MarkS

Bob White said, "...[the annual charter agreement] does not give priority of the CO's policies and guidelines over those of BSA's. It gives them equal importance. It says when conducting the Scouting Program that the rules of both the CO and BSA are to be followed." The agreement does seem to give priority to the CO where it says that the council will respect the aims and objectives of the [chartering] organization and offer the resources of Scouting to help in meeting those objectives. Are the methods rules or are they resources (tools) or are they both? I think they are tools, not rules, but that doesn't mean I don't want my unit to follow them.

jblake47 said, "So, if the methods are not required, the boy has only a uniform shirt, and his troop was adult led troop method, does that mean he doesn't get his Eagle?" Those are all examples of the methods of scouting. All the methods are equally important. However, the aims (including our mission) of scouting are more important than any method. They are why we serve (or at least they should be). If the only way for your program to produce a young men who are physically, mentally, and emotionally fit; have a high degree of self-reliance as evidenced in such qualities as initiative, courage, and resourcefulness; have personal values based on religious concepts; have the desire and skills to help others; understand the principles of the American social, economic, and governmental systems; are knowledgeable about and take pride in their American heritage and understand our nation's role in the world; have a keen respect for the basic rights of all people; and are prepared to participate in and give leadership to American society is to ensure that they make Eagle scout, then chances are your program is failing 98% of your youth (assuming that the same percentage of youth in your unit earn Eagle as the national average, and as FScouter would say, the goals of the CO are commensurate with the goals of the BSA).(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Because they are still tools for achieving the goals of scouting as described in the BSA mission and vision statements. Our unit practices all the methods of scouting. However, we don't confuse the methods with what our goal is.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

OGE, are those questions rhetorical? What are you suggesting? It's tough to tell when you can only read a post because none of that non-verbal communication makes it thru. It sounds to me that you are suggesting that if the uniform is a roadblock to a young person participating in scouting, a unit should not attempt to fulfill its mission and vision for that young person... of preparing them to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law, and to become a responsible, participating citizen and leader who is guided by the Scout Oath and Law. The methods are tools for achieving the mission and vision of scouting. They are not the mission and vision of scouting.

Avionics Systems Engineer currently working in aircraft computer and display systems. Sounds like Ohio_Scouter and I are competitors... poor fella. ;-)

A good way to figure out your dues is with the following equation... d = ( b - f ) / m where d is the dues, b is your budget, f your income from fundraising, and m is the number of boys in your unit (m for membership). Our unit collected dues twice a year. Right before recharter and at the beginning of a new school year to coincide with our council's fall recruitment campaign.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Beavah said, "If community polarization and animosity is your goal, yeh might be doing a good job. If service to the community and to children is your goal, I reckon yeh should be ashamed." Why the heck should he care about the communities. The guy lives in Minnesota, not Santa Maria, California or Pike Peak. What the scouts can do for those communities is not important. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't affect his.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Merlyn, In your research have you verified that all funds have been used for... "Over a 1, 2, or 3-year period, as selected by the grantee, not less than 70 percent of CDBG funds must be used for activities that benefit low- and moderate-income persons. In addition, each activity must meet one of the following national objectives for the program: benefit low- and moderate-income persons, prevention or elimination of slums or blight, or address community development needs having a particular urgency because existing conditions pose a serious and immediate threat to the health or welfare of the community for which other funding is not available." Or are you just discriminating against the BSA? Are you really concerned whether the funds are put to good use or are you just concerned that the BSA doesn't get to use them?

Can one really be truly manly if one has to determine whether or not they or their beliefs fit in a particular definition of manliness? I don't think one can be manly if they have to question what being manly is. However, if one must seek some outside source or inspiration to verify their manliness, you might as well have fun with it. Therefore I suggest the works of Bruce Feirstein for confirmation.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

The BSA values ***ARE*** our program. The outdoors is merely our classroom.

