Kaji

I must have come from an odd troop, because I remember when I was going through boy scouts (94-2001) I never had any problem wearing the shirt, and after two weeks in the troop neither did anyone else who stayed for any length of time. I beg to differ with Lisa's assessment that reason #4 holds no weight, because I can most definitely recall seeing the boy leaders in my troop proudly wearing the full uniform to each weekly meeting, and nobody had problems with wearing it in public or anything else of the sort. If the boys are taught from the beginning not to fear social stigma and the like pertaining to wearing the uniform, they'll do so.

Ah, this brings back memories of my cub scout days. Personally, I find nothing wrong with it if you just use the first verse (anything more and it just gets too long anyway). Part of the trick is that you stress to the cubs when it's appropriate and when it's not. My cubmaster made a game of it with the boys, and in so doing he actually got them to pay attention, if for no other reason than to listen out for "the word" so that they could burst out singing. It was clear to everyone that it was a regular part of the pack meeting and the way they were run, and it was a way of engaging the boys in a part of the meeting where they'd otherwise sit bored and stare at the front. Now if you DON'T teach them when it's appropriate to do it and when not to, that's a different matter entirely. Presentation is everything here. And as to the initial post I do agree, if the lyrics are offensive or inappropriate than they DO need changing. If they're not though, then it's important that the appropriate context is established.

Due to some interesting twists my career may be taking, I may well be working out in Taiwan within the year or so. I don't have any dependents or anything, but I'd still like to be active in scouting in some fashion if at all possible should I go abroad again. Nobody would happen to have information on how to contact foreign BSA units in a given locality, would they?

Den Chief was one of my favorite jobs I held when I was a boy scout... I'll admit up front that I was never trained specifically as a Den Chief (was one for four years, but was forced to stop because the district made it a requirement for all den chiefs, but never bothered to train any). Basically, what I did the first year (with a group of bears) was plan activities to help further a broader plan set by the Den Leader. The following two years were spent with them as Webelos and then another year with the next batch of Webelos (1st and 2nd year Webelos were combined during this period in my old pack due to numbers, I think). Working with the Webelos, the den leader basically was there as the adult in charge and left it to me to plan and execute den activities (much like the Den Mother/Den Chief relationship of the original Cub Scouting program, in a fashion). Now that I've been a den leader and am serving as an assistant cubmaster, I probably would use a den chief in much the same fashion as I served in my first year. Have the den leader plan the direction things go in, and then the den chief makes it happen, with the den leader making sure that the plan is followed through on.(This message has been edited by Kaji)

In the end it's important for boys to spend time with other boys and bonding as men, just as it's important for girls to do things together with other girls. There are plenty of opportunities outside of scouting for coed interaction (church, school, other community events), and there's still the Venturing program if they want to do coed scouting. That, combined with the myriad complexities that are thrown in by making activities such as camping coed leave me inclined to think that things are best left as they are.

I remember growing up some boys in the troop holding multiple positions either because they were the only ones willing to hold them, or because they just happened to get elected as both the scribe AND the historian, while also working as a den chief for a local pack. As a result, I'm kind of curious these days about what the rules say about that exactly, although I'm willing to bet that I can guess as they most likely discourage it. Likewise I was wondering if there is such a specific rule for adults as well. I know for a fact that Scoutmasters, Cubmasters, and their assistants are not allowed to be on the committee, but that's all I've ever really heard in that regard. I've heard of people working at both the unit level as well as the district level though, so I was just wondering where the line is drawn.

Not challenging the right of the organization to form if they so choose, but don't the BSA and GSUSA have exclusive use of the term "scout" as per their charters? Just wondering.

