eisely

I agree that the proper interpretation of the requirement does not limit the number of camping events that can be counted. I have always considered participation in fund raisers and services projects to be legitimate activities for this requirement.

Would it be double counting to include participating in a service project as credit towards service hours and an activity?

There also appears to be a difference among bears even in relatively small spaces. The stories I hear about Yosemite bears suggests that they have lost all fear of humans and have learned a great deal over the years about human habits. Alledgedly they even know what ice chests are for. Similarly, Philmont bears probably get more exposure to humans than bears in less intensively used areas. So modifying one's priorities to adapt to local bear behaviors makes a certain amount of sense. I have no science to support this, but I think it is a reasonable hypothesis.

The only instantaneous non controversial removal of a youth that I can recall was one of the boys in our troop who threw a knife at scout camp and hit a scout from another troop in the eye. First the camp director properly demanded the boy be sent home. Second, when the troop returned from camp, the parents were informed that the scout was no longer welcome. This boy was one of those cases where he could clearly have benefited from the program, but the decision was based purely on a clear safety issue.

From the discussion so far it doesn't seem that such an egregious aspect of conduct does not describe your situation.

I don't know of any magic way to teach scouts about this. Two stories told to me.

A group of Webelos was on a camp out in skunk territory with all the boys sharing a large tent. Boys left chocolate in tent. Skunk went into tent to get chocolate. Skunk still enjoying chocolate in tent when boys showed up to hit the sack and entered tent. Skunk defends him or her self in customary manner.

Our troop in Southern California had an incident on Cataline Island at summer camp where one scout smeared another scout's tent with food (peanut butter and jelly?) to deliberately attract local wilde hogs. The stunt was successful and the offender was disciplined.

I have always understood that you could accomplish this by submitting a new adult membership application with the new code. I would also write across the top in the margin "change of position."

This thread belongs under a different topic, but I will respond anyway.

Units have the lattitude to suspend or remove either youth or adult members. There is no prescribed procedure for doing this. Basic fairness suggests that the adult leadership at least owes you some kind of explanation.

Another unit has the lattitude to accept or reject a transferring youth. There are no restrictions on the ability of the unit removing the youth in sharing adverse information, but prudence suggests that they should limit what they might say, unless your son engaged in some kind of truly dangerous behavior. If you and your son both want a fresh start with a new unit and your son (assuming there is some legitimate reason behind the removal) understands his issues and agrees to mend his ways, the adult leadership of your current unit should not be placing barriers in his way. Certainly the adult leadership of the new unit will likely ask questions and there has to be some agreement about what will or will not be said. If I were an adult leader considering taking on a scout under these circumstances I would want to know what happened and what steps the youth has agreed to to improve his behavior. No unit is required to accept a transfer.

I know of no mandated minimum number of meetings per month.

Most troops meet weekly which is fine if one has a program that makes every meeting interesting.

Our troop cut back some time ago to troop meetings three times a month, leaving the fourth week for patrol meetings. this seems to create a better balance between troop level programs and getting the patrols to do things themselves.

Of course this specific alternative does not apply to a troop with one patrol.

Eagle92

Just because a scout may carry his own tent so that he may sleep alone doesn't mean that the group is not burdened by this preference. Carrying capacity dedicated to unnecessary tentage is carrying capacity denied for other group burdens (food, cooking gear, water treatment gear, first aid kit, etc), so a scout who insists on sleeping alone on a backpacking trek is imposing to some extent on the rest of the group.

To reply further to TwoCubDad, I have never done a buddy check in a campsite, but I have done headcounts.

Doing a headcount is a very simple safety precaution. I recall seeing a movie a few years back about a couple of divers left behind by the captain of the dive boat. Apparently it never occurred to anybody in charge of the dive to simply count noses.

Such a discipline is simple and effective in a variety of situations. No scout (or adult) left behind.

I have to agree that the NH statute as described is extremely harsh. The maximum potential punishment seems to greatly exceed the harm of the crime. I too shall avoid NH (not that I had any plans to travel 3,000 miles to trek in NH).

OGE,

To try to respond directly to your rephrased inquiry, I can only say that the buddy system never came up at Philmont in the context of tenting arrangements. The Philmont staff person who would be closest to the issue is the ranger who helps you prepare for the trail, runs you through the pre trek processes, and treks with you for the first few days and who presumably would be congnizant of any such policiies. In my adult capacity as crew advisor, I never engaged in any such conversations regarding tenting arrangements with those people or anybody else on Philmont staff. So I cannot say from personal experience that I am aware of any official Philmont policy position. From my experience, I am inclined to infer that Philmont does not incorporate any thinking about the buddy system into its attitudes towards tenting arrangements. Keep in mind that my last trek there was in 2002, so I can only speak to my experience at that time.

We do not require full uniforms for travel to and from outings. I am not aware of any BSA national policy on this subject matter.

There are good arguments for wearing the uniform when traveling greater distances using common carrier transportation. I don't know what BSA national may say about travel to jamborees in particular, but it would not surprise me if there was a requirement to wear uniforms while traveling to and from jamborees.

The two times I went to Philmont, this did not come up, even though we had an odd number of people in one of our crews. I don't know how Philmont operates now, but they did encourage us to take tents even though some of our scouts had bivey sacks they preferred. Given the volumes of rain we experienced, I think the scouts were all glad they accepted the tents.

The two times I went to Philmont, this did not come up, even though we had an odd number of people in one of our crews. I don't know how Philmont operates now, but they did encourage us to take tents even though some of our scouts had bivey sacks they preferred. Given the volumes of rain we experienced, I think the scouts were all glad they accepted the tents.

This is an interesting and pertinent topic. I was not aware that there was some kind of insurance program through REI. I will certainly look into it.

