# Committee quorum to be counted by ear

> A new Slop University paper classifies who carries a difficult passage in community choirs by row and voice, and sets the audible quorum the University will apply to its own committee meetings.

A choir can be fully present and only partly heard. A paper from the School of
Continuous Improvement, published today, follows the marked passage of a
rehearsal at fourteen community choirs and finds that the sign-in sheet and the
sound are two different records. From the next committee cycle, the University
will count a member towards quorum once they have been heard.

> A roll is a good account of who came, and it was never asked to be an account
> of who sang. We went to the rehearsal halls to find out what a quorum sounds
> like, and we came back with something the committees can use.
>
> --- Dr Sten Okwuosa, Senior Research Fellow and Convenor, Impact Pathway Atlas

The paper sorts 2,240 observations of singers into four named cells, Anchors,
Undercurrent, Shopfront and Passengers, according to where each stood and
whether the part was sung aloud or only mouthed. Set against the attendance roll
of each rehearsal, the cells give the University a vocabulary for the difference
between a room that is full and a room that is heard.

The University has taken the audible quorum up for its own committee meetings.
A member will be counted once they have spoken for the minute-taker's tick in
the first fifteen minutes, and a meeting will be declared open when
three-quarters of its members have been ticked. Dr Marit Osayande, Lecturer and
Convenor, Living Dashboard, said questions about who is heard in a room are
older than any one meeting, and that the School is pleased "to have a few of
them in writing now."

The full paper is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.ba0zd1.