I’ve just been made aware that the Student Government at my university is planning to expell a member of their senate. My friends and I feel this is mainly a political move and want to do whatever we can to stop it. I only have a couple of hours before the meeting so I’ve turned to the SDMB for help.
One of the first items on the agenda for any meeting is Open Forum, wherein members of the student body are allowed to speak for a total of five minutes each. The senate operates under Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised. What I need to know is: is there any way that I, as a student but not a member of the senate initiate a filibuster or the equivalent?
A filibuster relies on unlimited time for debate. However, one option you might have is to get a large number of students who will speak in open forum. If you have 20 people all taking their five minutes, that’s an hour right there. So if you get enough people, you can extend the meeting so long that they might choose to adjourn the meeting for the night.
I think Captain Amazing must be one of those metric time people.
But the Captain is right: if there is a time limit, you can’t have a filibuster. That’s why there’s no filibusters in the US House of Representatives – their rules specifiy time limits for debates. But if you can muster enough support, and if their rules do not place an overall time limit on the open forum, then you may be able to spam the session with lots of nonsense as a delaying tactic.
Thanks Captain Amazing, we’ll have quite a few people there, I was just trying to find a back-door method to really stop this thing. I even dusted off my old Bible to read to them.
Of course, this relies on the body’s willingness to listen to everyone. While not an expert on RROO, I highly doubt that the head of the student body is required to recognize every yahoo who shows up at the door and grant them the full five minutes.
Another issue is whether the Open Forum is itself subject to a time limit, or whether the body can impose one. Absent a special rule guaranteeing that the Open Forum must continue as long as there are students seeking the floor, the Open Forum is subject to a motion to limit debate. Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised § 15 (10th ed. 2000).) If the agenda provides that the Open Forum will end at a certain time or after a certain period, then the Forum will end as provided. If the agenda provides that another matter is in order at a certain time after the Open Forum has begun, then any member of the body can effectively end the Forum by calling for the orders of the day. (§ 18 at 211.)
Even if you do round up several like-minded speakers, you cannot guarantee that they can all speak, let alone that they can hold the floor consecutively: “Rights in regard to debate are not transferable. Unless the organization has a special Rule on the subject, a member cannot yield any unexpired portion of his time to another member, or reserve any portion of his time to a later time–that is, if a member yields the floor before speaking his full [five] minutes, he is presumed to have waived his right to the remaining time.” (§ 43 at 376.)
Sorry, not the answer that you were hoping for, I know. But the rules are stacked against letting any individual or group block the body from transacting its business. You may have better luck trying to win the debate on the merits or, if that tack is hopeless, trying to get enough voting members to walk out of the meeting that a quorum is lost. (§ 40 at 338.)
Under Robert’s Rules, any member can call “Orders of the Day” which means, “let’s get on to the business that’s scheduled for this time on the agenda.” The agenda should say that audience comments will go from 7-7:30, e.g., and that the official deliberation on the business at hand will occur at 7:30. If the audience is still talking at 7:31, a member may call for orders of the day. Of course the body can always decide to amend the agenda or simply allow the audience more time. It is very rare that anyone would ever call for orders of the day, but an attempt by the peanut gallery to hijack a meeting is one instance where it might actually happen.
(This assumes that someone who is not sympathetic to your cause knows parliamentary procedure well enough to know Orders of the Day – at most University legislatures, I would guess only the chair knows RROR that well…)
Thanks all, I kind of figured the answer would be “no” but you gotta try. Anyway, only a few of us showed up anyway. Ordinarily this sort of action wouldn’t bother me, as the student government is basically a joke, but the reason they were doing this (in our view) was to prevent him from holding any office next year. I believe he’s on the ballot for USG President.
Sort of a semi-nitpicky hijack, but since the Student Government meeting is over and all–and it sucks about akennett’s friend getting ganged up on–well . . .
I thought the Rules Committee set the time limits for most debates in the House . . . so, theoretically, you could have a bill debated on the floor without each Representative being limited to X minutes, or whatever. Or is it written somewhere that time limits must be set?
And is there some “default” limit in place for those times when a bill bypasses the Rules Committee under that whole “Suspension of the Rules” thing? Or am I getting stuff mixed up?
Not really trying to argue here. Perhaps I was misinformed about this in American Government . . . Lord knows they told me tons of other things that turned out incorrect.
Sure, the House of Representatives could debate a bill without a time limit on debate. But they never do, AFAIK.
The rules that the House adopts (on the Rules Committee’s recommendation) for each debate usually allow not a certain length of time per speech, as is the case in most nonlegislative bodies, but a certain length of time per side, with the time divided equally between the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader. Thus, on a given resolution, the rule might allow 60 minutes per side, and each leader can assign the floor (again unlike most legislative bodies, where rights in debate are not transferable) among his or her partisans. The leader will yield the floor to a member, who will speak, then yield the floor back to the leader for the remaining time. This process continues until the allotted time is exhausted.
I am pretty sure that there is a default time limit. I’ll check.
A representative or delegate cannot debate a question for longer than an hour (Rule XVII.2), and cannot speak on the same question more than once (Rule XVII.3(b)). If the debate extends beyond one day, then the representative or delegate who called up the measure may close the debate, for up to another hour (Rule XVII.3(a)). The House’s rules are online at the Clerk’s website.
Bills debated under Suspension of the Rules are debated for 40 minutes in the House of Representatives, the time equally divided (see Rule XV )
There is also “Calendar Wednesday” (also in Rule XV), in which bills can theoretically be called up from a committe without being reported with a “rule” and debated for two hours. However, the Majority leader usually asks each week ( by unanimous consent) that business on Calendar Wednesday be dispensed with. I’ve always been curious why he does that; why not just remove the rule alltogether?
brianmelendez, Actually the motion is usually stated as “Move to suspend the rules and pass the bill such and such”, so there is no practical difference (i.e., the 40 minutes is used to debate the merits of the bill before voting on its passage). I suppose one could make a motion to suspend the rules and act on any type of motion that isn’t allowed for in the Rules or is in order (“I move to suspend the rules and require the Majority leader to stand in the corner!”) , but I’ve never seen it done (I used to watch a lot of C-SPAN).
