My Dad, a lawyer, who sat through lots of college meetings told me his simple rule about the often knotty questions raised by Parliamentary procedure. If there seems to be no dissent on what a body of people wishes to do a Chair can always say (to invite objections) “if there are no objections we will………followed by whatever the unanimous group wants to do. This works best on simple things like an adjournment for a potty break or a suspension of rules to do something uncontroversial. If someone objects a vote can be taken and debated while bloated members of the body cross their legs so as not to pee in their slacks while the debate drags on.
I told this to Art Johnston once and he strongly disagreed that this is proper procedure.
I’ve just bought the unabridged 11th edition to Robert’s Rules so I’ll be able to look this up myself but as a matter of fact a majority can pretty much do whatever the hell it is that they want to do…….ultimately.
Parliamentary Procedure does however protect the minority’s right to kick up a fuss. No measure can be killed without some discussion as proper voting procedure must be followed…..unless its the Duluth School Board from 2014-15 or any previous Duluth School Board that had Art and/or Gary Glass serving on it. That is changing in our new school board……so far. Which reminds me of a tiresome joke I heard Steve McQueen tell Yul Brynner in the movie Magnificent Seven. It went something like this:
A cowboy who was paying a visit to Kansas City wanted to check out the tall buildings so he climbed up a towering seven story hotel. As he was looking over the roof he lost his balance and tumbled over. All the people sitting at windows along his route heard him say as he passed by, “so far so good,” “so far so good.”