Is a patrol required to ask permission of an SM before they go on a hike outside the confines of a troop activity? I don't think so but they will certainly need their parents permission. If I were an SM of a troop, I would tell my patrols that they can plan their own activities outside the confines of troop activities (from a video game lock-in at one of their homes to a hike to a campout). I would only require that they get permission from their parents and I'd advise them if they asked for help. In reality though, the chances of the patrols in my unit doing this is neglibible but not zero. It's almost always the older boys that do this type of stuff and they're all dual-registered with our COs Venturing Crew so they get this outlet there.

Bob White said, "The Venture Patrol and a Venturing Crew are two separate units..." Yes, BW is exactly correct on his description of the Venture Patrol. However, the small Venturing Crew sponsored by our CO consists pretty much of all the older boys in our Venture Patrol via dual registration, and their girlfriends and sisters. The boys that still need Eagle are working on their advancement in the Troop and help with Troop activities but for the most part all their HA activities are planned by the crew. It works pretty well for the Troop from a planning standpoint. The work gets spread around but it can also be a nuisance at Troop meetings when the older boys are working on their HA planning instead of participating in the Troop Meeting.

Eusebius of Caesarea

OGE, when it comes to ham radio, you're talking about Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS). Pappy, there are tons of ham radio web sites devoted to operating morse code on the net.

No but I think it was some variation because they were tapping on walls. It's difficult to get the 1:3 timing between a dit and a dah when you're tapping on a wall because a scrape may not be heard on the other side while a tap would. Also. Just realized your test message is not really representative of a real emergency call. In a real emergency you would send SOS serveral times followed by your ID, wait just a few seconds for a reply, and repeat. Once you get a reply, you then send your location and situation. This is because if a listener is tuning across the radio band looking for a signal, he's more likely to hear the SOS part of the message and respond. With your message he's likely to miss the "send help" part and just hear the latter part of your message where you give your location, he won't know it's an emergency, it might not interest him and he'll keep tuning to another signal that's calling for a contact. Of course, your message would be representative of what you might transmit after you've gotten a reply to your call.

Morse Code suggestion... I'm not sure how you're teaching Morse Code but if you're using the dot and dash symbols, you're making it harder than it has to be. You should teach the sounds, the boys should be thinking that "A" sounds like di-dah, or "B" sounds like dah-di-di-dit and just writing it down. With enough practice they'll start recognizing words and will be able to head copy and just writing down notes. When you hear "my name is" enough times, you don't copy that and just write down the guy's name. It's harder to learn I just heard di-dah, which is .- which is an "A." Copying the code is easier than translating it. Trust me, they'll learn it faster this way. I'm a ham and my favorite mode is CW. If this is how you're teaching it? Great job! di-di-dah-dit...dah-di-di-dit.......dit...di-di-dit.......dah-dah-di-di-dit...di-di-di-dah-dah.......di-di-di-dah-di-dah (the periods represent the timing space between letters and words) BTW... You're full stop is really a period and your query is really a question mark. There are prosigns that should be used for communication protocol (e.g. back to you, standby, over, etc). For what you're teaching, they don't seem to need to know them but from your posts, I expect you wouldn't want to teach them something that's not right.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

scoutmomma said, "The City of Philadelphia says otherwise, or this never would have come up. As I understand it, their concern is not to violate their own non-discriminatory policy because they don't want to lose federal funding." Merlyn said (sorry about butchering your username), "Leasing government property for $1/year is subsidising the BSA, which is a discriminatory organization. They can stay if they pay market rates, because then the city won't be subsidising them." Agreed that the city is saying that BSA was violating the ordinance they wrote subsequent to the original lease and that it's fair for the city to ask for fair market rates but to say that because an organization gets a fee or tax break from a government entity means that the government agrees with and supports the policies of an organization is a stretch. scoutmomma asked, "What is creeping normalcy." Creeping normalcy is a sociological theory that says unacceptable change will become accepted by a society if the change occurs in incremental steps over a long period of time. It is considered by many in academia as one of the leading causes of the collapse of societies. My use was in reference to the BSA maintaining its standards for its values-based program while the rest of society is compromising its values.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Merilyn said, "Government-supported discrimination doesn't fit their agenda. Things were fine until the BSA decided it was a private club that needed to discriminate against people." I don't agree that honoring the original lease constitutes government-supported discrimination. All the BSA has done is not succumb to creeping normalcy.

