Todd Gitlin, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society who teaches journalism at Columbia, recalled using Robert’s Rules for early S.D.S. meetings, “sometimes with amusement,” as if these young radicals had “borrowed Mom and Dad’s decks of cards to play our game.” But by the mid-’60s its guidelines seemed restrictive. In his history “SDS,” Kirkpatrick Sale recounts a 1964 meeting at which the organization’s co-founder Tom Hayden began to question the value of procedural niceties. “Suppose parliamentary democracy were a contrivance of 19th-century imperialism and merely a tool of enslavement?” Sale quotes Hayden as saying. “Suppose we rush through the debate and ‘decide’ to do something by a vote of 36 to 33. Will we really have decided anything?” Hayden, Sale writes, “saw that S.D.S. was caught in the bind of trying to create a new world with the tools of the old.”I can't stand SDS... Did I ever tell you that SDS folk used to meet in the dorm room next to mine at the University of Michigan, circa 1969? They were really annoying when overheard through a wall. I don't know if it's the best way to form political opinions, but overheard through a wall, I couldn't stand them. It's the middle of the night, you're trying to get some sleep and they can't seem to agree about The Revolution. Must you yell about it 5 inches away from my bed?
Today, Hayden, a professor and activist, is still skeptical of parliamentary procedure. “Robert’s Rules might suit a representative institution, but it doesn’t suit a fledgling social movement,” he said in a telephone conversation. “It institutionalizes a win-lose mentality, when often there are close decisions in which both sides need representation.” Hayden cites the example of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which in the mid-’60s voted to expel white members. “It was a one-vote margin that changed ’60s history fundamentally,” Hayden said. “I view it as an unfortunate way to try to settle a serious problem.”
Anyway, much as I can't stand SDS, I've got to give Tom Hayden credit for saying a lot of smart things there. (Though I don't agree with that new world/old tools part.) You know, I've chaired committee meetings, and I've never proceeded by taking votes and letting a narrow majority win. We've always talked to the point of consensus or until those in the minority position accepted the outcome. I accept that elections and elected legislatures ought to proceed by majority vote, but there are a lot of situations where the majority vote and Rules of Order games are best avoided.
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19 comments:
Quaker meeting.
Rather than as something to be slavishly followed, maybe the rules of order are there more to operate as a stop-loss measure, to brake a descent into disorder and chaos.
But Robert's Rules doesn't prevent you from adopting a rule that a super-majority (or even unanimity) is required for the group to take certain actions.
Robert's Rules is really about making sure the group is following its *own* rules, whatever they may be. Robert's Rules tries to constraint the manner in which new rules can be created so a strong minority is not railroaded into a decision--this is one of the reasons that a 2/3rds majority is required to end debate and call a vote.
As always, you bring that personal touch to your observations on political matters.
Rock on!
Personally, I have never been to a meeting where the word "consensus" was uttered and anything was accomplished, unless one counts a lot of blathering about "feelings" and "concerns" or scheduling another meeting or setting up a "study group" as an accomplishment, which I do not. I'm not opposed to hearing alternatives, but those who want "consensus" never have alternative solutions, just complaints (that is what "issues" and "concerns" and "feelings" are, stripped of euphemism). Frankly, I tend to say I agree with the "consensus" just because I could be doing something productive with my time instead of being there for another hour, like clipping the dogs' toenails.
“Suppose chocolate cake were a contrivance of 19th-century imperialism and merely a tool of enslavement?”
Democracy is so contradictory! And tyranny certainly resolves contradictions.
It's no wonder that the left has failed miserably for 100 years to incite a worker revolution.
Rightwingprof: We have to keep working together. Preserving the community is more important than the decision itself... unless you actually are trying to get people to leave. If I were on a law school committee with the minority position and they just kept calling votes that I lost and moving on to the next thing, I would hate my colleagues. There'd be discord everywhere, and people would be trying to leave all the time. We'd have trouble recruiting faculty. It would be a disaster. There would be vengeful backstabbing, slacking, pissy blogging, etc.
Robert’s Rules vs. Hayden’s ‘happening’ sit-ins and spontaneous civil disobedience? No contest. Rules are for rubes.
