FOLE Constitution
From SeLawWiki
Interim Board
Mary Beers
Ben Middendorf
Aliya Charlery
Christian Turner
Reagan Bush
Matthew Pociask
Daniela Costan
Alex Rowland
Jonathan Lowe
Charles Campbell
Lindsey Lonergan
Charlie McRae
Jerad Davis
Additions to make
assisting other schools
staggered first year voting scheme to ensure first year representation (1/3 of students on board should be first years)
Forum for Open Legal Education - Interim Constitution
Preamble
This is to form the Forum for Open Legal Education. This constitution is divided into two sections. Section A is modifiable via a 2/3 vote of the board. Section B is only modifiable via unanimous vote of the board. Although board members may abstain from voting, such abstention must be stated; a failure to vote on a constitutional issue is considered to be a vote AGAINST changing the constitution.
Section A
ARTICLE 1: NAME
The name of this organization shall be: Forum for Open Legal Education
ARTICLE 2: PURPOSE
Purposes shall include:
- Production of public domain legal education material
- Hosting and distribution of publicly-accessible legal education material
- Providing an open, student controlled forum for students and faculty with full free speech rights
- Creating a means for collaborative learning
- Helping other organizations put their material online
- Hosting official class pages for professors
- Gathering student, faculty, and administrative opinions and concerns, and communicating that material among those groups
- Assisting other schools with similar projects
- Modeling open government by publicly discussing conflicts, decisions, and board votes
METHODS
- Host a wiki.
- Host forums, blogs, and other forms of communication editable by students and faculty of the law school.
- Extend forum and hosting features, if helpful, to other systems, like Drupal.
- Issue a semi-annual report, written collaboratively via the forums administered by the club, summarizing concerns raised within those forums. The report should be available for public editing by students and faculty, although the final version will be approved by the board and mailed to the administration. The report can take the form of a judicial opinion in the event the board does not write a report with unanimous support. A response should be published if there is one.
ARTICLE 3: MEMBERSHIP
Membership is open to all to all students and faculty at the University of Georgia Law School. Anyone in this group may vote for members of the board, regardless of whether they have taken any effort to officially designate themselves as members.
ARTICLE 4: DUES AND PAYMENT
The organization has no dues.
ARTICLE 5: OFFICERS
The club is run by an elected board, all with the same powers. Any board member can require a vote during the fall and spring semesters, and the board will have five days to vote on it. A third of the board can demand a delay on the vote for another ten days, and a majority of the board can act to delay a vote indefinitely to conduct research. Although the board members generally act unilaterally, some issues will automatically require a vote, and any board member can move to hold a vote on any issue. For example, if board member A moves material to a different page, and board member B objects, B can demand a vote on the issue. If only three board members vote, a majority of two votes will control. This does not bar board members from later calling another vote. All votes and discussion of votes should be posted online. A link to an explanation of the voting process and the voting history and discussion should be put on the front page of the web sites hosted by FOLE.
VOTING FOR THE BOARD
Voting for the board members should ideally occur both over the wiki, using the extensions created by the Mediawiki Foundation for electing its board members as well as through a paper vote, to encourage accessibility of voting for those who are not computer savvy. Faculty may be elected to the board, but no more than 1/3 of the board should be composed of faculty. The voting system should not be susceptible to a party system, as board members do not run for certain positions on the board. Getting the most votes will grant a spot on the board, as will getting the second most, the third most, etc. until the board spots are filled. This means individuals with sharply differing views may serve on the board together.
VOTING PROCESS
In the event of a tie that leaves spots on the board in dispute, those spots will be the subject of a runoff, and everyone will vote again to determine those seats.
RESERVED SPOTS
One third of the student-occupied board seats are reserved for first year students.
One spot on the board is reserved for a faculty member. The faculty member with the most votes is guaranteed a position on the board. No more than 1/3 of the board may be composed of faculty. Faculty board members have less power than students, in that they are barred from possessing immediate, physical control over the servers and DNS registration, as described below. These powers are reserved for student members of the board.
