eisely

Might as well add my two cents.

The most recent posts are correct in that the institutional head of the chartered organization or the chartered organization representative are the only people with the authority to remove anybody, youth or adult, from the unit. Only the local council or the national council have the authority to remove a youth or adult "member" from BSA altogether. Committees get involved in these things and I can see how the unit commissioner and other powers that be want the committee to be involved. I would think that any reasonably well managed troop should have committee involvement in such an important decision. However, there is no firm guidance on how that is to be accomplished.

It is also correct the neither the Scoutmaster nor the Asst. Scoutmasters are technically part of the committee. I think that one of the background reasons why the committee membership is specified in this manner is to allow the committee to act in an evenhanded manner in exactly these kinds of situations.

I also have taught "Troop Committee Challenge" for several years now. While I am careful to point out that the SM and SA's are not committee members, I think it is a mistake to exclude them from committee meetings and not allow them to participate in routine deliberations. Removal of an adult volunteer, particularly the SM, is not a routine item of business.

I also teach that most committees operate on a consensus basis for most routine business. Nevertheless a committee should have a procedure in place for deciding when a formal vote is necessary, who is eligible to vote, and how votes are to be conducted.

One poster said that their committee met only once a year. I don't know how any troop committee can fulfill its functions meeting so infrequently. Ours meets monthly.

Another resource is the BSA publication "Troop Committee Guidebook" that should be available at your local scout shop.

I concur that there is essentially no limitation as to who can work on an Eagle project. I also concur that an accouting of hours by name is part of the package. This is particularly important if other scouts do participate and need the service hour credits. In my experience, most eagle projects are executed on schedules that are separate and apart from when it may be convenient for scouts from the boy's troop to help out. Our eagle candidates routinely advertise their schedules within the troop and solicit help, but there is no arbitrary limitation on other participants helping out.

It has been a long time since I initiated a thread here but I am back.

I am currently advising boys coming up for Eagle. One of the required references on the Eagle Rank Application is for a reference from a "religious leader". There is a permissable alternative for a youth who does not belong to an active church or other religious organization. That alternative is for the boy to write a brief statement of his religious beliefs. Is there any official guidance available as to the recommended content for such a statement?

Please advise ASAP as I have a young man coming up on his big 18 in about two months.

Like Wisumahi, I started in scouts in 1953. Almost all the gear that we used was army surplus, of which there was a great abundance then. I think the military has tightened up its controls because one hardly ever sees government surplus anymore. Anyway, we used army put tents too. I never saw a shelter half imprinted with a BSA logo. BSA did have tents in its catalogue, but I don't recall that BSA offered a shelter half as we think of it.

Check out this link. I think you will find it helpful.

http://members.aol.com/Mmcbs2/buffalo.html

In reviewing these posts, the one important point that comes through is the degree of severity of the conditions and the nature of the activities in which you will participate. Our council offers a snow camping course for adults, including an overnight in the snow. Snow camping techniques are also occasionally presented at the district roundtable. Our troop annually goes snow camping in the Sierras, but this is a car camping expedition. There are several areas accessible by car where this can be done. Consequently we usually limit our training for the scouts to equipment and recognizing hypothermia. If we were doing something more demanding then we would do more training and conditioning. As with any other activity or skill, there is no reason that the older scouts cannot teach this, but they need help.

I thought that I would update this for the other posters. Our son became part of the embassy staff in Baghdad in March of this year - still working on improving the private sector economy there. He is home for Christmas as I speak. He will return to Baghdad later in January and plans to stay with the embassy through May. He also plans to write a book about his experiences.

Presumably the employers want to be able to deduct the charitable contribution and that is why they want a taxpayer ID for the right kind of organization. I suggest that the adults involved go back to their companies and ask if a tax ID for the school would suffice. Corporations give directly to schools all the time and I would think that would qualify for deductibility. Just because a school is not a 501c3 organization does not necessarily mean that it cannot accept donations that can be treated as deductions by donors.

You should also reach out to local service clubs such as Lions or Rotary, and women's service clubs (with which I am less familiar).

I have been an instructor for this for three years now. In responding to the first post, it can be done in about three hours. I don't know why it is scheduled for two evenings, unless they are offering the same thing two evenings in a row to enable more people to participate.

It is a nationally distributed syllabus. It is perhaps more open than most such syllabi since it generates a lot discussion among trainees. I find myself cutting off discussion to move on to the next step. As far as I know, everybody who ever took it found it worthwhile.

In addition to the training materials there is also a "Troop Committee Guidebook" that is very helpful. The Guidebook should be available at your local scout shop. If your district training committee can't come up with the training materials, you can order them directly from BSA.

The Ruby Mountains are in Northern Nevada about fifteen miles South of Elko. I have never hiked or camped there, but I did have occasion to drive into the Ruby Mountains from Elko up the one paved road into the mountains from that direction. It is a lovely area and I didn't see anything that an eleven year old couldn't handle other than the length of the trek.

I agree with the comments about wearing of sashes. OA functions or activities only. Never over belt. Never worn with merit badge sash.

