Reports

CURA Constitution Committee - Proprosals Report

Prepared by: Matt Waddell and Swede Burak Summary

The CURA Constitution Committee has received two proposals:

1) To create an award recognizing ‘Coaching Excellence’ in athlete/program development - This proposal should be referred to the Playing Regulations Committee.

2) To strike line 12.2 from the constitution (“All meetings of CURA shall be conducted according to Robert’s Rules of Order.”) -

It is the recommendation of the Constitution Committee to not proceed forward with this proposal.

Reports: Motion #1: Coaching Excellence Award It was the decision of the committee that the creation of a ‘Coaching Excellence’ award was not a Constitutional matter.

Section ‘I. Awards, Trophies, and Banquet’ of the Playing Regulations governs the awards and trophies granted by CURA. Therefore, this proposal should be referred to the Playing Regulations Committee.

Motion #2: Striking Robert’s Rules of Order from the Constitution Proposal: ‘To remove line 12.2 from the Constitution: “All meetings of CURA shall be conducted according to Robert’s Rules of Order.”

The advantages highlighted by the proposal are that Robert’s Rules of Order can be overly burdensome for an organization that meets only twice annually. Furthermore, the proposal suggests that many of CURA’s members are not well-versed in Robert’s Rules of Order, causing further delays.

In defence of this proposal, the most recent Robert’s Rules of Order document is over 600 pages long, however this is meant to account for a number of edge cases and much briefer ‘cheat sheets’ are available.

The advantages to using Robert’s Rules of Order are that they are meant to maintain coherency and fairness, especially when large groups of people meet. They provide a process through which all voices have the opportunity to be heard, while limiting the time of especially strident or over-bearing members. As an organization with over 20 member schools regularly attending meetings (and still growing), it is the opinion of the committee that CURA falls into this category.

Robert’s Rules of Order contains guidance on a number of important procedures, including but not limited to:

- Contents of the meeting minutes

- Quorum

- Required voting majorities for different types of motions

- Who gets to speak and when

If Line 12.2 were removed, the rules governing all of these topics would need to be specifically defined in the Constitution. The situation is analogous to how our Playing Regulations specifically abide by USports’ Eligibility rules, with specific exceptions that have been voted upon by the membership.

Commonly suggested alternatives to Robert’s Rules are more applicable to smaller boards (5-15 members), where a consensus form of decision making might be more applicable or appropriate. For CURA specifically, without a system by which motions are proposed, deliberated, and voted upon, we risk getting stuck on contentious issues, running off-topic, or repeating business in multiple meetings.

It is the decision of the Committee that this proposal does not contain a sufficiently developed proposal for how to replace Robert’s Rules. Without an alternative for maintaining order and procedure, we risk meetings that get less orderly and more repetitive. It is the suggestion of the committee that further thought be put into identifying specific elements of Robert’s Rules that we find cumbersome, and writing into the Constitution exceptions for those elements only. This way we can defer to Robert’s Rules when needed, while tailoring them to our specific needs and purposes.