The reserved position may be occupied by someone else if a faculty member or first year student does not obtain a single vote.
NUMBER OF SEATS
Most of the time, the board shall be composed of at least 13 members (there may be fewer during the first few months of Fall semester if first year officers are re-elected). With thirteen seats, 3 seats would be reserved for first years. A simple majority vote of the board can increase the number of seats available for subsequent elections.
FIRST YEAR SEATS
First years must necessarily be elected later than other board members. Elected first years will retain voting powers for one year after their election. They can be re-elected for subsequent years, but will only carry one vote. This means the board will have a variable number of positions. (Example: with a board of thirteen, if all three first years are re-elected, then the board will only have ten members until the next first-year election.)
VOTING BY THE BOARD
Voting by the board may occur over e-mail. When not editing the constitution, and for cases not explicitly mentioned in the constitution, a majority vote by the board is enough to transact business.
A board member calls for a vote by e-mailing the issue to the board and posting the issue to the wiki for public discussion. When class is in session during the fall and spring semesters, all board members have three days to respond to a call for a vote, otherwise they are considered to have abstained, and the majority vote of the remainder will control. Any single board member can request a three day extension, so votes may occur over a maximum of six days.
(Commentary: This allows the board to act quickly, even if the club is controlled by a large number of board members. Some board members may choose to only cast votes regarding some of the more important issues. There is little penalty in forgetting a vote, since board members can always call another vote, or vote as a majority to delay the decision of an issue pending an investigation.)
QUORUM FOR THE BOARD
Business can proceed if at least two board members have voted. Note that votes are often unnecessary, as board members have unilateral powers (although these powers can always be overruled by a vote).
REPETITIVE VOTES
The same issue cannot be called to a vote more than twice in a two month period.
TIE BREAKING
In the event of a tie, board members who did not vote should be asked to participate. If the board remains deadlocked, they can resort to a referendum. The referendum should be posted to the front page (or location of similar visibility) and all UGA student and faculty users will have the ability to enter their names into a YES or a NO section. After two weeks, the group with the most votes prevails.
UNILATERAL POWERS OF INDIVIDUAL BOARD MEMBERS
Board members may, for the sake of efficiency, act unilaterally in day to day activities. A user blanking web pages might be temporarily blocked by one board member, and then submitted to a vote later for the full board. Users are entitled to prompt responses from the board, and the board should respond to disputes after no more than five days, unless the users or the board requests an appeal, statement, or other form of conversation.
The board may also appoint one board member to handle a broad range of technical issues, like database backups, software updates, etc. A board member acting in such a capacity has broad discretion, but any board member can ask for a vote to reverse any unilateral decision by the other board members, including matters involving technical modifications.
Board members consent to, and have the authority to post each other's e-mails regarding board votes. Debates about votes should be open to the public.
REMOVAL OF FACULTY VOTING PRIVILEGES
In the event the club must pursue legal remedies pursuant to the line of cases associated with Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 269, 102 S. Ct. 269, 70 L. Ed. 2d 440 (1981), or file a claim related to the Equal Access Act, 20 U.S.C. §§ 4071-4074, the full board, inclusive of faculty, may vote to remove the faculty board members' official voting privileges, if such action is necessary to give the club capacity to sue.
ARTICLE 6: MEETINGS
The board will set meeting times by vote. Business may be conducted through e-mail.
ARTICLE 7: NON-DISCRIMINATION POLICY
In order to be recognized as a club at the University of Georgia, FOLE incorporates UGA's non-discrimination policy word for word. FOLE's own non-discrimination policy, however, is broader, and thus adds to the protections offered by UGA's policy.
Thus,
Membership and all privileges, including voting and officer positions, must be extended to all students without regard to age, ethnicity, gender, disability, color, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status.
