VENTURA : Parliamentarians Meet, Sharpen Skills

Some might call them a club full of nit-pickers.

But the 26 participants of the Fourth Annual Parliamentary Procedure Workshop held at Ventura College say their skills are crucial to maintaining order in the world.

“Rules are necessary,” said Eulala Keller, registered professional parliamentarian and member of the National Assn. of Parliamentarians. “If we didn’t have rules, we’d all collide in the middle of the intersection.”

The workshop Saturday was part of a community service program to educate newly elected officers and members of civic clubs or organizations and private employees who might use the meeting skills in their places of employment.

The parliamentarian advises the presiding officer on meeting procedure. He or she may also help to prepare an organization’s bylaws and agendas. Without such a specialist, the task of keeping order falls to the president.

Guided by members of the county’s two parliamentarian groups, Zeta Chi and Xi Tau, participants spent four hours developing leadership skills through lecture and role playing.

Gerald Olsen, public relations officer for Moorpark College and parliamentarian of the California State Assn. of Parliamentarians, conducted the workshop’s mock political convention. Olsen is one of about 125 people in the state who hold the highest rank of registered professional parliamentarian.

Like the others of his rank, Olsen is an expert on Robert’s Rules of Order, the bible of parliamentarians.

The rule book’s author, Henry M. Robert, was an engineering officer in the U.S. Army in 1863, when he was asked without warning to preside over a meeting. “My embarrassment was supreme,” he later wrote.

Robert published his first 16-page edition in 1876. The most recent revised edition was published with more than 657 pages in 1990.

For information about local parliamentarian groups, call (805) 648-1089 or (805) 642-5671.