A funny thing happened on my way to the last North Coast Unit meeting. The reason isn’t important here, but instead of being in place almost an hour before the meeting I signed on slightly late. And I’m the president, so that was a problem: members were waiting for me to start the meeting on Zoom!
Since NCU thinks of its meetings as a teaching tool, my tardiness provides a teachable moment. I’ll provide here a quick look at the parliamentary situation when the presider doesn’t show up.
The first line of defense in NCU, as in most organizations, is the vice-president. Like most presiders, I prepare a podium script which helps with the many predictable parts of the meeting; and I share it with the vice-president before the meeting. Normally, our VP would have used the script to start the meeting in my absence; however, this evening she was absent due to a medical procedure.
RONR1 (12th ed.) 3:6 identifies the presiding officer and secretary as the “minimum essential officers for the conduct of business.” Normally that presiding officer is the president, but under certain circumstances someone else serves as the presiding officer. RONR (12th ed.) 47:33 (11) states that the duties of the secretary include “In the absence of the president and vice-president, to call the meeting to order and preside until the immediate election of a chairman pro tem.” In this case, she didn’t need to do so: I was ready to preside before most assemblies would have been able to elect a chair pro tem; but that’s how the assembly would have solved the problem if I had been much later.
A couple of comments about this:
- The podium script is a functional document, not a publication; but it makes sense to share it with the secretary as well as the VP. That way the secretary can share it with the chairman pro tem.
- Some organizations would want to designate the secretary as the chair pro tem.2 However, the work of the secretary is critical to the meeting, and it would be difficult for one person to perform both roles. If the members elect the secretary as the chair pro tem, then his/her first act should be to preside over the election of a secretary pro tem.
Hopefully the situation won’t happen again in my term as NCU president; but if it does, or if it happens in other organizations you may belong to, I hope this article clarifies what happens. What is clear is that the absence of the president doesn’t mean that the meeting is canceled: the organization is bigger than the president.
Notes:
- “RONR” is Rules of Order Newly Revised: parlispeak for what most folks call “Robert’s Rules.” The 12th is the current edition, published in 2020. ↩
- There’s some logic to this: the secretary typically sits next to or near presiders and is familiar with the environment and many of the participants; but organizations typically don’t elect secretaries for their presiding skills, so some secretaries may not be comfortable in that role. ↩