There is an ongoing search here in the San Francisco Bay Area for a middle aged man who made a habit of hiking solo in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He was well known to the rangers, some of whom commented that he knew the trails better than they did. Disappeared without a trace so far. The authorities have cut back on the resources committed to this search.

Some kind of recovery seems fair when there is clear and obviouis negligence involved. How one defines and measures that is an open question. Clearly we do not want to discourage legitimate calls for help.

Another ongoing controversy in this area is day hikers with cell phones who call for helicopter rescue when they get tired. There ought to be a way to impose some kind of financial penalty for frivolous calls. It wouldn't even have to be full cost recovery to discourage frivolous calls.

I concur with Eagle69.

The buddy system as I understand it is intended to deal with situations where people may get lost or run risks of needing help. I don't consider sleeping to be an especially risky activity.

If we are talking about a backpacking situation, I would not encourage youth to tent by themselves as this would tend to unnecessarily increase the amount and weight of gear being carried by the group as a whole. However it we are talking about car camping, canoe camping or something similar where weight and bulk are likely less of a consideration then I would have no problem with a boy tenting by himself.

Maybe Harry and Pepper really weren't born gay after all. Or perhaps this is just another example of feminine wiles at work? Maybe it is their true nature to be gay and this horrible female should have left them alone?

___________________________________________

SAN FRANCISCO, July 12 (UPI) -- Linda the penguin has split up two male penguins who lived as a nesting couple for six years at the San Francisco Zoo, caretakers said.

Male penguins Harry and Pepper had been so content together they were allowed to incubate and hatch an egg laid by another Magellanic penguin last year, zookeeper Anthony Brown said.

"Of all of the parents that year, they were the best. They took very good care of their chick," Brown told the San Francisco Examiner in a story published Saturday.

Enter the widow Linda, who began courting Harry in her partner's old burrow shortly after his death this past winter, Brown said.

"To be completely anthropomorphizing, Linda seems conniving," Brown said. "She's got her plan. I don't think she was wanting to be a single girl for too long."

Though Harry and Linda have been nesting in recent months, molting season in late summer tends to reshuffle couples, KTVU-TV reported Sunday.

"It'll be interesting to see if Harry spends any of that time with Pepper," Brown said. "We'll have to wait and see."

All the MBCs registered with our troop are properly registered and in compliance with all requirements.

What I meant to convey is that most troops in this area are highly autonomous in maintaining their own cadres of qualified registered MBCs. I don't think that we as a unit assume any responsibility for informing the district of our MBCs but we do respond to inquiries.

It is a somewhat circular phenomenon. Units make sure they have MBCs on hand so their scouts have people to go to because the district lists are so out of date, inaccurate, and incomplete. While units focus on keeping their own advancement programs functioning, it probably has the unintended consequence of weakening the advancement program at the district somewhat because so few people rely on the district lists or bother to provide current information to the district. One would think that the council would have a role to play here, and perhaps I am mischaracterizing what is currently going on. All I know is what I have seen over the years.

To respond to a question raised in an earlier post, it is my understanding that the camping that counts must be done under the "auspices of BSA." Family camping does not count. Camping with other groups does not count. I suppose a family camping event organized by a troop that led a youth to join might count, but again that is a SM call.

In prior years when I tried to sort this out for our troop, the issue I encountered was long term treks. In the situation I was dealing with I had scouts who had gone to summer camp and had met the long term requirement cleanly. The question then became as to how to treat participation in long term treks during the same two years. I discussed this with the lodge advisor and he made the point that the idea was to encourage not just total nights camping but fequency of camping. He could also see the injustice of not counting any of the nights on the long term treks. He and I agreed to count up to three nights out of any larger number of nights on a longer trek. That struck me as a reasonable compromise. This never became lodge policy or anything like that, but there was an issue that I was able to resolve reasonably. Worthy scouts were not overlooked, and the intent of encouraging frequent participation was also met.

One should not assume that changes in requirements will always result in tougher requirements. As often as not requirements are relaxed. When and if requirements are changed, a transition period is specified during which a scout may be advanced under the prior rules. Often the scout is allowed to elect the new rules. This is true for other ranks as well as eagle.

We follow the same basic procedure of leaving it up to the boy to select. In our neck of the woods, most MBCs are in the same unit as the scout. We have a unit list of MBCs and then there is the district list. Technically the district is supposed to be made aware of all of our registered MBCs but I doubt that happens.

Some folks think that committee chair is an elective position and there is nothing to prevent a particular unit from functioning that way.

As far as other generic committee members are concerned, the only process is registration for that position with the approvals required on the registration form. Some units that insist that each household with youth in the unit register an adult use "committee member" as a default registration. Upon reflection I think that is a mistake. There is nothing I am aware of in the rule book to prohibit this practice, but you could end up with a huge unwieldy committee. IMHO, the official committee should generally be restricted to those active adults who are willing to take on specific committee level responsibilities.

You are correct that adults are allowed a great deal of leeway on neckware. This is true in both cubs and boy scouts. Can't speak about venture. The main advice I would tender is to use the neckware adopted by the unit if the unit has a preference. This sets a better example to the boys.

That said, I still have my neckerchief collection from when I was a scout and I wear these on some of the strictly adult things, mostly training, in which I participate. They become nice conversatin pieces.

What was the rank of this scout during his tenure as SPL? If he served six months and he was a Life scout for the entire six months, he may have already met the POR requirement.

Out council does not have anything resembling a whitewater program. Perhaps the ready availability of commercially guided whitewater rafting opportunities in the Sierras diminishes the demand for such a program. In any event, nobody has yet suggested that the council should even attempt to go there, and there are numerous higher priorities for us to worry about.