A scout is TRUSTWORTHY. If he says he will abide by the Scout Law, then he will abide by all points of it. A scout is LOYAL. While continuing to be a member of the BSA for better or for worse is certainly a display of loyalty, a conscious violation of the rules (particularly one in which nobody is physically harmed and no inalienable rights are violated) is a stab in the back, no matter how you slice it. A scout is HELPFUL. Peaceful forms of protest can be construed as helpful because they can highlight areas that need changing. Violating rules in the name of protest crosses the line into being destructive to the cohesiveness of the organization, and that is in all ways a disservice, especially when done under a banner of "unity". A scout is FRIENDLY. Just because they aren't allowed to be scouts doesn't mean they can't be your friend, or that you can't be theirs. A scout is COURTEOUS. A rule that never shifts. Honesty is part of courtesy as well as the aforementioned trustworthiness and loyalty. A scout is KIND. Corny as it may sound, lying about breaking the rules is unkind (as well as discourteous) to people like your DE and SE who have to answer for it if it comes to light that people under their jurisdiction have been violating the rules. Your being in violation makes them in violation, whether they are accomplices to it or not. A scout is OBEDIENT. The rules are there for a reason. You swore to obey and uphold the scout law. Therefore, the scout law binds you to obeying the BSA's policies. A scout is CHEERFUL. Even if you don't like doing your duty, you should still try to view it in the best light you can and be positive about it. If you can't hold to this, then you should either find a means of contributing that doesn't put you in this scenario, or you should be questioning whether you should/can contribute at all. A scout is THRIFTY. The obvious interpretation here is the monetary one. If you don't support the BSA, don't "waste" your money supporting something that doesn't represent what you believe. It's not like taxes, nobody's forcing you to be a member. A scout is BRAVE. If you feel that the policy is wrong, the brave (and as aforementioned, honorable) thing to do is to openly dispute it. If you can't properly execute BSA policy in the intervening time you are trying to get it changed, then you should resign and protest until it is changed. A scout is CLEAN. That includes his conscience. If he's not following a point of the scout law then he's automatically violating the first point, which should mean he's therefore in violation of this point as well (if he has a conscience in the first place). Notice the chain reaction? A scout is REVERENT. He's not required to believe in a particular god, but he is required to at least be open to the possibility that there is one, regardless. I've personally seen these same twelve points of the scout law in every edition of the Boy Scout and Scoutmaster handbooks clear back to 1928, and I'm pretty sure that they were there before then, as well. That means that the requirement was clear a full 50 years before the cited 1978, it was just that in that year the need was felt to clarify it. It's much like how when the pope speaks ex cathedra on issues facing the Catholic church. It's more often than not stating with as much clarity as possible what the church's stance is on something that had not been elaborated on to that extent in the past because the issue either A) was common sense up until then, or B) was never an issue because the necessary technologies/knowledge/etc. were not in place prior to that time.

Well, it seems like it's more someone's going to be coming to visit the pack to run it for their leaders, but they've invited others from the district to come and participate. It's my first time at a roundtable, so I'm still learning the ropes about how things work above the unit level

Hmm...Seems I lucked out at Roundtable tonight! A local pack is going to be running a BALOO training session soon, and when inquiring about the Wood Badge course the council is going to be running this August they said that if you pay your deposit for it and don't have the necessary training, they'll make sure you get trained before it starts.

First off, while the lion was being phased out about the time my dad would have come of age for it, there rae still plenty of dads/granddads who remember the lion as being one of the highest honors in Cub Scouts when they were growing up, even if they didn't participate in the program themselves. How are people going to respond to what was one of the highest honors being reduced to the lowest? It's like putting the sergeant below the private, by my view. Second, are they going to give the new lions a badge? Where are they going to put it? They can't keep shuffling the diamond around every couple of years here, one of the motivating factors I remember from when I was a tiger back in 1990 was seeing the Webelos with their full diamond on their chest (one of the reasons I'm slightly opposed to the new oval Webelos patches, although I can definitely understand why they did it). Although I'm an assistant cubmaster, I commonly lend a hand with our first year Webelos when the den leader has to attend to other civic duties, and I have a hard time keeping a group of four to six fourth graders in line from time to time. Doing it with a group of 10 4-5-year-olds, even with their parents there, is absolutely unfathomable. I love stuff from the good old days as much as the next old-timer out there (even if I'm only halfway to becoming one myself), but if what they want to do is reintegrate Lions back into Cub Scouting then they should work it back in to the same place they had it in 1966, and basically rename the Webelos den back to Lion (perhaps make the first year of Webelos back into Lions and leave the second year when they're working on their arrow as Webelos. Tiger, Wolf, Bear, Lion, Webelos.) (ack, sorry for reviving a dead-ish thread! Sometimes a bit hard to tell the new from the old without keeping a close eye on the date column)(This message has been edited by Kaji)

