Stosh

I doubt that, BSA never makes mistakes.

Not really, they imply the continuation of the rank advancement process. I don't think, other than the 21 EMB's the two should continue to coincide. One is awards the other is rank. That's two different animals altogether. Maybe by separating the two it would still "add value to continued participation in the MB process". But one would do it for the award, not the rank.

@qwazse one could have all kinds of camping, management (i.e. "leadership"), NYLT, Kodiak, NAYLE, etc. under their belt and not yet possess the internal grit of a gal/guy that's there at every turn with a helping hand, does a dozen good turns before breakfast, lives the Oath and Law, and has internalized scouting as a way of serving others in life. Any honor society needs to evaluate potential members who are nominated for membership. I really don't like the popularity voting of the OA. Johnny/Janie is a great scout, here's the reason why, please consider him/her for membership. Let the honor society make the decision instead of having a steady stream of sash and dash recruits. As scouters, the honors of District Award of Merit, Silver Beaver, etc. are determined by the nomination of others of the accomplishment in the field. Maybe that would be a better way of selecting Venturerererers for membership in the society.

Why would the adults be the ones "to ensure that there are high standards for performing a position once a scout takes it on." Isn't that the job of the boys? The biggest problem I have with election term limits is that one usually has to suffer for 6 months or a year on a bad call. Recall? Nope, if he's not doing the job up to the standards of those he is serving, then get someone in there that will...immediately! With this onus hanging over every leader, if they want to keep the job, they had better do it or someone else will.

Should? Isn't that our job as scouters to teach that?

Take away the Eagle rank demarcation would it have been better to have earned MB's prior to Eagle count? They put in an extra 3 months of POR, did all the requirements, etc. with no double dipping into advancement requirements. That way the requirements would have been the same, but they would have earned them. I have always been a proponent of having the boys earn their 21 EMB's and THEN start counting the Palm requirements. This is basically what happens now, having to get the 21 in for Eagle. So as a Star scout, he has his 21 done, then he can start earning Eagle Palms by putting in requirements SEPARATE from those for Star and Eagle, and then have them presented with the Eagle? Yes, I'm not at all in favor of just handing out Palms like candy, but there are those out there that do earn them (following all the MB/POR requirements) prior to reaching the Eagle rank. This process was not recognized by the new ruling.

50 years ago, social norms were pretty structured. If mamma found out I didn't treat a lady decently she'd go after me with a stick. Courtesy, manners, respect, etc. were fairly common. In this day and age, those norms are no longer practiced as much. Yes, we had our buddies get out of line, but it was quickly corrected on the spot. Now others tend to want to join in. It's not just the "kids" doing it either. The world has changed. Differences between boys in my younger years were quite often settled with a physical fight. Not good, but that was common. At least a guy beating up a gal because of differences hasn't become common place, it would seem that with the equality issue, even that might change.

When any administration ignores what the boots on the ground are saying, they are going to have problems. It's a lesson few learn.

She was producing scandals way back when Bill was President. With all the combined scandals those two have been involved in, I for the life of me, can't figure out how they have lasted this long.

I put sexual harassment in the same category as bullying. Any scout that witnesses such activity is honor bound to step in and stop it. If the bully is twice his size, so be it, a Scout is Brave. I have seen it done. Bullies are notorious cowards looking to find dominance by intimidation. I had one boy step in on a harassment confrontation. (This was not a scouting situation) He put his arm around the girl and told the bully he didn't appreciate that being aimed at his girlfriend. (She was a total stranger to him) The bully backed off and the boy escorted the girl to a safer place before walking away. The only thing the girl said besides thank you was that she wished she had a real boyfriend that could do that. The activity occurred during a church youth group activity. Some boys do step up.

Welcome to the forum. One of the first thing one learns in the Scouting program is stay in your own lane. Elections are the boy's problem. Stay out of it. They aren't going to learn anything until they fail at ti a few times. I don't do elections (insert corporate gasp here) I let the boys decide who there leadership is. I only define the Patrol Method as the structure in which they make their decisions. I have had PL's (s)elected by the patrol members that lasted only a couple of weeks before losing the position to a better suited scout. I have had other scouts who have done well and held the position for years. I don't care how they (s)elect their leadership because it is THEIR leadership. When the problem spills out far enough to influence me, then I can say something. Until then, be patient, grab a cup of coffee and remember, this process is not your problem.

My Mrs. is a Master Gardener as a hobbyist and a forester by trade. Invasive species are an arbitrary entity. Like trash alongside the road, eradication is nothing more than temporary cosmetics. For all those out there who buy into the Theory of evolution, it's survival of the fittest and the invasives will dominate. 90% of what we have out there are invasive to the environment as it was 100 years ago. No one is going to spend time eradicating 90% of what we have today. It always reminds me of Australia. It was originally a British penal colony. In order to deport criminals there they brought them in by ship. Well a few ship rats got ashore as well and over ran the continent. So in it's myopic brilliance they introduced cats to control the rat problem. Now they have a cat problem TOO. In the midwest flowage system there has been a problem with invasive carp species. Instead of tapping into the market of turning that resource into something useful, they bemoan the fact and do very little about it, as if doing anything would be productive at all. Maybe the Americans of European descent don't eat carp, but the Americans of Asian descent are fishing like crazy around here. Maybe we ought to import more Asians to handle the carp problem, or maybe that's not the lesson we want to learn from the Austrailians. Maybe we should just figure out how to deal with an ever changing environment. I pull a ton of weeds out of my garden every year. They are all invasive. But I just mow the crab grass and dandelions and ignore them for the most part. An added note: The Lamb's Quarter, Dandelion, Plantain, and Purslane I pull out of the garden are equal in nutritional value as the vegetables I grow. They might even be more nutritional than some of the hybrid varieties I grow. Adapt to the environment. By the way, the Mrs. collects Bittersweet to make really pretty wreaths in the fall to sell. Might do well to consider that as a fundraiser while you "clean up" the environment. By the way, I've been trying to eradicate Poison Ivy (a native) from my yard for a long time. It's a never ending task!

