MattR

@BetterWithCheddar, welcome to the forum. I really enjoyed scouts with my son. Having never been a cub myself, I was looking forward to the scouts part. I would have been a much better den leader if I had read some of the discussions here. Anyway, it's great to see enthusiastic new parents.

We have a memorial garden at our camp. A tree is planted for those who pretty much dedicated their life to scouts. Unfortunately, few people really know about it other than those that have spent a lot of time volunteering. But that makes sense in a way.

Every year at our district awards ceremony we hand out a list of all the previous District Award of Merit recepients along with all the current year awards and eagle scouts.

@skeptic had posted an article from the sfchronicle that is behind a paywall. Rather than violate copyright laws I'm leaving the link below. If you can read it, great. If you'd like to selectively quote it that would be nice for those that don't have a subscription to that paper. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Boy-Scouts-Chinatown-survival-troop-17378339.php?fbclid=IwAR2iiW3b0mQY2Sc4057JzQZuf0OP3N1SP3-AjRoLp8wtre5JZDNoF1hd1Oc

So what you're saying is get rid of the pamphlets, as there's little need for a pamphlet where the activities are the driving motivation. We've had that discussion and I'm all for it. But it requires changing the requirements for all the MBs and I doubt it will happen.

I hate to say this but few scouts are motivated to read the material. While I think the books are informative the scouts are focused on the few pages with the requirements. I can't blame them because that's how MBs work. Anyway, it seems to be easier for scouts to google or just guess how to explain, describe or discuss something than read the book. If someone has an idea on how to motivate scouts to read the books I'm interested in hearing it. I think it would require really skilled counselors, which is along the lines of "just find more volunteers" - a simple idea that's very hard in practice.

To me it read as a survey to understand how to write a fundraising plea. For example, if you have no intent on donating or recommending someone donate then they might ignore your other answers. Given the billions of dollars spent on bankruptcy it doesn't sound nefarious. Yes, there are other problems I'd rather see worked on but if your job is fundraising then it makes sense.

No to the first, yes to the second (at least how I would have handled it). Stupid comments are a good opportunity to bring the scout law alive.

There's a thread about uniforms that ended in the gutter over sex (girls in string bikinis tempting boys) and now coed dens is turning into girls being raped. I guess it must be the fault of all the girls. Or at least we should just blame them. Honestly, can we stop latching on to the least likely scenario that might happen and talk about what has happened? Have coed dens been a problem? If you want to talk about coed troops then what problems have you seen? The biggest problem I've seen is obnoxious boy says stupid things to girl and, rather than an older scout slapping him up side his head and ending it, it exploded into phone calls and meetings and drama, oh my! But, nobody got raped.

Just a suggestion, but what might help more is finding someone that understands websites. Maybe someone at roundtable. Maybe your CO. Maybe your council will let you put a couple of pages under their website. Someone in your town knows how to setup a website and host it. Bring them a box of pictures of your scouts doing fun things, pull on their heart, and ask for a donation of their time to help you out. The website itself might be free. A domain name costs money but, for the size of a website you need, it costs nothing to run. You just need someone to help set it up.

It's a great opportunity that will consume a lot of time setting up. It might not be as much cheaper as you think but will provide more opportunity for scouts to lead and have fun. If done right, and the troop wants to do it again, it will be a bit easier the next time. We used to roll our own high adventure trips, and those are less expensive than national's. We did one that was for the entire troop and was a mix of high adventure and summer camp activities and all the scouts could go. It worked really well. But for one guy it was lot of work organizing everything.

"Is there or is there not a uniform standard in Scouts BSA?" Yes, there is. But that question isn't very helpful. A better question might be "what should the response be when a scout doesn't meet the uniform standard." As usual in scouts the answer often depends on why the scout isn't doing what is hoped for. I once had a scout wear intensely bright green pants to a meeting because someone complained that the green pants he previously wore were not "green enough." I suspect the tutu scout was also trying to make a point. While some broken rules require a ton of bricks, the uniform, whether tutu or neon green, is better served with a quizzical look and a conversation. I think the hardest part is being prepared for scouts that want to push boundaries or buttons. But that's on the adults, not the scouts. By the way, the scout wearing the neon pants turned out to be an outstanding SPL.

