Policies & Procedures - 2.3 Meetings Conducted by E-mail

- approved 5/05 -

Bylaws allow for special meetings to be called either by the Com Soc President or four members of the ComSoc Board of Governors. These special meetings may take place via email using the process outlined in these procedures. Each special meeting shall be set in motion to address one issue only. If additional issues need to be addressed, a separate meeting for each issue shall be called.

The special meeting shall be chaired by the President. If the President is unavailable, the Chair shall be determined by Society bylaws. The meeting secretary (MS) shall be the ComSoc Executive Director or designee.

All time periods mentioned in these procedures shall be based on the the time zone at ComSoc headquarters.

The rules applying to the conduct of the semi-annual Board of Governors meetings shall also apply to email meetings with the following exceptions:

1. The Motion to Table rule shall be suspended for 72 hours immediately following the announcement of the start of the discussion period by the Chair. Following the suspension period, any Motion to Table brought forth shall be disposed of within 2 week-days.
   
   
2. The Call for a Vote rule shall be suspended and replaced with the rules in Items 5, 6 & 7 below.

The order of business shall be as follows:

1. The Chair shall send an email to all the members of the Board of Governors stating the reason for calling the meeting and providing an outline of the issue to be discussed. The Email Meeting procedures shall be attached to this initial email.
   
   
2. The MS shall ascertain that a quorum (a majority of the voting members of the BoG) is available to participate in the meeting. Lack of a quorum shall put the meeting on hold until such time as a quorum can be assembled. When a quorum is available, the Chair shall declare the meeting open and communicate that to the Board. The MS shall then assign a unique ID Number to the special meeting by attaching a sequential number ‘N’ (reset at 0 every calendar year) to the end of the following identifier: 'SM-yyyymm-N' where 'SM' stands for Special Meeting. Significant documents shall also be assigned a unique identifier. For example, the first motion in a special meeting called in July 2005 shall be assigned the identifier SM-200507-1-1. The MS shall set up an email exploder (BoGX), used strictly for this meeting. The BoGX shall contain all the members of the current BoG or in the case where the SM is an executive session, all the members needed for that meeting as determined by the Chair.
   
   
3. Motions shall be presented, seconded and opened for discussion by following the same rules and procedures as in the Board of Governors semi-annual meetings with the exceptions noted above.
   
   
4. Once a motion has been seconded, the Chair shall then start a discussion period which shall be open for 5 week-days. In order to keep everybody informed and to monitor progress of the meeting, emails pertaining to the issue being resolved shall be addressed to the BoGX and have, in the subject line, the unique ID Number assigned by the MS.
   
   
5. At the end of the discussion period, the President shall then start the voting period by submitting the motion to a vote by the members. The voting period shall last 4 week-days or until the number of returned votes is sufficient to determine the outcome of the vote. For a motion to pass, it shall have received the necessary number of favorable votes as defined in the Bylaws for each motion type.
   
   
6. Each voting member shall send their email vote to the Chair and to the Meeting Secretary. The MS shall tally the votes and announce the results at the end of the voting period along with a list showing the vote of each member to the BoGX. If a motion to hold a secret ballot had previously been passed, the MS shall then announce only the results of the vote.
   
   
7. Once the voting results are announced, the Chair shall declare the special meeting closed.