Newly revised amendments to the Council on University Planning and Budget’s bylaws will stand, despite a lengthy debate at the council’s meeting Friday.

The amendments were imposed to relieve people outside of the CUPB, such as the president and vice presidents, from performing various duties like delivering budget reports. Instead, those duties are given to subcommittees working within the CUPB.

The new amendments also state that only 10 out of 35 CUPB members, rather than a majority, are needed to call a special meeting.

English professor and CUPB member David Carpenter said the problem with the amendments is that they were based on bylaws discussed in an informal September meeting. Carpenter said those bylaws had never been approved, and the last approved set of bylaws came out of a formal meeting in May.

Carpenter believes the revisions should have been based on the official bylaws that were approved in May.

“We have now violated our own bylaws more than once this year,” he said.

Carpenter was also upset that CUPB Chair Hank Davis, an accountancy and finance associate professor, limited debate on the bylaw revisions by stating that each member could speak just once and for only two minutes.

Limiting is against Robert’s Rules of Order, which dictates the parliamentary procedure that the council must follow during a meeting, Carpenter said.

Roberts Rules of Order clearly states, the “motion to limit or extend limits of debate … requires a two-thirds vote because it suspends the rules, and because limiting debate takes away the basic rights of all members to full discussion and may restrict a minority’s right to present its case.”

“I have sat on this council for seven years, and I have sat on this council at three other universities in the nation,” Carpenter said. “And never once did I feel that my right to speak was violated like it was last week.”

Davis replied that anyone who feels that Robert’s Rules are being violated may speak up and call an order on the mistake, and that no one saw an error, so business continued.

“I am here to keep business moving forward,” Davis said, “and that’s what I did last week.”

Carpenter’s rebuttal was that the rules should be followed, regardless if anyone there notices whether they’re being violated.

“So the rules only pertain if someone knows them well enough to call an order?” Carpenter said.

Davis insisted the council had not acted against the rules, and that he had done his job properly.

“If the council is unhappy with my performance,” he said, “I’d be more than happy to step down.”

The council laughed at that statement, and no member spoke out in favor of Carpenter’s objections.

“The bylaws have been approved,” Davis reminded Carpenter. “They were adopted as written.”