Last Thursday I attended the Inter-Residence Hall Association Meeting. A Daily reporter was already covering it, but there were some interesting things on the agenda and I wanted to see what was going to happen.

One of these was the request to impeach Sarai Arnold, the Barton, Lyon, Freeman, Fisher/Nickell Hall president and IRHA representative. Arnold, a member of the ISU Mock Trial team, had apparently been remiss in her duties as the IRHA representative, missing meetings because of mock trial practice.

Arnold, freshman in biology, presented her case to the parliament against her impeachment. While she admitted she had missed several meetings, she said she had been excused by David Boike, IRHA vice president, and had sent BLFF/N’s vice president in her place. She said she would be finished with mock trial in the coming week, once they were done competing in the national competition.

Some pretty compelling arguments – I was looking forward to what members of the parliament would say in response.

Unfortunately, I never got to hear them.

Almost immediately after Arnold presented her case, IRHA went into executive session, allowing only members of parliament and their guests to be in attendance. Everyone else is out, and on Thursday night this included the Daily reporter and myself.

“Sorry, Daily,” Boike said as we walked indignantly out the door.

“What did IRHA have to hide?” we asked each other. Arnold was an elected official; shouldn’t her constituents know all the arguments for her removal?

One of the other guests in the hall heard our complaints and decided to shed a little light on the subject.

“They had to, you guys,” he said. “It’s in the bylaws.”

Ah, the bylaws.

Those wonderful little rules in addition to the rules, because an organization’s constitution could never be good enough all by itself.

Now, I can understand some bylaws. They help maintain continuity and provide clarification for the organization’s procedures. It’s a good idea to make sure there’s a backup plan controlling the potential chaos that is student government, or any government for that matter.

What I can’t understand are the sheer number of bylaws organizations like IRHA and the Government of the Student Body have.

Are they really all that necessary? Does anyone even read them? If so, how do they get through them without falling asleep from the exhaustion that each sentence exudes?

To quote the GSB bylaws, section 4.13.6.2:

“In the event that the legislation in question is a bill, this motion shall be in order only before the Chair of the Senate meeting at the time when the legislation was disposed has signed and delivered the legislation to the President.”

I tried to figure out what kind of action was going on here, where exactly the bill was being sent and why, but the language throughout the 40-page packet was too much for me. I like concise sentences.

IRHA’s bylaws are a little better, but just a little.

Section 6.1, “Attendance Policy,” has a detailed list of procedures to make sure representatives understand what to do if they’re going to miss a meeting. I would quote some of it, but it lasts a good two pages and isn’t entertaining enough to entice anyone to keep reading.

The simple fact that the IRHA Constitution lasts three pages and the bylaws take up 19 speaks volumes. The fact that at least 27 bills GSB dealt with this year involved solely their bylaws says something too.

Haven’t these organizations been around a while? Shouldn’t they have a fairly expedient system in place by now without constantly having to tweak this section or that?

GSB and IRHA have each had an interesting year, filled with successes and failures.

But as senators and representatives lose themselves in the ordered system of the bylaws, are they remembering what they’re really there to do? Are all these changes really making a difference, or taking time away from the issues students really care about?

In the grand scheme of things, probably only the bylaws know.

Andrea Hauser is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Edgewood. She is editor in chief of the Daily.