We've already decided what to do in this situation for now, but I thought I'd throw it up here so others could throw in their input. We had two boys show up to tonight's meeting with Cub Scout applications in hand, and upon inquiry it turned out that they were both in 5th grade. Turns out that one of their friends is in the 2nd year Webelos den, and they decided they wanted to join. The concern in this situation is that we're bridging either at the end of March or the beginning of April, and so these boys won't have any hope of catching up with their peers, or even just completing their Webelos badge (without significant effort outside of den meetings) before the time comes, so the thought came up that perhaps we should pass them on to the Boy Scout troop instead, where they can advance normally (logic being that if they join Cub Scouts and can't get anywhere, they might get bored/demoralized and decide to move on to other things). One of the boys is turning 11 this week, the other doesn't do so until April, so under the rules they technically have to enroll in Cub Scouts. In the end we decided it was best to keep the group of friends together, and so we placed them in the Webelos II den. Any other leaders have suggestions for situations like this that sort of fall between the cracks of what's covered in the manuals?

I'm an assistant cubmaster for my pack, and just recently learned the date/time/location for my district's roundtables when the quarterly newsletter came in the mail recently (nobody in my pack's leadership knew when they were held). I'm interested in going so that I can keep up with what's going on in the district, and particularly with training schedules. Unfortunately, it appears that the district might only run training for my posititon one time in the fall of each year (not certain, but that just seems to be what I've gathered so far). Are there any options out there to at least get the information from it if I indeed can't get trained during the remainder of the program year?

I earned the Episcopal God and Family emblem when I was a Webelos scout, and while I became Roman Catholic when I was 15, I still wear the award and knot on my uniform. Unfortunately, shortly after I got it the link between the bar and the shield broke, and so for as long as I can remember I've had a piece of a brass paperclip twisted to hold the pieces together. It's been nice and serviceable and everything, but of late it's just really been starting to bug me, and so I was thinking about trying to replace the medal. Unfortunately, all efforts to find out where one can be ordered from have been fruitless. Does anyone have any reccomendations on what to do in this situation?

I'm in my second year as an adult leader in a local Cub Scout Pack, getting used to some of the things that have changed in the 3-4 years I was out of scouting after having turned 18 and learning new things about how units actually run now and then. One thing that I've been curious about on and off is what role the unit commissioner serves. I remember seeing mine when I was growing up in my troop, but all I really knew about what he did is that he'd show up once a month, share a few words with our elderly ASM who'd been around since the founding of the troop, and that was about it (not saying that's all he did, just that that's what I recall from a boy's perspective on things). What exactly is a unit commissioner supposed to do?

I was with my troop from 1994 until I turned 18 in 2001, and for as long as I can recall, the beret was the official headgear of the troop. Naturally, it had been discontinued before any of us were even born, but that was what Sunny's Surplus was for. If you didn't have an original, then you'd just go down, buy a red surplus beret, then get one of the red BSA universal patches and sew it to the front and you're set to go. Even if you didn't wear it on your head the whole time, they looked just as sharp rolled up and situated under the left epaulet. Certainly didn't look out of place or just shoved aside somewhere, which is more than can be said for any other piece of BSA headgear. Made for a good out for those who plain couldn't wear one and make it look good on their head, as well. Always hated the baseball cap, myself. It lends an air of informality that I don't feel goes well with the image projected by the Class A uniform. Troop T-shirt, or a shirt from a scouting event, go for it, but not with the khaki.

The uniform was redesigned two years before I was even born, so suffice it to say that it's the only one I've ever worn as a regular uniform (unless you want to count the blue one from my Cub Scout days). Personally, I've never found there to be any real issues with function, and have worn the long-sleeved uniform shirts in all weather in relative comfort (no fan of the short-sleeved shirts, but that's just me). If it's cold in winter, to me that's a sign that you're not dressed properly. Throw on a pair of long-johns and a t-shirt under it. The epaulets help to hold the OA sash in place, and make it much easier IDing adult leaders when participating in events such as camporees/Scouting on the Mall/etc. Switching to epaulets also allowed a redesign of the Den Chief cords so that the shoulder doesn't get torn up from repeatedly sticking the pin from the tab into it. In the end though, if the uniform gets redesigned, any older uniform is still allowed to be worn so long as it's complete (as best as I understand the policy). Hence the reason why you'll still see some SMs going to camporees in the old olive shirts with community/state strips and green mylar SM/ASM patches. If the uniform gets redesigned and you don't like it, you're always free to continue wearing the present one, no?