AMC Minutes Capsule  

The Agenda for the December 2003 AMC meeting began with these words, captioned "American Mensa Mission":

The mission of American Mensa is to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity by encouraging research in the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence and by providing a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members.

We note that the Minutes of the meeting left out those words — and documented a disregard for their intent.

The first agenda item we discussed in the last "AMC Agenda Alert" (AAA) was improved in two ways. It was moved out of the ill-conceived "Consent Agenda," and it picked up two actual people, instead of AMC subcommittees, as mover and seconder. Unfortunately, it still passed. Here is the final wording:

Moved FOLKS seconded SOPER that, for the purposes of campaigning, AML shall release member contact information only to candidates for AML or local group office and that it is the sense of this body that using that information to campaign for any other office may be an act inimical to the society.

This passed by a convincing margin, leaving candidates for MIL (Mensa International, Ltd.) office out in the cold. Interesting move for a supposed part of an international society. Only Beatty, Timmers and Wilterding had the good sense to oppose the measure. Burg and Werba declined to take a stand, and Rudolph and Seigler were not in attendance.

It appears that MIL has taken notice of this issue. Later in the Minutes, in the "Urgent Issues" section of the meeting, we find this item:

Appointment of AML representative to the MIL task force to study release of information for MIL elections.

The AMC did appoint Membership Officer Soper to this task force — we suppose, to defend that motion she had seconded to cut off member contact information from international candidates.

This item remained in the Consent Agenda and passed unanimously within that omnibus:

Moved BRUCE seconded BEATTY, COONTZ, FOLKS and MCBEAN that:

a) ASIE 1995-026 be amended to read:
All officer reports received by the established deadline shall be made available to all Local Secretaries and Editors.

b) ASIE 1999-018 be amended to read:
Motions and other agenda items for regularly scheduled AMC meeting shall be submitted according to a schedule that ensures these materials will be distributed to AMC members at least 30 days before the AMC meeting date. The Chairman shall set the deadline for submission of these and other meeting materials. This policy does not apply to the first meeting of a newly elected AMC; however, the materials for that meeting will be distributed as early as practicable.

As noted in "AAA" last issue, this removes any deadline for receipt of officer reports. One could stretch a point and consider them agenda items; however, we remain concerned about the AMC's passing motions of needless ambiguity.

Next we revisit the renaming of "Actions Still in Effect" as "Standing Orders." The motions to make this change passed. Later in the meeting, under the banner of "Emerging Issues," we find out why this was done — or do we?

Discussion of Standing Orders: What is the purpose of this document and how do we envision it changing in order to be more useful? VASILIAUSKAS pointed out that the SOs are a policy manual, containing policies set and revised and added to by the board. BURG noted that the SOs contain actions taken by the entire body, and only the entire body (or a subset of itself, such as ExComm) can get rid of an SO. A discussion followed on various suggestions and ideas to make this document easier to use. WERDELL suggested that motions be written in such a way as to make them easier to understand. The Secretary will take the many suggestions under advisement and continue to work to delete obsolete SOs.

Your trusty commentators, apparently along with the AMC that unanimously made the change, wonder how SOs are really different from ASIEs. Perhaps actions (oops, orders) like this are a good reason to scale back AMC meetings to three a year.

In the last "AAA" we commented extensively on the flawed concept of the Consent Agenda. As a refresher, here are the comments on the concept from the meeting Agenda:

Chair's Note: This motion includes receiving the reports and adopting the motions in the consent agenda section as a block, with no discussion necessary. The Consent Agenda is intended to minimize the time required for handling non-controversial matters and permit additional time for decisions that require more discussion.

Any AMC member may request an item be pulled from the Consent Agenda AFTER discussing it with the appointee or committee chair, staff person, and AMC liaison (if any). This should be done BEFORE the weekend of the AMC meeting except in rare instances, such as a result of committee meeting decisions the night before the AMC meeting.

We will note that some items were removed from the Consent Agenda, as all of them should have been. The means of doing so are not any better defined, at least in a resource available to your commentators.

Finally, for this edition we want to amplify previous discussion of the problem of committees being listed as movers and/or seconders of motions. Though corrected in one instance in the December meeting, the Executive Committee is listed as maker of two motions to enter executive session. One of the items passed by the AMC in this meeting is as follows:

AMC shall be guided by and conduct itself according to the Tenth Edition of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, modified to permit the Chairman to speak, vote, and to make motions only concerning appointments and consent agenda approval, and to permit the Parliamentarian to speak, vote and make motions.

Robert's states quite clearly that it is a member of the body that may make or second a motion. A committee is not a member of the body, even though it may be entirely made up of members of the body. We do hope that the AMC will not make this error again.