Scandals? Seriously? Sex in the Oval Office? Fast and Furious? etc.? It just depends on which side of the aisle the President leans and whether or not the scuttlebutt is aired in the media. All presidents have a defining moment. The media was tearing into the sitting president and his family even before he took office. The media has turned into the op ed page of the National Inquirer That's not sad for the president, it's sad for the nation as a whole. The world I live in today is not the world I grew up in. With all the progressives out there, we haven't progressed one iota in terms of humanity. It's hard to believe anyone out there anymore. Rumors, scandals, and such are pretty much media hype to sell information to the public. The more sensationalized spin sells the most. I research all stories of interest to me, I take no one at face value and I understand both sides of an issue before making a personal conclusion. Most of the "stuff" out there today is simply verbal garbage and power politics. I will defend free speech, but for the most part, one pays for what one gets. As a kid I watched a lot of westerns on TV. Everyone carried a gun. By the time I was a kid, it was a thing of ancient history in our culture. Well. we've come full circle and we're right back to where we started. That's not progress. Every woodman knows that if you start in one place only to end up back there again, you;re lost!

That's why we have assault laws. The kid gets a sexual charge against him, he'll regret it for the rest of his life. If the girl is under 18 the police really take it seriously. What I can't figure out is how in a crowd the jerk could get away with it. Surely there must have been a real scout around that would do something besides watch.

Stop and think a minute, what would the scout think if those patches ended up in a shoe box on your shelf? In this case the only thing matters at this point is letting the boy know tangibly how you feel about the gift. The others don't matter, they have problems of their own if they think this is a big deal.

Yes, I saw the smiley face and understood the nature of the post, but one must always remember this is the Issues and Politics section of the forum and us Snowflakes can't always take a joke very well. I am just concerned about others that will read the words and miss the emoji. As one who sits in the middle of the road, there are those who are way off in the field on both sides of that road that lack any sense of humor. They are the scary ones.

As it should be.

Yep, and the results will be the same. But getting BSA to realize that may be a futile effort at best. Until people see the destination they are headed for, they won't change their mind. Most don't see it in time to make the change. Oh, yes, my tag line. A day late and a dollar short.

I keep going back to sticks and stones. If the girl was molested, call the police, that's their job to handle not the BSA. If money was stolen call the police, that's their job. etc. Now if the police don't think this is a big enough issue to deal with, why are we arm-chair quarterbacks so worked up. A girl was hassled, happens every day, they learn to deal with it. Scout's break the Scout Law, it happens every day, we learn to deal with it. This what we DO as adults working with immature youth. It's our job. Start doing it and quit complaining about how you haven't handled it to allow it to get to this point. If your boys witness this girls harassment and did nothing about it, you've got work to do. Worry about your boy's inaction and let others handle the harassment issue of the boy and any issues with the girls. I'm sure this isn't the first time some over-hormoned teen boy has said anything to her. One cannot change the behavior of boys in other troops, but one can start with the behavior or lack there of of one own troop. And from my arm-chair, I didn't see it, I don't even know if it really happened, Whatever story I get is hearsay, and in the meantime, I'm going to store away the possibility of it happening and work with my boys so that they aren't the ones in the next story I hear.

I took one of those stupid Facebook tests to see whether you are liberal or conservative. I was flat out honest and to my surprise I was almost dead-center, just a hair off to the conservative side. So we're talking about ideologies? Well from my front row seat in the middle of all this, I see 1963 and 1863, and a number of other times when extreme ideologies set events in motion that ended up with a lot of dead people and destruction on a scale that was pretty horrendous I don't know as if I want to play that game anymore and it's a lot more peaceful and sane in the middle.

The only government action needed is to protect the citizens under the Constitutional Bill of Rights.

One can only assume something bad is going to happen to our President? And how is that lesson going over in the scout units? We have enough calls for something bad to happen, but then a coup might allow him to survive along with his family, which up until now has always been off-limits to trash in the media. I may not agree with everything he does, but then at 67, I haven't agreed with any president 100% of the time either. I suffered through Carter and Obama, Nixon and Regan. Is this the lesson in Citizenship we want to promote? I realize this is in the Issues and Politics section, but a Constitutionally elected president doesn't need the flack coming his way. A Scout is Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, and Brave just to mention a few. How does any of them suggest something bad happening to sitting president. There's enough plots out there right now thinking the unthinkable and if history repeats itself, an assassination of a president, amid tense diplomacy,on the brink of war, as the country was torn apart by riots is a good thing, guess again. I lived through it and it wasn't pretty. Is that the legacy one wishes to leave behind?

I had a crew for 13 years and in all that time the council never offered anything for the crews on a council or district level other than pizza parties and mixers. Needless to say I can't give an account of how well they were attended none of my boys/girls ever attended. And then they wonder why Venturing is a flop.

The focus of my point was that the YMCA, now the Family Y, had to change totally away from it's original mission in order to make the change, is that what BSA is up to? Sure things changed, they merged, they went co-ed, they invited in families, etc. etc. etc. all for membership the the bottom line. I was hoping BSA had more integrity than that.

Ever notice that the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) is now called the Family Y? I often wonder what percentage of the membership is Young Men....... I know that their focus, intent and mission today is not what it was when it was started. Is this the route BSA is taking?