Vis Lupi Est Grex

The Phantom Committee

When Senator Brandon Bishop calls a meeting of several senators to order tomorrow, he will be giving life to a sort of shadow committee, one that the senators all believe exists and has power to exist, but in reality does not. Hence the title of this post. This phantom committee will be "apparently seen, heard, or sensed, but [will have] no physical reality." Well, no legal reality.

Remember back when the Senate thought it adopted rules at its first meeting of the session? We do, and it is somewhat of an important point. Well, the senators, try as they might, attempted to do it right this time (we applaud the effort) but managed to pull off a magic trick. Before the senators decided to go on extended holiday for the entire summer, despite the end-of-semester posturing that they would work tirelessly while everyone else was up at Tahoe working on their tans, we blogged that because the Senate didn't adopt a legally and parliamentarily proper rules resolution, the Interim Operations Committee did not exist.

Enter Sen. Patrick "Rules" Kealy to the rescue--sort of. At the June 3 Senate meeting, Sen. Kealy offered a resolution to adjourn the Senate for the summer (I guess it's too much to ask that the senators work for the students while the students are away). Included in that resolution was a clause that read, "The Interim Committee of the Senate is hereby active during the recess of the Senate. The duties, membership, and chairperson may be decided at the discretion of the Speaker, pursuant to Senate Rule XI."

Looks simple enough, right? The Interim Committee will be active. Just one slight problem: This committee doesn't legally exist. It would have had the Senate adopted a proper rules resolution at the beginning of the year. Why? The Interim Committee is not included in the codified Rules of the Senate; instead, it was created under a standalone resolution (S. Res. 75-29) (see here, page 221 of the scribd document). (That resolution was subsequently amended by S. Res. 75-64 to allow the committee to meet during spring break.)

Since the Senate did not readopt this resolution for this session, as should have been done at its first meeting, the Interim Committee does not exist. Yet, here we have the trick of this committee, which does not exist, meeting tomorrow. Thus, when the group of senators meet tomorrow, despite the Senate's best intentions, they will be without the legal authority to meet. Of course this is very easy to fix. A resolution like the one below would suffice.

Resolved, That Senate Resolution 75-29, as amended, shall apply in the 77th Session of the Senate in the same manner as such resolution applied in the 75th Session of the Senate.

The resolution is short, clear, and unambiguous. It not only makes clear to the senators what they believed was clear already, but allows people looking back to have clarity as well. Indeed, if you compare Sen. Kealy's clause to the actual resolution that created this committee in the first place, it becomes clear that the membership selection is somewhat different than what is precsribed in Rule XI, especially with respect to selecting a chairperson.

Sen. Bishop, since you are the parliamentarian of the Senate, we expect you will take this analysis under consideration and take the reasonable course of action to cancel tomorrow's meeting so that this legal and parliamentary oversight can be corrected by the full Senate. (Oh, and while you're at it, if you could fix the problem that exists with the Senate's rules, too, that'd be great. We've got some other quarrels, but let's start with something simple, eh?)

In reality, we fully expect that this post won't even get the lip service it deserves, let alone actually be taken seriously. No worries, just another item to add to the list of ways the ASUN Senate has tried but failed.