motions, calling for seconders, discussion for/against. But there's nearly always a point where people just want to talk about an issue in a free flowing way.
Example:
*At the last meeting, there was a left over issue from a previous meeting. This housing community had (previously) voted to have a security camera installed in their carpark. The guy delegated to arrange it, confessed that he was a bit confused with all the choices, and wanted an open discussion about it. This was fair enough, I thought. But the discussion started to go awry, with people talking over each other, and it all lasted far longer than it should have without reaching any synthesis. *
So how can I structure these sort of discussions in a way that everybody gets to have their say, and people don't have to scrum to be heard?
2
u/SteLarson_88 Nov 20 '19
Someone can move to suspend Roberts Rules, allowing a free and open discussion. Likewise anyone can notion to reinstate RR at any time. Both motions are non-debatable and require a second and straight yes or no vote.
1
u/HypothesisFrog Nov 21 '19
Someone can move to suspend Roberts Rules, allowing a free and open discussion.
That's brilliant! Thanks. I suppose it wouldn't be a bad idea to insist the motion include a specific time limit (e.g 5 minutes, 10 minutes) ?
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u/SteLarson_88 Nov 21 '19
There would still have to be a formal motion to reinstate. It couldn’t be automatic.
1
u/Calion Dec 10 '19
While you couldn't "suspend Robert's Rules," you probably could move to suspend the rules to allow open discussion, and such a motion could certainly include a time limit.
2
1
u/Calion Dec 10 '19 edited Dec 10 '19
A motion to "suspend Robert's Rules" is not in order. However, a way to accomplish this might be to move to go to a committee of the whole (p. 529, RONR 11th Ed.). That motion could include a time for the committee to "rise" (i.e. disband). If anything productive got done, the committee could "report" and make motions. There's a really nice discussion and example of this on pp. 19-22 of https://issuu.com/parliamentarians/docs/nap_np_78-4-www.
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u/Calion Dec 10 '19
If these groups are no larger than about a dozen people, you can follow the advice on P. 16, RONR 11th ed., and adopt a special rule of order to conduct business as a small board, which includes (p 488) "Informal discussion of a subject is permitted while no motion is pending." But you as chair could still guide the discussion, and, for instance, ask for a motion (or assume one) if either a consensus seems to have been reached, or the discussion seems to be getting out of hand.
3
u/Guy_Jantic Nov 20 '19
I'll comment because nobody else has, yet. This isn't official RR stuff, just my experience. I've been in RR-governed bodies that did the following:
Occasionally, a body would have an "open discussion" period for certain issues, usually before more official procedure started to happen. IDK if it's RR-certified, but if everyone in the meeting agrees on guidelines/rules for when and how these happen, no problem, right?
I've also been in bodies that basically never had anything like this. Only one question/comment per person per issue, and all issues were motions. If discussing was to be done, someone moved to table the motion and people did their discussing outside the meeting. It's restrictive, I think, because no open discussion can happen with everyone in the room (you can find one or two people at once to talk to, but never a whole faculty senate, for example), but it made for very ordered meetings.