Constitutional Conundrum

In Sci-Fi club, we have several amendments to our constitution based on simple clean up and making sure we cover our bases. One of the amendments has a provision that basically would allow the President to "appoint, remove, or replace a committee chair upon the advice of the committee, executive board, or club." The current constitution just says the President simply appoints. The Executive board then logically inferred that the power to replace and remove is also the President's handled in the same matter. So, if the President can pick someone on a whim, the President can remove someone on a whim. That's just irresponisble, hence the amendment making advice necessary before taking any action. The President needs the whole story. This is a way of protecting committee chairs from a President removing someone that the officer doesn't like.

At the meeting, we had a guest speaker from MENC to talk about joining Haunted House and if I had known, I would've had him go first instead of amendment talk. It was brought up first that the word "advice" should be changed to "approval." I stated that it is inefficient to have to vote on every committee chair's appointment and that it should be a quick executive action. We are not a communist society and that's why we have elected officials. They are the ones to do the jobs that don't require full democratic action. The other officers all have jobs that require no club approval to do, removing any power from an officer weakens the club as a whole. Then we discussed changing "or" to "and" but that would mean I would have to involve the entire club each time on what may be a private matter that affect a person's duties. Also, the power to appoint/remove/replace should be uniform in action so whatever steps it takes to remove need to be the same steps to appoint, which is an incredibly simple matter. Basically after all of this certain members probably scared off the MENC guy basically telling that club that we are too complicated an hung up on the difference between "and" and "or". That irritated Ron because MENC is actually willing to help this year and we may have shooed them off or made them hate us again.

Eventually they voted on an amendment proposal that reads: "To appoint, remove, or replace a committee chair upon the examination of the parties involved in the situation in the presence of the advisor if the advisor is available." First of all, that is not constitutionally appropriate language so I have to correct that. The constitution must have appropriate, logical language to prevent potential ambiguity. It would be irresponsible of me to submit an amendment that would flaw the constitution grammatically. The clause "in the situation" was removed by me because it is redundant. Who else would be in the situation? Then the phrase "in the presence of the advisor if the advisor is available" is contradictory because it basically means the advisor is not required granting executive discretion on whether or not an advisor should be present. We can't remove "if the advisor is available" because it was agreed that this should be a speedy decision. So, therefore, if the advisor is not required, it doesn't need enumeration. Then the question was: What is the difference between "the parties involved" and the groups previously listed? Who else would be in the involved parties that wasn't listed? I know they said that this should be a club decision, but when it involves the "parties involved," how does the club get involved? Now I have to figure out what the difference between "advice" and "examination" is. Am I supposed to give tests? What else do I get from an examination other than the advice I need to carry out the decision? I am going to add "concurring advice" to show that the advice I receive must agree with the decision but other than that the amendment will read the same way. I need to talk to Ron about how to accomplish this but honestly, I don't see the difference between the amendments.