If I correctly recall what I've read, CoL completed a major renovation of the property some years back. That combined with regular maintenance exceeds an average of $200,000 a year. Seems like Philly just bought themselves a money pit.

kb6jra asked, "I wonder how many unit leaders are chosen because they have the uniform and the time and meet no other qualification?" Given that our current SM's youngest ages out in October combined with the fact we haven't been able to recruit additional leaders in the last couple years, you might be describing my fate. What we did last time was a luxury.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Beavah asked, "Small committee of only three plus scouters in committee roles makes that really tight. Selecting from just ASMs makes it even tighter, eh?" Yep and there was some thinking of looking outside the current adult leadership for a new scoutmaster but it was decided that the few available would serve well--even if there might be a little bit of a learning curve to climb. Beavah asked, "Was there any youth or parent input? Or didn't yeh see that as bein' valuable?" Didn't ask the youth but did ask (frequently and extensively before the process started) for parent input but they didn't help. Beavah asked, "What do you do for selecting an ASM?" I'm the newest adult leader in the unit coming over from cubs almost two years ago. In that time, we haven't added any other uniformed adult leaders. What we've been trying to do is communicate with parents that they are welcome to participate in program activities and encourage them to come camping with us and share some time with their boy. If things work out with their participation (i.e., they don't do any really bad things), the goal of our SM is to get them in a one-on-one converstation and try to get them more involved eventually leading up to filling out an adult app and getting a uniform. We have our baited hook in the water but they're not biting. Alas, the last couple years I was involved in our feeder pack, I was a one-man show. It may be another year before a boy joins the unit with a parent that has an interest in participating. That interest has to be there. If it's there, you can nuture it. If not, trying to get them to commit to volunteering on more than an occassional task is very difficult and I'm not sure it's worth the effort--it's so much easier to find it in another unit than to create it where it doens't exist.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Beavah asked, "How is it that da committee is able to rank the various candidates? How many of the committee are both trained and experienced? Have they really watched each candidate in action so as to be able to make an honest evaluation? Do all your committee members go campin' and sit in on TLT and such?" Beavah... what we did is steps 2 thru 5 as described in Ch. 5 of the Troop Committee Guidebook (our CO is the PTO of a local elementary school so CO involvement was, well, you know). It's important to note that our unit of 20+ boys has a group of six highly motivated scouters where thru mutual agreement, four became the selection committee and two the candidates. Myself and another guy were the candidates. We're a typical unit where 10% of the people do 90% of the work. How did the four rank candidates?... Well, they didn't. They subjectively scored the qualities, discussed which qualities were most important and weighted them accordingly, filled the numbers in a spreadsheet, and it scored and ranked the candidates. How many of the committee are both trained and experienced?... All of them consisting of the CC, outgoing SM, and two MCs, were trained. The CC and outgoing SM are Woodbadgers. The CC with 10+ years of experience, served in several unit and district positions, and has earned our district award of merit. The outgoing SM had 30 years of experience, served in several unit, district, and council positions including district training and woodbadge staffs, and has earned our district award of merit and the silver beaver award. Both MCs have nearly ten years of experience in unit positions and have received our district training for their positions. BTW, both candidates were ASMs at the time. Have they really watched each candidate in action so as to be able to make an honest evaluation? Do all your committee members go campin' and sit in on TLT and such?... Well, we all attended several campouts and activities together over the year leading up to the selection of the new SM. It was a planned transition. A lot of times MCs [would] have a real hard time bein' accurate in rating more than half of MarkS's example categories. How do you avoid this trap in your approach?... Some of those example categories come from Ch. 5 of the Troop Committee Guidebook but the evaluation process is really a hiring best practice. The only difference is the candidates aptitude for a quality was gleaned from observation and simply knowing the candidate rather than an inverview. Start by discussing one of the qualities as a committee. Figure out what it means, talk about examples, lay down the criteria for good and bad scores. Then score it individually and save secret ballots for the scores but don't look at the results. Repeat for the next quality and so on. After all of the qualities have been scored. Talk about them as a skill set. Figure out which ones are more important than the others and define a weighting factor. Once the weighting factors have been decided. Fill in a spreadsheet with the weighting factors and scores. The spreadsheet multiplied the score for each quality by it's weighting factor and then added the scores for the qualities up to provide a score for each candidate. The scores were discussed as a committee to determine if they are or are not representative of the committee's opinion. If they are, you have your selection. If not, then do over. How do I know what they did? Well, all six of us put together the process before choosing candidates. The way we work, the SM and ASMs need to function as part of the committee in order to make more sound decisions. Yeah, a bit overkill for a small unit with not a lot of candidates but a solid way to to make a subjective evaluation process as objective as possible. BTW. The other guy was selected. He had more experience and scored a lot higher in that quality. (This message has been edited by MarkS)

