Apologies that this is rather long.
X is elected to the governing Board by the whole membership of a political association, A. The Board adopts RONR into its standing orders. X is one of several members of A to receive, unwillingly, sensitive information from an officer of A about Y, an ordinary member of the association. Y alleges that the sharing of the information was unlawful and takes his complaint to regulator R. Initially the Board is not informed, but X mentions the matter to Board members and the chair of the Board confirms to the Board that R has an open investigation. A week later, at a Board meeting held remotely by Zoom, a member of staff states (orally) that there are no open investigations into association A, mentioning receipt of an email but not reading it out. No further explanation is offered. X says that X is unable to accept that the statement is accurate and asks to see the correspondence. The member of staff refuses to disclose it. The chair does not put the disclosure issue up for discussion. Several Board members in succession speak attacking X, accusing X of having accused the member of staff of lying, and demand an apology. These attacking speeches continue for some time. X writes in the text chat that X cannot accept that the statement is accurate and that the Board must see the correspondence. The chair of the Board, claiming to be applying RONR but not being specific, calls on X to apologise. X denies having said anything improper and refuses. The chair puts to a vote whether X should be ejected. The vote is passed and X’s access to the videoconference is terminated.
I have noted RONR 49:15 on conduct of business in Boards and read all the threads I can find in your forums about ejections of members entitled to be at meetings and I get the impression that no deviation from RONR is permitted, unless by some other rule that overrides RONR, which was not the case here. Your opinions would be appreciated: -
Under RONR, should the chair have put X’s request for sight of the correspondence to the Board for decision? Is the chair unilaterally entitled to reject or ignore such a request?
RONR 61:12 contemplates that the chair may name an offender, after repeated warnings, for ‘obstinate’ or ‘grave’ breach of order, but before taking such action the chair directs the secretary ‘when it begins to appear that it may become necessary’ to ‘take down objectionable or disorderly words’. X had not said that the staffer was lying. It was an imputation by others. X named no one and said nothing about motive. The chair did not direct the secretary to take down any words. Is RONR 61:12 about the words, or about other Board members' particular adverse interpretation of them? Or does something in RONR empower the chair alone to put a particular adverse interpretation on X’s words? Or is this impermissibly putting words in X's mouth that X did not say?
RONR 61:17 applies where the member denies having said anything improper. It states that “the words recorded by the secretary can be read to” the member “and, if necessary, the assembly can decide by vote whether he was heard to say them”. How does that work if the words were not said? Does anything in RONR empower the chair to skip the steps at RONR 61.12 and 61.17?
Thank you in advance for any comments. They are sought because based on this incident the chair sought X’s expulsion from association A for “bullying” and published the allegation that X had committed “bullying”. Meanwhile, Y pointed out to R that R’s investigator was under a mistake of fact, R resumed the investigation and a few months later R upheld Y’s complaint. X (having been an unwilling recipient of the information about Y) was aware of the circumstances giving rise to Y's complaint but not of what the association had told R, and maintains that if the correspondence had been disclosed at the Board meeting as requested, X would have pointed out the mistake. Obviously the power to eject a member should not be open to abuse by the controlling faction.
