Current president attended nominating committee interviews

[JCee]

Our Bylaws do not speak to permitting the current president of the board to sit in on the nominating committee meeting interviews for those who have announced their interest in being slated for office. Our Bylaws provide a full description of how the committee is to be selected, how many must be selected and that the parliamentarian is in charge of said committee and acts as chairman.  This is a first!  Candidates walked into the interview room and there sat the current president!  The current board of directors was not told by her that she would be present or else I assure you they would have vetoed the idea.  As she did not introduce herself to the candidates during the interview process, only those of us who were seeking a 2nd term knew who she was.  Isn't the nominating committee sacrosanct?  Can a president use her ex-officio status and invade the nominating process by her presence?  And yes, those of us who were applying for the presidency could not speak openly about the changes we would like to see come about with our board and our organization due to her presence!

Edited September 29, 2018 at 11:04 AM by JCee
misspellings

[Hieu H. Huynh]

The committee could have excluded the president, unless the bylaws make her a member of it.

[Greg Goodwiller, PRP]

You refer to the president's "ex officio status." Please give us the language in the bylaws about that.

While RONR expresses a clear preference for the President not being part of a Nominating Committee - and for exactly the reasons you outline - such an exclusion needs to be clearly stated in your bylaws. If, for example, your bylaws state simply that the President "is an ex officio member of all committees with voice but without vote," which is pretty common language, and if words such as "except for the Nominating Committee" are not also included, then the President has as much right to be present at a Nominating Committee meeting as she does with any other committee. 

[JCee]

Greg, you have it correct as to what our Bylaws stipulate and what it does not.  But, do you believe it would have been the right thing to do for the current president to announce to the board that she would be attending the nominating committee interviews?  This has never happened before and took us all by surprise.  I realize this loophole in our bylaws needs to be closed but do we have any recourse as a board to her doing this?   All of us who are seeking a 2nd term were so stifled in our remarks to the committee and in our responses to their questions by her presence.......or, should we just grin and bear it and seek to amend our bylaws to ensure this doesn't happen again?  

[Hieu H. Huynh]

It seems that the bylaws would have to be amended.

[Richard Brown]

Even though the president may have had the right to be there, that doesn't mean that being there was the right thing to do. She can be censured by the board for her actions if the board is so inclined. Depending on the bylaws, stronger discipline or even removal from office might be possible. 

[Joshua Katz]

I agree with Mr. Brown that those things can be done. I also agree with Mr. Brown that just because something can be done, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I wouldn't want to be part of an organization that uses its bylaws as a trap for the unway, making people committee members then disciplining them for showing up at committee meetings. In any event, it looks like an election is coming up, and the members can presumably deal with their feelings about the President's discharge of her rights and duties by voting.

[Richard Brown]

I was about to edit my post above, but since it has been about a half hour since I made the post, I am posting the information here that I was going to add to that post.  This is to supplement that post.

For some information on removal  from office, see  FAQ # 20:  http://www.robertsrules.com/faq.html#20

You might also look at FAQ # 7 regarding a "vote of no confidence".  A motion of censure would work exactly the same way and is apparently the preferred motion in the U.S as opposed to a "vote of no confidence".  Your society and/or its board are free to adopt either unless prohibited by your own rules. http://www.robertsrules.com/faq.html#7

The motion of censure is covered in several places in RONR.  It is simply an expression of disapproval.

 

[Greg Goodwiller, PRP]

I would only add to what my colleagues have said (with which I do not disagree) that in the non-profit world where I live and work, there are plenty of organizations that do allow (and even expect) the current president to participate in the nominating process. I understand and concur with what RONR says about that, but we call come into particular organizations with our experiences and traditions of other organizations of which we are or have been a part. So before I contemplated censuring someone for something that the bylaws don't prohibit, I would strongly encourage you to develop some sort of agreed upon written statement of expectations, and preferably a bylaw amendment to clearly define the president's role. 

[Guest Who's Coming to Dinner]

5 hours ago, JCee said:

Isn't the nominating committee sacrosanct?  Can a president use her ex-officio status and invade the nominating process by her presence?  And yes, those of us who were applying for the presidency could not speak openly about the changes we would like to see come about with our board and our organization due to her presence!

Robert's Rules do not address sacrilege. 😃

If the president is a member of the committee according to your bylaws, she has as much right to be present as any other member. If you are so afraid of your president that you cannot discuss your ideas in front of her, your organization has bigger problems than deciding how to apply the rules of order.