Rescind an Amendment?

[Guest27506]

Amendments to our Constitution and Bylaws require to be passed through our student government, a faculty committee, and then ratified by students.

 

If an amendment has passed through both the student government and faculty committee, and waiting to be put to a referendum of students, could the student government vote to rescind the amendment according to RONR and thus not hold the referendum? Or would the motion to rescind only apply prior to the faculty committee's review?

[Josh Martin]

Amendments to our Constitution and Bylaws require to be passed through our student government, a faculty committee, and then ratified by students.

 

If an amendment has passed through both the student government and faculty committee, and waiting to be put to a referendum of students, could the student government vote to rescind the amendment according to RONR and thus not hold the referendum? Or would the motion to rescind only apply prior to the faculty committee's review?

 

It's up to your organization to interpret its own bylaws. See RONR, 11th ed., pgs. 588-591 for some Principles of Interpretation.

[Guest27506]

It's up to your organization to interpret its own bylaws. See RONR, 11th ed., pgs. 588-591 for some Principles of Interpretation.

 

But can the RONR motion to rescind something previously adopted be applied to amendments? And if so, would there be a time limit to when an amendment can be rescinded?

[Chris Harrison]

But can the RONR motion to rescind something previously adopted be applied to amendments? And if so, would there be a time limit to when an amendment can be rescinded?

If the amendment had already been adopted and was now in the bylaws then the answer would be easy that you could use Amend Something Previously Adopted to either change the bylaws again or get rid of the amendment previously adopted (you wouldn't apply Rescind to Bylaw amendments).  However, the problem is that the amendment hasn't been totally adopted since the referendum hasn't occurred and generally speaking a body can't apply R/ASPA to something that hasn't even been adopted yet.  However, this appears to be a 3 stage process with 3 different bodies considering the question so the normal RONR rules wouldn't necessarily apply.  So in other words see Josh Martin's reply. 

[Josh Martin]

But can the RONR motion to rescind something previously adopted be applied to amendments?

 

The motion to Rescind cannot be applied to an adopted amendment to the Constitution or bylaws. It may be applied to an adopted motion to recommend such an amendment.

 

As noted, however, whether that is in order in this particular situation is a question of interpreting your organization's rules.

 

However, the problem is that the amendment hasn't been totally adopted since the referendum hasn't occurred and generally speaking a body can't apply R/ASPA to something that hasn't even been adopted yet.

 

Yes, but if the amendment has "passed through both the student government and faculty committee," this was presumably accomplished by each body adopting a main motion. If a committee adopted a recommendation on its own initiative, for instance, then it would be in order for that committee to Rescind that motion before it had been presented to the parent body. This situation is a bit unusual, however, so I'm not sure how that applies here.