Consensus is not always possible nor desirable. Too often differences get papered over with slick rhetoric or meaningless compromise, just to smoothe ruffled feathers. But how is this not just adding further insult (to thinking people?)
Real decisions in life are often win-lose, until new circumstances change the equation. It's the mature way of group dynamics and functioning. Having to bend over backwards to achieve a win-win or to make something appear acceptable to everyone with divergent POVs cripples both decision and the process and makes petulant adolescents of everyone.
"If I were on a law school committee with the minority position and they just kept calling votes that I lost and moving on to the next thing, I would hate my colleagues."
And if you kept losing votes, and then you colleagues talked and talked and talked at you until you changed your vote (consensus!) out of exasperation or exhaustion, would you like them better?
Paco, I wouldn't do that, because that too would be destructive of the community. They'd hate me. Plus, it would waste time.
If you don't like SDS, professor you would have enjoyed being in room 209 of Boston Latin School early one morning in 1969 when they tried to shut down classes at English High School across the street. We watched out the window as the English football team came and beat teh stuffing out of the nasty little radicals. School is in session!!
"...trying to create a new world with the tools of the old...It institutionalizes a win-lose mentality..."
Roberts Rules can't account for the win-lose-'maybe win, maybe lose' of quantum physics. We need new rules to keep up with the times.
I've chaired committee meetings, and I've never proceeded by taking votes and letting a narrow majority win. We've always talked to the point of consensus or until those in the minority position accepted the outcome.
Wow - talk about a dick.
I'm sure most people will do whatever they have to to get you to shut the fuck up...
Ann...I was 60 miles up the road when the UM SDS were having their soirees...MSU had the occasional visit but our SDS chapter didn't much believe in RRO but rather adhered to volume voice votes. We still managed to turn out 20,000+ after Kent State and I had the unfortunate luck of being trapped in the graduate student stacks while the tear gas rose up.
I was, however, lucky or unlucky to make my next education stop at Columbia and frankly that was a University ruined, at least temporarily, by Mr. Hayden's ilk and the result was a cowed and standardless faculty so past our present concept of politically correct as to make the $90 credit hour (yes it really was back then) a ripoff.
I've always hoped Hayden would have understood the effects he visited on education at the time - remembering one particularly horrible political thought course the professor asked us on day 1 to tell him the grade we wanted so we would be free to just learn and not be concerned about such mundane things when there were bigger social issues manifesting themselves on the library steps.
Oh brother.
Can that really be hdhouse??
Sounds like a conservative to me!
"Preserving the community is more important than the decision itself."
Not if there's a problem. A problem requires a solution, else there's no point in addressing it at all, and one might as well let it continue. And a solution is a goal. I'm all for goal-oriented meeetings when problems exist; but when I have to attend one of these pointless feeling-fests, I'll say whatever I have to to get it over as quickly as possible. That means the consensus isn't really a consensus, but then, the problem wasn't a problem either, or wasn't big enough to actually solve, or the meeting would have addressed a solution.
Althouse: I accept that elections and elected legislatures ought to proceed by majority vote, but there are a lot of situations where the majority vote and Rules of Order games are best avoided.
What about smaller groups, like the Supreme Court? What should John Roberts' rules of order be?
Bill: I think he can work for consensus and has said he tries to, but he has to deal with the limits of the judicial role, which is to interpret the law. There is flexibility however in deciding which case to grant cert on and in framing the decision narrowly so there can be broader agreement.
Testimonial on meetings:
Our department met occasionally when necessary to address a specific issue until our new chair (an insufferably officious twerp) mandated WEEKLY meetings, just to "pull rank". I remember at one of these pointless meetings squandering forty minutes debating about who was to dust (at a cost of perhaps two minutes' work a month) the new student achievement plaques hung in the hallway, because one of our departmental feminist mouthpieces (AKA, PC naggin' nannies) wanted to drone on about exploitation of the working classes. . . .
Tenured radicals like Gitlin and Hayden and other rad-riff-raff racaille (is "journalism" even a legitimate university subject, let alone department??) helped me in my youth make the decision to enlist in the Army, which I did, in part to protest disloyal anti-war protesters. . . . Thanks guys, for helping me become a proud life member in the VFW. . . .
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