Welcome to February! You're probably contemplating the long stretch of time between now and Spring Break, so let me inject a little excitement into this with a discussion of...your constitution!

Remember your club constitution? It's one of those documents you have to have in order to become a club--chances are you used the basic form from your Student Org office and just changed the names to reflect your club. That's the basic structure of what you need, but as you grow, the club constitution becomes a document that can guide your club through rougher patches.

The reason you want to go over it now is because you need to start thinking about your yearly elections. Some groups will have them right away in the fall, but it's usually easier in the spring since it gives the new folks a little time to plan for the coming school year. Since the constitution defines the basic structure of your group, you should probably haul it out and start considering how it can become a document you can use for years.

Determining Base Stats

The goal of a club constitution is to provide the framework for holding the group together. It defines the focus and the organization of the club, lists the important positions, and establishes the protocol for official procedures within the club.

So if it's such a bare-bones structure, why bother with it? It can be a boring process, revising a constitution, but if you plan ahead, it can help you avoid problems that could crop up in the future. For example, some constitutions don't outline the process for impeaching or removing an officer. Usually, this isn't a problem, but it sucks when you run into a problem and you can't find a way out of it--perhaps you find that your club has misplaced its trust in an officer, or the election gets a little wonky and you don't have a clear idea of where to go. By considering these situations and attempting to put some kind of plan into place, you can give future people a clue as to how problems might be solved.

There are a few parts that you have to have in any constitution. At its minimum, a constitution should contain

• The name of the club.
• The goals of the club. This will probably look something like a mission statement, but you want to at least have some idea as to what you're supposed to do as a club.
• The officers you need to elect. This is a list that, ideally, should be kept as small as possible. A longer list means that you have to jockey to get the positions filled, and there may be some that don't need to be full officers all year. Usually, you have to have at least three (President, Treasurer, and Secretary), but if the club is large enough, you may have a more specialized officer, such as Vice-President or Media Manager or some such. Whatever it is, make sure that any positions listed here are ones that you need to function as a group. Anything else can start making your life miserable in lean years.
• How the elections are run. You'll generally need to note the nomination process, how the vote will be held, and who can vote. Make sure to put in some process in case of ties, and make sure your tiebreaker will actually break a tie--no one wants to be in a position where the entire process doesn't produce a clear winner.
• How to impeach an officer. This part is a doozy, if only because it requires you to play a difficult balancing act--you don't want to make this a trivial affair, since you don't want a lot of turnaround in officers all the time, and the club needs some kind of stability and protection from gossip and rumor mongering. At the same time, if you make the process too difficult, you can make it near impossible to get rid of someone when they really are a problem for the club.

  Make no mistake; the process of impeachment is never a fun time, and chances are nerves will be on edge and people will be angry at each other. Feeling and friendships can get ruined by this. However, your job is to ensure that the club can continue, and you need to make sure you can get rid of someone who is actively (or even not-so-actively) causing the club harm.

  Most impeachment processes require two parts: the initial vote of no confidence and the vote to remove the person proper. How the no-confidence vote works is up to you--some groups require an initial vote from the officers only, and some clubs require the general members to vote. There should also be a clear majority in favor of the process; this isn't the time for simple majority votes, since that can really cause a huge split in the club. Most clubs will require at least a two-thirds majority, with some going as high as 75-90% of the general membership. You don't want to go with 100%, however, as Geek Social Fallacy #3 (Friendship Before All) just needs to kick with one person in order to be stuck with them. Remember: a clear majority of the club is needed. Send a message, and move on.

• How to revise or amend the constitution. One of the reasons the United States Constitution has lasted so long is because it can be changed to fit new times. Don't leave future club members with something they have to reinvent. Again, amendments are also votes that usually require a clear majority, but are usually less personal than an impeachment. It should be fine so long as lots of club members don’t show up at the next meeting to find out that everything’s changed.

Constitutions aren't really all that difficult to write as long as you keep it simple. The more parts and rules you add, the more unwieldy it becomes, and the more time you spend wrestling over the details of it. A club constitution shouldn't take up a lot of time or energy--it should just hang back and get pulled out when it's really needed.

Making the Character Mesh With The Party

In order to help with this process, try to get the members together for a general brainstorming session. Make the goals of the meeting known in advance, and make sure people understand the goals of the constitution in general. What you want to do is prevent people from starting to offer suggestions about matters that can be dealt with through smaller means—yes, it’s important to make sure you have a check-out process for the club library, but that’s not absolutely necessary to the functioning of the club proper. Besides, no one wants to have to make quorum just to change the length of time someone can check out a book.

Also avoid silly amendments. We’ve all been tempted to add silly amendments like declaring a limit on the number of Monty Python jokes or some such. All these amendments do is serve to clutter up what is otherwise a business document. Keep the silly rules to an informal level.

Next month is the one-year anniversary of this column, which means that, if you've been following the advice here, it's time to start considering the next year all over again. So we'll end this year with the only topic we need to discuss that we haven't--holding elections.

February Checklist:

• Look over your constitution and check to make sure you have the basic parts.
• Sit down with the members and discuss what needs to be in the constitution. Use this meeting as a brainstorming session.
• If changes need to be made, write them up and prepare the membership for a vote at the next meeting. The membership should have at least one week's notice, and you should try to get a bunch of members there.

See you next month! Alec "Kid Twist" Fleschner