Welcome to the forum. As for your question, my guess is temporary patches, as long as they're temporary can be anything one received that doesn't have another place. So yes, enjoy it.

They get plenty of marketing from professional sports. Fame and money. Granted youth sports is more than that but marketing is what it is. Yes, council focus is misplaced. I compare my council office to the local soccer office and ... ouch. You have a brutal point. For soccer they had one or two people at the office, which was a rented, small store at a strip mall. The head guy was very busy. They have a soccer complex (which is the most time consuming thing they deal with). They managed schedules, coaches that they found, collected money. They had training materials available for coaches. They did not need scoutbook, registrars, scout stores, FOS, JTE, DEs, district staffs, roundtables, BORs, district eagle chairs, pages of requirements, .... They probably had fundraising and service days for the soccer complex. Their focus is playing soccer. I think that an important aspect not being addressed is the youth/volunteer ratio needed to run a successful unit. I haven't measured it but I suspect it would be eye opening. All those council staff are around assuming there are huge numbers of volunteers to deal with a lot of stuff. There aren't and there hasn't been that many for a long time. So they've been forced into focusing on their salaries.

We've had that discussion as well. A constructive discussion needs both good ideas and also the hard realities. The latter is brutal. My council doesn’t have the faintest idea how to market what they have and they at least had a full time marketing person. National is worse off. That leaves everything local. First, the target audience. It's true they don't know much about scouts. They also don't know much about their neighbors or community. So much advertising is being pushed to them the default is to turn it all off. At the same time units are desperate for volunteers, adding more jobs won't be an easy sell. This is what I did and it worked. We had a website. It was nothing exotic. It had enough search terms built in that the search engines found it if someone was looking for a troop in my town. That is a static, one time job, that someone else did before me. It had some dynamic info about events and calendars that the scouts used. More importantly it showed that the troop was active. Calendar modules make that easy. However, the most important part, when it came to attracting scouts, was a bunch of pictures showing scouts having fun. Not classroom settings, not meetings, not even flag ceremonies - but fun in the outdoors. Scouts on rocks, in kayaks, around a fire, stupid grins, dutch oven cakes, hiking up a mountain, repelling down a mountain. Everything that people imagine when they hear the term scouting. For parents that were looking they would find us. After that we pushed being friendly to visitors and having a fun program with the right challenges. The program has to be there. The additional part is the photos.

I understand your frustration. I also really appreciate your honesty and trying to see both the good and bad. A suggestion: let your son decide whether to move. For one, boy led? Second, it seems that in 4 months you've already made a good impression. "Hey! Fun games are a good idea! Maybe that guy has more good ideas." To be honest, meetings at a summer camp is, well, brilliant. Maybe there's a different approach. The CC seems to like your ideas. How about just having a friendly, honest conversation with him or her. The business with fixed blade knives and lengths is just a myth that lots of adults succumb too. I did. That could be an honest mistake. Not allowing parents to see progress could be the similar (it wasn't too long ago that only a few people had access to the troop database). Doing scout rank together? Okay, I'll give you that one. But maybe a bit of time is needed and you'll have their trust. At the same time, keep a similar, critical view of the other troop. They all have warts. Good luck.

Welcome to the forum, @Cavan. I read the entire thread, from the first post, apparently before you were born, to the last, and one possibility is that in 2004 there were rules about what could go on a red jacket. Somewhere in the first handful of posts people seemed fairly sure there was a document describing where patches could go. Those posts also included descriptions of other ways for people to display their patches. That lasted until about 2007. Then there's a long gap until a post in 2019 where the idea that any patches can be placed anywhere on a red jacket (plus more posts on how silly this subject is). About two years later you posted. So, is it possible that circa 2004 there were rules and sometime before 2019 those rules were changed? If there's one thing I've learned in being nearly 4 times older than you is that things change. When I was your age we could send scouts to look for left handed smoke shifters, we were told to dig trenches around our tents, we only cooked on fires and we never filtered water. Whether or not there were rules about patches on red jackets, I don't know. I'm sure I never thought about it. But, I had a great history teacher and did learn to appreciate how amazing history can be. So, tell us a bit about what you like about scouting and where you put all your patches. For me, I liked the outdoors, the adventures and the friends I had. As for my patches, they went in a box, which I still have.

