@Penny Wood The committee already has this power (s50.7 of our constitution). However I think it feels better to review all positions annually. This makes everything consistent and procedural, rather than personal judgement based.

@Lewis Yip Great! It's still subjective though and there's no specific wording in there about what's considered abandonment of role. An equivalent for regular committee members is in the constitution (s38.1.e.), it would make sense to me to also have a similar provision for subcommittee members.

My suggestion is possibly outside of scope of this particular amendment, however I believe it's worth considering in the greater context.

Having something there to that effect also means the annual review has something to fall back on when they are doing the review, as at that stage it's all quite up-front about what exactly is considered abandonment.

Still, it's just a suggestion, I completely agree with the above amendment and this in no way should impair its adoption.

s38 and s38.1.e. is exactly why the Laser subcommittee is having regular, announced-and-calendared, open-to-everyone-and-publicly-minuted meetings.

That is, to (visibly) co-ordinate and if someone has been away for a long time without apologies, gracefully take note.

That is, I don't see this proposal as a change in policy, really - it's just scheduling that review.

I wouldn't actually want to leave it a whole year before acting, ideally: given how rarely most of the subcommittees have been officially meeting, s38.1.e. is already quite fairly paced.

Hi @Nick Arti,

I haven't had a chance to chat in person as promised, however the following points for consideration.

I interpret your comments as a suggestion that all subcommittees should be having regular public meetings, with minutes, and that s38 (or a rule like it) should apply to subcommittees.

• s38 of the constitution is specifically about absentee members of the management committee. Subcommittees are welcome to adopt a similar procedure, but it's not applicable by default.

• The Lasers subcommittee does a great job of having publically calendared maintenance events (meetings) and you do a great job of minuting them.

  • Thanks! :)

  • Under those circumstances, it's easy to measure whether someone has been active or not.

• Other subcommittees find other ways to coordinate - for example the 3D printing subcommittee is doing a great job coordinating in real time over Slack.

  • In this model, there's no clear KPI to assess whether a person is active enough or not for the purposes of a rule like s38.

  • Given the demonstrated effectiveness of this arrangement (our 3D printers have never worked better!) I don't see the benefit of introducing regular, announced, calendared, and open-to-everyone meetings.

  • "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

• Other subcommittees (e.g. Associate Membership Panel) currently consist entirely of management committee members, and their business is addressed during regular committee meetings.

• Other subcommittees (e.g. Events and Promotions) truly are inactive, and a rule like s38 isn't going to fix the root cause.

• If a subcommittee chair reports that a member has become absent and requests the removal of that member from the subcommittee, the management committee will always be willing to consider that.

The proposal in this thread is purely about adding a backstop to catch the cases that our current rules don't deal with, without imposing any additional burden on our volunteers, or requiring all subcommittees to adopt one operating model that may not fit.

Let me know your thoughts.