Additionally, FOLE extends membership and all priveleges, including voting and officer positions, to all students without regard to gender identity, gender expression, ethnic or national origin, age, relationship/marital status, language proficiency, religious affiliation, spiritual beliefs, political affiliation, class/socio-economic status, affectional orientation, disabilities, ancestry, pregnancy, and/or citizenship status.
ARTICLE 8: RATIFICATION AND TRANSITION
This section shall expire no later than May 30, 2009, but a majority of the board (i.e. only those actually voting, abstentions are not votes against) may vote to strike "Article 8: Ratification" earlier. The purpose of this section is to ease the transition into a self-governing organization.
The board is now composed of interim members. Those members will arrange the voting process to replace themselves with popularly elected board members. They may govern FOLE for the 2008-2009 school year, or may elect to have a vote sooner, if possible.
This interim board need not fulfill the requirements set out in other sections (e.g. the requirement that a 1/3 of the student-seats be composed of first years).
Alex Rowland will continue as de facto operator of the wiki until others are trained to take his place. He will order a vote no later than August 1, 2008 to release decision making control to FOLE and its board, acting under the direction of the FOLE constitution. He will also give up ownership of the web operations upon establishing a legally cognizable means of doing so that will keep those web operations under the exclusive physical control of students. Alex Rowland will also submit an interim constitution to UGA's Center for Student Organizations, but further versions may be uploaded by him unilaterally until August 1, 2008.
ARTICLE 9: OFFICER REMOVAL
The University requires a section in club constitutions noting removal procedures for officers. Board members only serve for one year, and the club can function normally even if many of its board members are inactive. Further, a principal aim of FOLE is to maintain free speech rights and to protect the speech interests of minorities against majorities, and that interest would be injured by allowing removal of board members via majority vote. Thus, there is no removal process, and board members serve the entirety of their one year term unless they resign. Board members who resign are not replaced until the next election. There is no special election process to replace them.
Section B
STUDENT REGISTRATION
All current UGA Law students should have access to registration. The free speech provisions below may not be circumvented by preventing UGA Law students from registering.
FREE SPEECH
Furthering free speech is a principle goal of the group. Objectionable material shall not be deleted against the author's wishes unless it creates a reasonable likelihood of liability(for example, a suit of defamation or copyright infringement).
Material on the site must be placed somewhere accessible, and for that reason, the board may need to resolve disputes over the location of information. A user should not be able to blank a page, or fill a page with random characters and leave others’ contributions at the bottom, or similar behaviors rendering the site unreadable. Nor should a user be able to incessantly modify another’s entries against their will, perhaps to make it appear that someone else had said something they hadn’t. The board has powers to keep material on the site meaningfully accessible by restricting such activities.
The board’s decisions regarding information placement is the back-door to restricting offensive material which should otherwise be publishable (because it is not legally actionable). Thus, the board must strive to avoid placing material in a way that effectively silences users. The board must give users fair access to pages. If a dispute arises, the board must craft an openly available set of rules with as few content-based rules as possible. These rules should not function to craft exceptions to block new kinds of material.
For example, if users have a history of posting events they sponsor to a particular page, and a student wants to post about an event they sponsor in support of the Nazi party, that student should be able to do so without the board bending over backwards to write content rules which would exclude such a post but include those posted earlier by others.
Content disputes should be resolved through segmentation, that is, by splitting a page into a set of viewpoints. If a user demands a section for their viewpoint, they should get it. In such cases, the board may force the user to sign their sections, or separate the page out into identifiable sections. There should be a table of contents or similar box before the first viewpoint explaining that the page has been segmented and linking to the viewpoints.
Viewpoints should substantively relate to the page on which they are posted. For example, a student should not be able to create a signed link on every single page of the wiki with a link to their personal web site or pictures of cats. They may, however, link to pages, created by them or others, with substantive discussion of the topic discussed on that page. And if no page exists which substantively relates to something a student wants to post, a relevant page should be created.
