PHP and Stored Routines

[voltageme5]

I'm working on a project and cannot figure out why one piece of code works in one project but not in this one.

 

	$username = "voltageme5";
	$result = $mysqli->query("call usernameCheck($username)");

 

returns

string(43) "Unknown column 'voltageme5' in 'field list'"

 

Here is the stored routine:

 

CREATE PROCEDURE `database`.`table` (IN memUsername varchar(45))
BEGIN
select count(*) as total from members where username = memUsername;
END

 

Whats weird is that in the PHP code if i replace the variable with a string, it works. It's only with the variable in the call that it errors out like that. I'm new to this stored procedure thing so I'm sure I'm missing something stupid.