The Sheet on the Table

When a facility hands a meeting its rules, the group has a boss, and Tradition Four says a group has none. It happens politely. A sheet is taped to the table: start and end times, no crosstalk, clients sign in, staff choose the chair, no meeting over the holidays. Some of it may even be sensible. But the members never voted on any of it, and none of them can change it. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563): "With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience." Its own conscience, not the building's policy manual. Bill W. wrote in 1947 (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 38): "Nowhere in A.A. is there to be seen any constituted human authority that can compel an A.A. group to do anything." Constituted means officially set up, with power. A.A. has no such authority anywhere, not even at its own headquarters. A facility that writes a meeting's rules has become exactly that authority, from outside. A room that can't change its own format isn't running its own affairs; it is being run. Test it tonight: find any rule read out or posted at your meeting, and ask when the group voted for it.