Eagle92

Actually if you look at the roots, the Den Chiefs were in charge of the dens, and Den Mothers were not registered, and aided the DC.

Actually once upon a time the CMs adn WDLs had to males.

JS, females as MEMEBERS of troops, may be headed our way in the near future.

JS, Funny you mention girls as members. There are some rumblings from both WOSM and national on that very topic.

Actually there is a process where units and t-shirt shops etc CAN get permission to make their own. That new process was the topic of a RT recently in my district.

Skeptic, Feel better now? A good rant can work wonders. What i've seen done, and am prepared to do for Crossovers next year, is taking scans of old certificates, and ten reprinting them on certificate paper. Grant you it is a little costlier than the cards from the Scout Shop, but look must nicer IMHO.

YEp we had the bulk of our Web IIs crossover this month, and the last two that have been with the pack since it's founding doing it next month. As for the new Web IIs that joined in Aug, they are busting butt to get AOL by may, which is entirely doable.

I have to disagree with lowering the bar, I think being able to pass a swim test: 75 yards strong forwards stroke, 25 yards backstroke, and floating for a minute are a vital scouting skill. IT DOES SAVE LIVES I'll give you an example. I had a fear of water since I did drown when I was about 4 or 5. Mom gave me a choice: learn to swim and stay in scouting or get out of scouting. She knew abotu some of the aquatic stuff BS did,and knew i would not be able to be a part of it unless I could swim. I was fortunate in that yes I was did go to a YMCA for 1 two week class. But that still did not prepare me fully for BSA as I had to take the instructional swim at summer camp. Glad I did learn to swim as I had numerous aquatic adventures and did become a lifeguard. While there may be challenges in leanring to swim, trust me I'm in a small town with only 2 pools open years round: the college and the city pool. But you will have leaders and older youth who are qualified to work with the young men. I've gone to SM's home pools, family friend's pools, and yes the city pool to work with folks to meet the swimming requirements for the T-2-1 ranks. So options are there.

Back when I PDL-1 we had a gung ho female DE who really knew her stuff as she was a former vol. When they did break out sessions based upon your experience with the BSA, she went to the "expert" with all the oldtimers and the Eagles, getting a lot of looks by some in the process. When we finally went to camp and had to wear teh field uniform, she not only had a bunch of Knots like the DAM and SB, but also wore her WB necker with...4 beads.

Women can serve in any and all roles in the BSA including SM. In fact the 2nd best SM I ever met,sorry NOBODY holds a candle to my old SM, was female. So there is no BSA policy restricting her from being a leader. Now a CO does have the power to limit who they have as leaders, ie LDS troops, teams, and crews won't have females involved to my knowledge. BUT I can tell you this, you limit who you will accept as leaders and it will come back to bite you.

Chug, Did you have a WB reunion at Kingsdown in '95 that went to the King's Head? If so then you saw me as I was the "crazy Yankee" 0on crew that year

Chug, I spent some wonderful time with 5th Deal (Sea Scouts) When I was on the Service Crew at Kingsdown International Scout Campsite. Great folks who let a guest tag along

Stosh, national just came out with a polywool uniform shirt and pants. the "new new" shirt doesn't have the expandable pockets and the "new new" pants are not switchbacks, so it is more dressy, and more expensive. I've been told that it was created at the request of pros and Scouters who wanted a dressier/more professional looking uniform.

As I stated in my post, every unit does it differently. For some units, it's the Eagle's responsibility to organize their COH. Some units have it preplanned and will accept no deviation. And some have a traditional ECOH program that you can follow if you want, but it is up to you. That's one of the great things about scouting, while it is truly a worldwide movement, it's doen on the local level.

From looking at the GSUSA website, I would say no to the question of Sea Scouting in GS. However the BSA's Sea Scouting is coed as it is a subset of Venturing. Pity b/c Sea Scouting is the 2nd oldest program in the BSA, being founded in 1912.

MUST CONCUR WITH DOCTOR DEAN! I too have seen the hard time that CS leaders have making the transiion to BS leader.

Zach, Welcome to the forums. If you can get to a NATIONAL scout shop return them as they have a lifetime guarentee. Local distributorsd may or may not honor the guarentee as national charges them for returns, even if they are defective returns.

Even better I can take the train! EDITED: Nevermind the train, just mapquested the route and it only a 6 hour drive, compared to about 19 hours by train.(This message has been edited by eagle92)

2cub, That reminds me of a patch I picked up in the UK and had sewn on my old green uniform. The patch had a leader with hands in the pocket and the words " Don't ask me, I'm only the Leader." GREAT now I got to go up in the attic now and get that patch

Sailing, Thanks for the update. Keith is one of the few professionals I know who is about the Scouts, or Sea Scouts in this case. Good bloke.