In the event material does not substantively relate, generally it should not be deleted, but moved to a more relevant location. However, this paragraph is by no means a strict rule, as users are expected to delete and revise material regularly without seeking permission, otherwise regular editing and use of the wiki would be impossible. This is more for users who insist that material they have contributed should not be deleted.
Blocking of user accounts, or any other mode of completely disfranchising a user from posting requires a unanimous vote from the board's voters (unlike changes to the constitution, this vote does not require a vote from all board members, just that all board members who do vote must agree to the block). Before a full block, the board should issue warnings and temporary blocks. Warnings and blocks are to bar users who, for example, repeatedly post libelous material, blank pages, render them unreadable, alter material outside of their own viewpoint section after a page has been segmented, or alter posts to make them appear as another had written something (spoofing). Warnings to cease such activities should be issued before blocking a user's posting privileges.
EXCEPTION FOR CLUBS AND CLASSES
Users who are not members of a club or a class may be barred from editing pages for the club or class by those in charge of the relevant club or class.
Professors may welcome the blurred lines, and the wiki allows for “productive interference,” like if a student in a corporations class posts to a forum for a taxation class to inject a statement about corporate taxation. If professors or club leaders do not welcome such interference, they can block it on their official class pages. Users violating such blocks can be sanctioned.
Students who are members of the classes or clubs, however, retain their free speech privileges within those pages. It may be wise to advise professors that if one of their students on a class forum posts material the professor finds objectionable, the board will protect that student’s right to keep the material they have posted online. It is unlikely that a student will resist the potential in-class sanctions for publishing something offensive, but the fact that a student is willing to ignore such possibilities should lead the board to class the material they’ve posted as important and worth protecting.
IMMEDIATE PHYSICAL CONTROL
The student members of the board should retain possession of the immediate, physical control over the server and its pages. The student members of the board should be in charge of enforcing decisions of the board. This includes, but is not limited to:
- password access to the DNS registrations
- FTP access to the servers (except for cases where sections are partitioned for a particular use)
- ownership of the domain names
- sysop, beauracrat, and user states of similar power
In the event the University of Georgia's rules for student organizations conflict with those of the FOLE constitution, FOLE should privatize its web holdings to retain autonomy. The constitution on file with UGA's Center for Student Organizations may necessarily control FOLE's actions with regard to school property or funds provided by the University, but otherwise FOLE is a private entity, which is recognized by the University but in no way subjugated to the University. This means that FOLE's private actions are judged by the most recent version of its own constitution, regardless of whether the constitution has been approved by the University or other Local, State, or Federal government entities.
ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC
- the board’s purpose in administering the wiki is to render it more usable and more accessible. Otherwise, they protect the speech interests of the minority and the pedagogical interests of the majority.
- conflicts should be posted to the front page. Conflicts include segmentations of pages, or disagreements among users. If the board does not act on its own to post a conflict to the front page, users may do so. A majority of the board may object to the posting of a conflict, unless it involves more than five users, or five or more users e-mail the board requesting that the conflict be posted.
- Fifty signatures from law students can force a referendum. A referendum is a vote by all registered users of the wiki. A majority vote in the referendum functions acts as a vote by the board, which can only be overridden if the board poses unanimous opposition (among those voting--abstentions are not counted as votes against). At least thirty users must vote in the referendum for it to be effective. Thus, if the board has five members, after obtaining a fifty signature petition, 16 users in a vote by 30 users could function as a 5/6 vote by the board.
- Referendums cannot have a retroactive effect reducing the privacy of users.
- Unilateral actions by board members with a substantial impact on individual users should be accompanied by a statement that the board member’s action is not representative of the club or the board and that the board will vote on it.
- Once it is technically convenient and possible, the board should move to make part of the wiki's MYSQL database available for download to the public. Some sections may be stripped because of privacy or liability concerns, including edit histories (which might include copyrighted material that has been removed), e-mail addresses, and log-in information.
