You think Parliamentary Pricedure is boring? Well here's the funny side of it:
From 'Due to Lack of Onterest Tomorrow has been Cancelled' by Irene Kampen
The room was filling up with smoke and the phone kept ringing and everybody seemed to be talking at once at the top of their lungs. (page 29)
The uproar from the living room had now reached a crescendo and people were shouting things like "... move that the board of control be partitioned and forced to ... objection! ...entire rationale must be restructured and McLuhanized before ... Siddown! ...must protest the outrageous emasculation of my original motion... open a window because I am suffocating! ... transmuted into mature and meaningful values ... point of order! ...Timothy Leary has ferreted out innumerable fallacies in ... oh -Timothy Leary ... Russia but here we supposedly still have a democratic ... will you kindly shut up, Malkovich? ... racist insurgency on this campus is a mockery of ... learn a lesson from Berkeley and activize before ... Shuddup! ... Mr. Chairman, I must insist that you prevent this travesty from ... for [Pete]'s sake open a window!" (page 31)
Which makes you want to yell something like:
"Everybody shut up! I'm taking control of this meeting! I know parliamentary procedure. You! Shut up!
A motion to open the window is a motion of personal privilege. It's privileged so it doesn't need a second. There's no objection so you over by the window, open it.
You! You have the floor, do you want to make a motion? You have 2 minutes."
"I want to say that I decry the lack of -"
"Are you making a motion?"
"No"
"Then you are out of order. Sit down and shut up. You! Do you want to make a motion?"
"I want to make a motion to partition the -"
"You have two minutes to speak, I'm timing you. Make sure your motion is something the body can actually do."
"We should debate this..."
"We can't debate until we have a motion of what to debate and it's been seconded. So you are out of order. Back to the gentleman making the motion to partition."
U.S. Acres was a cartoon that had anthropomorphic animals on a farm. This is one of my favorite episodes (as I remember it.)
One day Wade Duck (he's a duck) is walking past the barn and he hears sounds from inside. He looks in and there is Roy Rooster, holding a meeting of the Roy rooster Fan CLub, membership 1 (Roy Rooster). (Roy is a rooster and an egotist, which explains why he founded his own fan club). After thinking a minute Wade announces "I would like to JOIN the Roy Rooster Fan Club." Roy is both surprised and elated and immediately instates Wade as a member, thus doubling the membership.
Wade gets the floor and announces, "I move that we change the name of the club to the Wade Duck Fan Club."
"You can't do that!" objects Roy. After a bit of arguing they go off and ask Orson Pig (a very erudite pig) who consults Porker's Rules of Order (he is a pig after all) and determines that "Yes, Wade can make a motion."
They go back and vote and it is Wade one vote for and Roy one vote against. But Wade objects that Roy as Chair can't vote, which requires another trip to visit Orson who consults Porker's again and determines Roy can't vote. As Wade continues to steamroller changes through, of the now named Wade Duck Fan Club, Roy becomes more and more upset until he not only quits as chair but resigns from his own fan club.
The only problem is Since there is only the chair and one member, the motion should have died for lack of a second if Roy had though to demand it.
Also, please note that Porker's Rules of Order are different from Robert's Rules of Order, under which Roy would have voted since his vote would make a difference, but that would have made a boring and unfunny episode.
It was my first time chairing a business meeting as a new president of the club, and I was nervous. We were discussing our Christmas party and someone suggested we invite out area governor and someone suggested we pay for his meal... and then the guy in the fool's hat (he wasn't really but I figure describing him like this is better than public blabbing his name all over the Internet) made a joke: He suggested, as a motion, that the treaurer personally pay for the AG's meal.
Now, we can't do that! But it was a motion and I was really new and really wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to speak. And then I saw a way out:
"Is there a second?" I asked. I figured it would just die for lack of a second and we'd be done with it.
That's when the member in the clown suit (also a description rather than posting a name on the Internet) said, "I second the motion."
Now I had a real problem. When there was just an invalid motion I could get rid of it. Now I had both a motion and a second. I didn't know how to get out of this. So we debated the motion. In spite of the fact that it started as a joke (and was seconded as one) debate was not funny. It dragged, badly. Finally we voted it down...eventually. At the next meeting the club voted in a restriction on how often we could hold business meetings (and I think they wanted to vote me out of office after just a month as president.
What I should have done, when the member in the fool's hat made the motion was simply said, "We cannot order the treasurer to spend his own money. The motion is out of order. Next motion." End of debate, motion and we'd have finished the business meeting in a reasonable period.
The moral is, if you are running a meeting you have to run it and sometimes you've got to grab that gavel, whack it on the lectern, and stop people before they get out of control and make a mess of the meeting!