Pretty much. LOL. 99.999% of the time BSA has some type of rule or book for whatever topic at hand, but with the Centennial uniforms, the book didn't come out until later, and then they kept changing things on us and not telling those in the need to know; Scout Shop personell, local distributors, and leaders. It was basically going on a wild goose hunt to get the info that should havebeen easily available in a timely manner.

NOT ENOUGH! From this website: http://www.seascout.org/ In a speech to Juniata Valley Council in November 06, [2007] Charlie Holmes said the number of Sea Scouts was 7,000. Assuming the number he quoted was correct, that suggests the it's closer to 3% (actually 2.8%)[of total Venturers]. maybe I can work my mojo on this topic and ask my old friend Keith about it? EDITED: I needed to add the year 2007 in brackets as that info was in the discussion, but not in the quote selected. (This message has been edited by eagle92)(This message has been edited by eagle92)

Yep there is a lot of complaining when things change. Part of it is human nature, we don't like change, and part of it is the passion of it's members and leaders. We don't want to see a great program destroyed. You see once upon a time Scouting made some drastic changes to the program, and it nearly destroyed the program. that was in 1973 and the introduction of 'urban Scouting" It took the legendary Green Bar Bill to come out of retirement and get the program back to basics in 1979 before things turned around, and even to this day after 30 years of GBB doing his thing, BSA is not at the levels that it was prior to the change. So when program changes do occur, people do get concerned. And I think with good reason too. Now in reference to the uniform changes, they were so out of the blue they took a lot of folks by But what made matters really worse was that there was little guidance on the uniform changes, basically a pdf file, instead of the usual IG. to make matters worse, not only was the IG was several months late, it did have errors in it and reversed things that went into effect 8 months earlier. While that may not seem like much, remember you get a large intake of new leaders and Webelos who were affected,a nd that did tick soem folks off. uniforms aren't cheap, and every penny saved is needed.(This message has been edited by eagle92)

Sctfish said "Now, I do have to ask though...If even National gets it wrong...who is to say that Green and Tan are not the right colors? Maybe a memeo was supposed to be sent out saying that everybody is supposed to change at the beginning of 2009 or 2010." That is actually a VERY good question. I'll give a very quick recap of how I tried to get the actual answer. And i'll aslo give a little history as well. Usually when something new and major comes out, some type of book precedes it, for uniforms and insignia it's the Insignia Guide. Also with uniforms, the Uniform Inspection Sheets are also prior to or at intorduction of th new stuff. Problem with the CU was that no IG or UIS were out at the time of intro, only a brochure introing the new uniform hyping up the materials, and then a pamphlet going over the CU. So from August 2008 to approx Mar/Apr. 2009, you had only the two items above. In late Mar/early Apr 2009 the IG comes out, but is not available everywhere. Some folks started started posting about the info in hte IG both here and on MYSCOUTING.ORG and their Scouting Community Section (SC). However it is full of errors, and some folks noted the the unit numbers for CS and their leaders according to the IG was still red. THAT started raising alot of questions and many folks believed that it was one of the errors of the book. That is when I began looking at BSA literature on the Scoutstuff.org website. Some of the literature had green and tans listed and/or shown for everyone in the CU, including CS. Heck you still see this error in the 2010 catalog on page 42 with the Webelos wearing tan and green numbers, apparently that photo op was doen during that time period. BUT the UIS stated that red and whites for CS and their leaders. HOWEVER that form also showed both the ODL and CU shirts, and the drawings did not help. Since the bulk of the info said one thing, BUT the UIS siad soemthing, I called a nationally owned Scout shop and talked to an old friend, in fact someone I trained when I worked for them. Long story short, that indiviual stated that the IG was chocked full of errors, national had not sent any memos to them stating that CS and their leaders wearing CUs still wore red and whites, and that national hadn't been to helpful for those on the fron lines. He also expressed his opinion, and we all knwo what opnions can be like, that the reference to red and whites may stem formt he fact that the ladies yellow and blue uniform is still current, adn the red and whites in the IG shoud have sated for them, remembering that the IG was full of mistakes. After to my friend, I went ahead and bought my green and tan unit numbers and trained strip. It was after that purchase and time spent sewing on the insignia, that national started showing tan and red numebrs for CS and CS leaders. That lasted about two weeks. Then 80% of the literature started showing and stating that yes CS and CS leaders, as well as Venturing folks but that was never an issue, did indeed wear red and white numbers still. FYI this was a very sore point with folks in my neck of the woods. As national has been notified of continuing errors in their literature, thjey have been correcting it. BUT as can bee seen with the current catalog, it takes time to change things.

Brklyn, Welcome to the forums. You may need to be care/get your council's approval for that. BSA nationally and some local councils, are really getting anal retentive about BSA 'branding" and ARE going after individuals and units. There is a troop in my district that had the lawyers coming after them b/c they designed an all in one patch that had my council's old CSP design in it. Looked great, but it violated the law and they had to quit makign them. Came to someone's legal eyes via an ebay sale.