Note: The following has been written for the benefit of interested parties, in order to help us better understand quorum rules, our quorum history, and why our recent discussions have proven so difficult.
 

I. Conversion to the Current Governance System

In 1978-1979 Wittenberg agreed to abandon its faculty senate form of faculty governance in favor of the current system. The senate system was widely criticized for involving too few faculty members (roughly 30) and too many students (26) and administrators (8). The Faculty Bylaws adopted in 1979 eliminated administrators save for those with faculty rank, cut student voting to eight, and allowed every full-time member of the faculty to vote. Effectively, the new system vastly reduced the power of students and administrators, while allowing for 100% faculty participation.

The new system was launched in 1980, and it quickly became apparent that a large portion of the faculty did not desire such participation. Average and median faculty attendance the first year was in the high 50s, despite a full-time faculty in the lower 140s. At the final faculty meeting, in May 1981, Provost Wiebenga complimented the faculty on implementing the new system, but he also noted that "The concerns with respect to the new governance are clear. The faculty has operated most of the year without a quorum. . . ." He also noted anxiety over less student involvement. The latter had been intended, the former had not.

The following fall, Warren Copeland and Cynthia Behrman proposed to the faculty the creation of an ad hoc committee to consider some problems with the new system: frequent meetings, quorum calls, and mail ballots. Some senior faculty members do recall quorum calls in the early 1980s under the new system. The faculty created the committee, whose chair, Al Stickney, reported back in April 1982. That committee made three major recommendations, and it considered recommending a lower quorum number, but ultimately declined to do so.

Why, after noting the problem, was nothing done? Part of the answer would lie in the motives of the faculty newly involved in governance. Thirty or so faculty members now could participate that could not before, and they would have had no motivation to challenge the new system in its first year. Moreover, attendance problems were, typically, not severe, and there might have been reason to expect attendance to improve once the system's early flaws were corrected. The only other choice, a representative system, had been discredited in the minds of many by the pre-1979 system.

The 1979 quorum language (50% of the faculty) has remained in place ever since. Attendance did not improve. Average yearly attendance in the 1980s ranged from the mid-50s to the low 60s. How did the faculty get into the habit of ignoring quorums? Answering that question requires some deeper understanding of the evolution of Robert's Rules of Order.
 

II. Robert's

The volume commonly referred to as "Robert's Rules of Order" has been published in ten editions over 125 years. But it is more helpful to understand that it has been published in three series of multiple editions each: Robert's Rules of Order (1876, 1876, 1893); Robert's Rules of Order Revised (1915, 1943, 1951); and Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised (1970, 1980, 1990, 2000). To avoid confusion, bylaws typically refer to "the latest edition of Robert's Rules of Order."

Robert's Rules of Order have roots in both English and American history, but its single greatest source are the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives, where a quorum is 50% of the members. The principle of quorum is found in every edition of Robert's, but in the major revisions of 1915 and 1970, the book was overhauled and enlarged, and the quorum language became more specific. The last widely used edition of the second series, published in 1951, was used until 1970, and it served as the basis for instruction in parliamentary procedure in American colleges through the 1950s and 1960s, when such things were taught.

Revisions in 1943 and 1951, and the initiation of the massive 1970 revisions, were led by Sarah Corbett Robert. The 1951 edition made no mention of a chair's "duty" to determine the presence of a quorum before convening a meeting, or of a duty to notice its absence once a session has begun. The 1970 edition expanded the treatment of quorums, and it included the duty language for the first time. If attendance dipped during the meeting, the duty to notice the absence of a quorum applied before the body voted; it did not apply during the debate. In other words, a debate could continue without a quorum; only when the body was about to act did the duty kick in.

But in the early 1980s, many individuals in high ranking positions at Wittenberg would have worked under the older rules. Former President Bill Kinnison recalls advising Provost Wiebenga that the absence of a quorum is only a problem if someone calls it. This advice reflected the way Bill was taught in speech class at Wittenberg in the 1950s.

Other factors would have contributed to the problem. The faculty had created the new governance system over complaints of limited access. Those who did attend after 1980 faced either major modifications in the new system or simply going along-they, after all, had achieved their hope of participating. Moreover, the attendance issue would not have seemed so bad: while quorums (50%) often were not met, decisions were rarely made with really small numbers (under 40% or under 30%). In other words, while the faculty often met without quorums in the 1980s, the degree of abuse was not so great as would develop in the mid-1990s. (More about this in Section III below).

The word abuse sounds strong to a faculty grown accustomed to the idea that quorums do not matter. But in Robert's Rules of Order, making decisions without a quorum is an abuse. The 2000 edition states the matter succinctly:

"That is, these rules are based on a regard for the rights:
        •of the majority
        •of the minority, especially a strong minority-greater than one third
        •of individual members,
        •of absentees, and
        •of all these together. "

Faculty members at Wittenberg, especially those experienced in 1980s and 1990s faculty governance, sometimes express the opinion that the absentees choose not to attend and therefore leave it to others to make the decisions. If those attending constitute a quorum, then this argument holds. But under the rules of order adopted by the faculty, if those attending do not constitute a quorum, the rights of the absentees take precedence. The faculty present should convene and then adjourn, and any actions they take without a quorum are null and void.

Robert's treats the rules associated with quorums as among the "fundamental principles of parliamentary procedure," the kind that cannot be suspended even with a 100% vote, the kind whose violations can be noted and acted upon long after the fact. In Robert's, absentees have rights, and others have duties to honor and to protect those rights. Interestingly, Robert's currently recommends as a quorum, not 50%, but instead the largest number that can reliably be expected to attend except in cases of severe weather. Given the level of faculty attendance since the early 1980s, it is clear that the original quorum number of 50% of the full-time faculty was too optimistic.