Our committee starts of by putting together a list of desired qualities for a postion, individuals are graded 1 thru 10 for each quality by each member of the committee, the grades from the committee are averaged and then multiplied a weighting factor based on the importance of the quality to the committee, finally the grades are added up and to deteremine which candidate has the highest score (just like any other trade study)... then we usually choose the one guy willing to do the job (just like most scouting units it seems). The last time we had two candidates for SM and the qualities we graded on were as follows... Commitment to the ideals of scouting High moral standards Ability to relate to boys Ability to relate to and interact with adults Ability to keep a "cool head" under pressure Good organization skills Flexibility and the ability to compromise Good planning ability High energy level Attention to detail Comfortable in the outdoors Training Experience(This message has been edited by MarkS)

Beavah said, "Yah, fgoodwin, I didn't see any flamin', eh? MarkS and I and others were havin' a friendly and animated discussion about issues. Nobody was rippin' on anyone personally." I'm certainly happy you didn't think there was any flaming going on. I know I was close but tried not to cross that line. I lost a friend on my High School Cross Country Team in a car accident. He was a passenger in a vehicle driven by a teen who was experiencing a drizzly rain for the first time. The driver was going too fast but not terribly so, skidded, didn't know how to recover properly, and wrapped the car around a telephone pole. As far as I know no GDL would have helped. It happened at 11 am on a Saturday. The good news is all of the Safe Ride drivers who lost their overnight driving privileges with the law change will get them all back in less than a year.

hops_scout said, "From the articles I've read (both here and on the Belleville News-Democrat's website) it sounds to me like the program might have technically been illegal to begin with. It talks about the driving curfew being moved up to 11PM instead of midnight. They already said that they are driving until as late at 2AM." Actually under the old law 16 year-olds had the 12:01 am curfew and 17 year-olds had no curfew. Under the new law both have an 11 pm curfew. Safe Ride drivers had to be at least 17 with 1 year of driving experience so they wouldn't have been in violation of the old law. However, the old law also limited the number of passengers for 17 year-old drivers to one person under the age of 20. That said, Safe Ride's practice of providing a navigator under 20 years-old for the driver providing the ride home to a client was potentially illegal under the old law (depending on the age of the client). Beavah said, "Accident rate for folks over 70 is pretty darn high, eh? When are we gonna start seein' restrictions on night driving?" A better way to handle a loss of physical ability would be to simply start giving driving tests at the time of license renewal to drivers at such risk. fgoodwin said, "I just thought it was sad that this law, although well-intentioned, has the unfortunate (and unforeseen) consequence of derailing a worthwhile service, which happened to be provided by a school-sponsored Venturing Crew." Given that the law that takes most of Safe Ride's drivers off the road, also takes the majority of their clients off the road too, I'm kind of wondering if this is an issue?(This message has been edited by MarkS)