@Scoutcrafter, I second @scoutldr's comment. The scouts should have some say in what they're doing. Also, they should be having some fun. So, I'm not sure you're asking the right questions. Does it really matter what adult has the final say if the scouts have no say? That said, you're right that the SM shutting you down is not helping. I'm also not sure what you can do to change that culture. Is it worth looking for a different troop? Are they having fun? What's important to you?

I'm confused. Is it hours or nights of camping? 100 hours of camping at 40 hours/campout isn't very much. But 100 nights is rather respectable. Then again, I'm not too sure what the NOAA program is. To me NOAA refers to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (or something like that).

@CM23,welcome to the forum.

That's also against the rules. Once you're 18 you have to swap the eagle patch for a knot. I gave out a lot of eagle patches that weren't allowed to be worn. I asked that the parents get their son a knot.

I've decided that adult uniforms are really just a test of other adult's patience. Some people like opulence and others minimalism. If it encourages them to keep volunteering then why not? Unfortunately, uniforms are a great trap for people to judge others that are different. "You have to wear your POR patch. How else will anyone know you're the SM?" Honestly, if that's a problem then there are bigger issues, but I digress. People vary, so there will be lots of opinions, all valid to each. A scout uniform is like a book cover, best not to judge it. Think about it, how uniform is our uniform if there are arguments about what to put on it?

Sounds like you helped someone clear out their garage. That was kind of you. Seriously, if you can't figure out how to set the tent up, maybe you don't have all of, or the right parts.

It was not a matter of luck to be nominated in my troop. It was hard. If you made an early name for yourself of not being helpful, it stuck for a long time. We had fewer OA nominations than Eagles. As a SM the one thing that brought up the best discussions was along the lines of "how did your actions reflect on the scout law?" So, you're helpful and cheerful? Always? Long pause and then good discussion about how hard it really is for everyone. So, when the scouts nominated OA candidates maybe they went back to those discussions. One more observation. Scouts probably don't connect OA with character as much as we think. As a scout in the 70's, to me, it was more about the ordeal and Indian culture than anything else. For me it was sash and dash. Indian culture was fun but not that big a deal. While I was likely missing something, that's what I remember. I see the same thing now.

What was this thread about? Or is about? I've had covid for a week and now that I'm back all I see is the usual arguing. Everyone understands but nobody understands. "30 years ago people should have known better" or "30 years ago was a different time." Is that the argument? That's an argument about how we envision people, not how they are. Just one example, watch the Jan 6th hearings if you want to see how people really act vs how we'd like them to act. Tons of evidence of incredibly poor character over decades by the ex president, who is a pathological liar, has been openly planning for a violent transfer of power since 2015, and yet nearly all the good guys left in power in the GOP didn't have the courage to stand up and say anything. They were afraid of the voters. Now they're trying to save their reputations. It sounds very familiar to what's going on in the BSA. And Russia, now that we're talking about current events. And Jim Crow, pogroms, Rwanda and plenty of other bad behavior if you go back a hundred years. Most people don't want to rock the boat so those in power either get overthrown by those with bad character or just refuse to see a problem until a critical mass of pain occurs. That's where the BSA is right now. They're paying for past sins. The same thing happened, and is still happening, in Germany since WWII. People asked how could they not know? Why didn't they do something? The scale is different but it sure sounds familiar. Bravery is a lot harder than people make it out to be. That doesn't exonerate the guilty. Far from it. But it does make me question why we're still having arguments about human nature. I'm not surprised that the survivors who endured a lot of pain are arguing as a way to confront that pain. On the other side are those that think so highly of at least what the BSA stands for, and can't believe the abuse and cover up was so bad. All I can say is if you're not arguing to strengthen the BSA, based on what can be learned from all of the abuse, then you're arguing for the wrong side of history.