A quorum number that was too high naturally became discredited. But along the way, quorum itself was discredited. Ignoring the quorum rules required unanimous compliance of the members present whenever a meeting lacked a quorum. Gradually, a quorum call came to be seen not as a normal protection for absentees, but rather as an abnormal means of thwarting the "will" of the faculty. Quorum calls thus were branded as illegitimate. Recent, public comments to the effect that faculty members who call quorum will pay a price reflect this upside down view of things.
 

III. But Does This Matter?

Does this matter? Some statistics may help. The following chart is based on analysis of the attendance at the first 200 faculty meetings of the current system. The total is not 200, because we lack reliable information on several meetings.
 

			Percentage of meetings in
			which attendance fell below:
Years	Number of meetings		50%	40%	30%
1980-86	44		77	38.6	6.82
1986-1992	52		85	48.1	11.5
1992-97	53		79	54.7	17
1991-2002	41		83	56.1	26.8

In other words, the incidence of meeting with a quorum (50%) has not varied much over the decades. But the tendency to meet far below quorum (under 40 or even under 30%) has increased over time. In the 1980s, attendances over 40% outnumbered those under 40%; since then the reverse has been true. The incidence of truly poor attendance (under 30%) has increased dramatically. These figures underline the immediate need to identify a minimum level of acceptable attendance and then to live with it.

But does it matter? The preceding begs the question, but has it been a problem? Some argue that it has not. But some evidence suggests otherwise. Since many votes are not recorded in the minutes, for many issues it is impossible to reconstruct how few people actually have set policy. But some important vote totals are recorded. We know, for example, that Common Learning survived as part of the new general education proposals in 1994 by a vote of 33 to 18. In January 1998, a series of votes on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee proposals showed vote totals of 21-25, 16-19, and 22-6, before a faculty member finally called for the quorum. The policy on consenting sexual relations passed by a vote of 29-13 in April 1998. In all these instances, a minority of the faculty were voting, and even smaller minorities set policy. Nor could the absentees have been presumed to be in support, because in several cases the policy adopted had not appeared on the pre-distributed agenda. In March 2002, a vote of 18-16 established a promotion policy.

We do not know if better attendance would have altered any of these votes. But we are likelier to get a more representative vote the higher the turnout for the meeting. Doug Andrews provides the following example: "Assuming 160 faculty members divided over an issue with 55% in favor and 45% against, what's the chance that those in the overall minority on the divisive issue actually have a majority at the faculty meeting?
 

With this % attending             the probability of misrepresentation is

            10                             24.5%

            20                             20.2%

            30                             15.7%

            40                             11.5%

            50                             7.6%

            60                             4.2%

            70                             1.7%

            80                             0.2%

            90                             0.0%"

Greater consensus on an issue will lessen the risk, but sharper division will increase the greater the risk. And we should note that this model understates the risk of unrepresentative results when those attending are not a random sample, as typically occurs.

As an example of the problem, the votes concerning the 2003 calendar in the meetings of April, May, and September 2001 are suggestive. In April 2001, when the FEB announced its intention to propose a 14-week calendar, members moved to thwart the effort by creating a task force to study the question first. The motion passed. In the May meeting a reaction set in, and faculty members who wished to follow the plan originally announced by the FEB pushed through a motion adopting a 14-week calendar anyway. In September, the faculty agreed to create the task force after all and not to decide on switching calendars until after the calendar task force's report.

We cannot determine with finality what role attendance played in these results. But given the strong divisional nature of the debates, the following figures are at least suggestive. In the April meeting that thwarted the FEB's calendar intentions, attendance was 32%, but it varied considerably by division: 14% for the Arts, 30% for the Humanities, 50% for the Natural Sciences, and 29% for the Social Sciences. In the May meeting, when a coalition of Humanities faculty members pushed to reverse course, the pattern was much different: Arts-43%, Humanities-48%, Natural Sciences-38%, Social Sciences, 28%; overall attendance was 38%. In September, with overall attendance at 47%, attendance in all four areas lay between 43 and 49%.

In other words, in the meeting with disproportionately high Natural Science attendance, the faculty voted to delay by 34-24; in the meeting with disproportionately high Humanities attendance, the faculty voted instead to go ahead with the 14-week calendar 42-38; in the meeting with the highest overall attendance and the most balanced attendance, the faculty voted to compromise, 55-26-3. Other factors were surely involved, but it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the appearance of division within the faculty was produced, in part, by fluctuating and unrepresentative attendance.

It is of course possible that this is the only time that attendance has ever affected an outcome in 22 years. But such is highly unlikely.
 

IV. Conclusions

Both sides are right: the problem has been with us for many years, and the problem has become worse. The current practice can only be sustained by common consent -- or open coercion - to ignore the rules. This approach cannot survive forever, and it could place the University at a serious disadvantage in a court of law if our internal practices were scrutinized closely. The current practice implies that absentees have given up their rights, a view for which there is no support in any of our rules.

The faculty has every right to set a reasonable quorum number or percentage, and two decades of experience have shown that 50% is too high. Whether the faculty should choose a lower percentage (40%, 33%, etc.) or a lower number (60, 50, etc.) is essentially a political call. For those seeking a different approach, another way of protecting the rights of the absentees would be to require higher majorities when meeting with a number below our expectations. (For example, 60% or 2/3 when attendance is adequate for meeting but still falls below a quorum).

But once reasonable quorum and/or voting percentage rules are chosen, all the rules associated with quorums should be honored. Robert's treats the rules associated with quorums as among the "fundamental principles of parliamentary procedure," the kind that cannot be suspended even with a 100% vote, the kind whose violations can be noted and acted upon long after the fact. In Robert's, absentees have rights, and others have duties to honor and to protect those rights.