Just Some Light Reading

So hey, what’s on my reading list you ask?  Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised, 11th edition.  Woo weee!  Side note:  I’m also reading Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut, but that’s a different topic and has nothing to do with Girl Scouts.  I guess.  I’m serving as a service unit delegate in my council, and while reading through our by-laws and the Girl Scout constitution, I realized that I really had no idea how an official meeting is run and what all of the terms truly mean.  Sure, you kind of act like you do if you have a casual meeting with any organization, but who knows this stuff?  And who trudges through 716 pages of parliamentary procedure?  Apparently I do.  At this point, I’m about halfway through, and the meeting is tomorrow.  I shoulda gotten the condensed or the Parliamentary Rules for Dummies version.  Oh well.  But I did find some online basics that I can at least print out.  I’ve read enough to hopefully have a better understanding than I did before.  Plus, we are supposed to have training in the morning for us newbies, so maybe I’m just being an overachiever.

So why the heck am I doing all of this?  This is my first time serving as a delegate.  I’m not sure how much say-so we get as a delegate, but I’m the kind of person that would like if at all possible to know all of the rules before I open my big fat mouth.  I don’t do this to be a troublemaker because that insinuates that I would be doing something for kicks.  But, I feel very deeply about the cause of Girl Scouting, and if I have a question or curiosity about a decision (whether it’s good or bad),  I like to know more about reasons, trains of thoughts, explanations, and motivations before I make my mind up.  There have been some concerns brought up by ladies who have been leaders in this area for much longer than me, and Girl Scouting has changed quite a bit since I finished up as a Senior in the late 80s and when I became a Daisy leader in 2010 – good and bad IMO.  I like to know the appropriate procedures and chain of commands if there is something that I would like to know more about.  I’ve found in my experience that going the official way first gets you a whole lot further than the other way if you encounter a roadblock.  Plus – it CYA if anything ever comes out of this.  I learned this the hard way at a job with a very political type environment.

I read back through this and it sounds very confrontational.   That is not my intention.  I’m a “big picture” kind of person and like I stated earlier, I just want to know the facts, ma’am.  At that point I can make my mind up about a topic and bulldoze straight ahead.

Back to Robert’s Rules – and I think it would be pretty cool if I am able to yell out, “POINT OF ORDER!!” at the right moment.

DID YOU ORDER THE CODE RED???