Regarding re-affiliation, your lodge should have a form for that. I am not aware of a national form. It helps if you have old membership cards, but I was never asked for one. They will want to know the dates of your ordeal, brotherhood, and vigil, as appropriate. I was only able to put down the years and that was OK. They do cut some slack for we older geezers.

This is an interesting thread. I grew up in cental Missouri (Jefferson City and Columbia) and attended segregated schools until desegration began after the 1954 Supreme Court Case. I can only affirm that there were no black youth in scouting in either town of whom I was aware.

When I was on camp staff, a black troop from another town in our council (either Moberly or Mexico as I recall) came to summer camp one year. As far as I can tell they had total acceptance.

I was personally oblivious to most of this as a young boy. It was not until desegration began that I began to think about this things. Blacks were a very small minority in both Jefferson City and Columbia at the time, so it was relatively easy to accomplish desegregation.

Ditto to the above comments. Date of rank is the date of BOR approval. Scouts should take their books with them to the BOR so the book can be signed off on the spot. This way the scout has a separate record in case something else gets messed up along the way...not that that has ever happened of course.

As others have pointed out, the key player in all this is the Chartered Organization Rep (if there is one) or the institutional head of the chartered organization. These people have the power to remove any member (adult or youth) from the unit, although not from scouting altogether. You had better have this person on board.

Contrary to a prior post, I don't think the CC can fire anybody. The CC "appoints" people to various committee responsibilities and approves the applications of all adult volunteers, but I don't think this "hiring" authority necessarily brings with it "firing" authority.

Good luck.

Is San Diego Imperial a new council or just a new name? The last I knew, the council in that end of the state was called Desert Pacific. Since the trend has been to merge councils, I would be surprised at new councils that could only be created by splitting existing councils. The fact that that part of California has seen a great deal of population growth could be a basis for sub dividing an existing council, but what about the rest of California? Puzzling.

I have never heard of a rank being revoked. Once it has been made a matter of record at the council level it is a done deal. The council relies on the unit to handle things properly and ensure that all the paperwork accurately reflects what happened. I don't know how one could fairly hold the scout responsible for the kinds of errors described unless one had clear and convincing evidence that the scout himself committed some kind of fraud. Even then it remains the primary responsibility of the unit to catch any cheating. Councils do not have the wherewithal to audit submissions from the unit. Councils even have difficulty recording accurately on a timely basis all the information submitted to them. How could they possibly check on these things?

As the bears were saying, "The ranger said...."

These scouts were from our council, although from the far end of the council. I was listening to news radio on the way home Friday evening from work and they interviewed one of the rangers. The ranger said that in her judgment, the group did the right thing. There were some trees about and they stayed away from those. The only other thing they could have done to minimize casualties was to spread out instead of huddle in groups under a tarp.

I had a similar experience many years ago in Northern Virginia in the winter. My very young sons and I were walking around a very irregularly shaped pond with a trail around it. At one point I observed a group of boys playing on the opposite shore. We continued walking and lost sight of them. Our path then took us through the area where the boys had been playing. What I did not know was that minutes before we passed through that spot, one of these foolish, untrained boys had ventured out onto the ice and had fallen in. The other boys had run for help. By the time we got back to our starting point, emergency crews, including a diver, had shown up. They managed to recover the body, but were not able to revive the boy. It may still have been possible to save that boy at the momoent that we passed by, but we did not know he was there under the ice. A somewhat sobering experience.

Teaching how to kill animals for food without teaching how to catch them first is rather pointless, as pointed out above. I don't want boys to be squeamish about things, but this episode in Belgium is a little over the top for me.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium plans to stop Boy Scouts from slaughtering chickens and other small animals at summer camp, despite Scout leaders' defence of the practice as a lesson in wilderness survival.

The Health Ministry said in a statement issued on Monday that one Scout group had refused to stop teaching its lads how to carry out the bloody task even after complaints from parents.

"These kids have to be taught how to kill an animal in order to feed themselves," the ministry quoted one of the group's representatives as saying.

However, the ministry took the view that the Scouts learnt nothing from using animals in this way.

A simple orienteering compass is more than adequate for most needs. As noted above, leaders need a more accurate compass only to lay out training courses. The primary need on any trek is to be able to orient one's map. Lensatic compasses can be used for this purpose as well, by laying the lid with the wire sight out flat. Another tip - do not buy compasses with tinted baseplates, or opaque baseplates. Orienteering compasses with clear un colored bases are best for working with maps. Even when you can see through a tinted base, you may lose some information in the colors of the symbols on the map itself.

We have been doing this for the last few years. We bring a professional photographer in who takes a group shot and any parent who is interested can pay for a solo portrait of their son in uniform. Everybody seems to like the idea.

I too have seen nothing in writing about how a committee goes about nominating an adult other than how to fill out the nominating form and documenting that the adult nominee has met the requirements. I think that the reason for this is that such a writing does not exist. The person to talk to is your committee chair to be sure that adult OA nominations gets onto the agenda. You won't find this in writing either, but no single adult, particularly a current OA member, should have a veto power over a nominee. How the committee goes about making this decision is up to the committee. Usually this is not a problem because so few adults ever qualify that the only decision to be made is whether or not to submit a nomination at all.