MattR

Now I can answer your question, since this has little to do with CH 11. Typical scouts spend about 1.5 hours a week at meetings and one weekend a month at campouts. When they get into leadership and they do a good job the meeting time probably doubles. And could double again for SPL/ASPL. Adults are more like storing data on disk drives, time spent is not a problem until the spouse complains (or drive fills up). We estimated that for each scout in the troop all the time spent by adults as a whole was one hour a week. So with 50 scouts, the total time could get to 50 hours of adult time a week. Honestly, I'd say the scout leadership time was part of that. So if you had really great scout leaders then the adults would be doing less and the scouts more. At the district and council level ... they all get yelled at by their spouses (and hence I have cut that way back and say no a lot).

I'm locking this until I pull out a sub thread about need vs want. I'm not deleting any posts. Just give me a sec. I'm back. NO POSTS WERE HURT IN THE MAKING OF THIS MOVE. If you can't find your old post it might have gone here:

I'm going to move some posts from the ch 11 thread to here. It came from comments about what the bsa needs vs what it wants. It seems to include a discussion about camps and program. You're welcome to add here.

Old saying: when a worm sits in horseradish, it doesn't know there's anything sweeter. Another, not so old saying: Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. Not really a saying: Go look at UK Scouts. At least before the pandemic they had lists of people trying to get their kids in scouts.

@RandomScouter, welcome to the forum. Sorry there aren't any other topics to talk about

No and sorta. These are not are HA trips. It could become a useful list of places to stop at but most of them are trying to be a destination and not a way point.

I MOVED A BUNCH OF POSTS from the ch 11 thread to here, as it really has gone off from legalese (although important to the ch 11 thread). So, some of these posts you may have seen. Look for the time stamp of 5/9/2021 at 4pm Eastern. I've been on about 15 high adventure trips and none have been at a high adventure base. For a while we were doing 2 a year. We need a local camp more than a high adventure base. A 3 hour vs 1 hour drive for a weekend campout will have a much bigger negative impact on our program than anything related to HA bases. Rather than summit, which is 1500 miles away, a wiki with ideas and potential outfitters would do us more good. Having a network of scout camps we could stay at would also make travel cheaper. While there's lots of discussion by the lawyers about the property values I wonder if anyone is considering what the units need. Unfortunately, I suspect I know the answer to that.

There are lots of companies that make custom ribbons. Search "custom award ribbons". They typically have a minimum amount. I looked into it when I was camping chair but it was beyond my budget.

I'd say everything is negotiable, it just depends on how one negotiates and how much leverage one has. Ignore the org charts. Power comes from people following someone. If the people that are supposed to follow you don't trust you then there are other ways to go around you. Make your life miserable, ignore your requests, etc. I see this in the BSA/council relationships. Councils can ignore the BSA up to an extent. At the same time the BSA has to be careful how it tells all the councils what to do. At some point national could fire the council exec, but that's rarely done. I suspect this is why councils can't pick their own council execs, national is afraid of losing control. This is not the military, there is no chain of command. Theory has it that the CO picks the leader but most COs don't even understand scouts. There's a roughly one page agreement the charter signs each year. I have no idea what it says even though I was a SM for 12 years and got them to sign it. BTW, that was the CC's job but I just did it. Next, one might say the unit committee chair picks the unit "leader" (SM, cub master) but even that is a bit hazy. Often it's just finding someone that is willing to do it. As for responsibility, the council won't step in unless things go way off the rails. They certainly don't ensure the program. It's like the relationship between national and the councils, as long as you're not way over the line you're left alone. This whole thing is based on trust. If you're a good unit leader then your scouts will have a good experience and hopefully your unit will grow. If you're just okay, well, that's not so bad. Until you get cross wise with the law or a ton of parents complain, it's really easy to create a fiefdom. I suspect that is not what you want to hear.

No, what I'm saying is a couple of good memories make up for a truck load of strife. I believe you when you say you're frustrated. We've all been there. Time can help fix the frustration. If not, then it may be time to walk away. I know of several scouters that stuck around, hoping to get things back to a more fun time and it never worked out. The result was a lot of resentment and anger towards scouting. From what you've written it sounds like you might be approaching that. It might be better to take a break and find another way to volunteer. That's what I'm going through right now. Last weekend I went on a campout and really enjoyed it. I didn't have to put on a program for hundreds of scouts but I did help a handful cook their dutch oven cakes. That was reward enough for me till the next campout.

Welcome to the forum. Some times you need to let the bad memories go.

I hope the judge listens to everyone with an appropriate grain of salt and makes her own plan. The quicker the better. At this point the lawyers are just sinking the wheels deeper into the mud, nothing is moving forward. I'd rather see some progress so the victims can get some closure, the volunteers can start rebuilding and this forum can get back to arguing about the patrol method.

Peakaboo! For all of you that just look at the "what's new" page, it looks like @Eagle1993 corralled that other thread about how superior Latin is, or whatever it was, and put it back here. You can continue here.

I used to tell patrols: 1 scout, find another patrol; 2 scouts, your choice; 3 or more, you're a patrol. A lot of scouts enjoyed the smaller patrols. Everyone had to help and it was all very fluid. They could cook things that were too hard with 6 scouts. One patrol started their standard for dessert - melted chocolate and some sort of fruit. That patrol stuck together till everyone aged out for no other reason than melted chocolate and some sort of fruit. Well, that and they just got along, but they claimed it was the dessert. Thanks, that's a really good memory.

@seguru, welcome to the forum? Anyway, nobody said you can't express your opinion. But if you're not courteous then we will remove posts. Those are the rules.

Probably not the right sub forum but why not. My understanding of bamboo is that if it is not contained, you have a problem. I also know it costs a bunch to get the poles where I live, so maybe Etsy would be an option. It also makes for good pioneering poles. Much lighter than wood. Other than that, I'm ignorant about bamboo.

The drone sounds like great fun. I hope they have lots of extra props 😉. The maker space also sounds like a good idea. We have push cart parts the scouts really enjoy. The frame and wheels are standard and they can add simple things like push bars and decorations. It's kind of the big kid version of the pinewood derby. Helmets required so they enjoy it.

Either way, just pause it. Or end it and restart it. Talk to the scouts and ask them what they think is right. I have a hunch they'll understand. And for those that are so driven for check boxes, this could be a blessing for you as you'll get them out of the way.

First, there's an easy solution to the OP, before the pause tell everyone with a pol that they no longer have it and it will start up after the pause. But, yeah, I get your frustration. Next, summer is the only time we can count on not having freezing temps, so we want to camp. At the same time we also have lower attendance. So we make things a bit looser, more relaxed. We make it work.

Whatever all that means, no. I was thinking of the ethics of the situation. Whats the best solution for everyone and not just "my" side. This problem has been thought about for millennia, how to write a wrong, and I see very little of it in this case. To be honest, the legal system would struggle with it, but people keep bringing up the idea of fairness and the only person that has anything to do with that is the judge. For all other parties in this case, fairness isn't a primary concern. So a separate discussion about what's fair might shed some light. Big caveat: Nobody cares a wit about anything written on these pages, we have zero impact on this case. If anyone is worried about the result then they are just giving themselves stress. It's best to only worry about what one can control, and that ain't much. That, too, is an idea that has been thought about for millennia.

Apology accepted. Maybe we just need one other thread that deals with things not related directly to the legal system. I think there are some worthy points that you and others would like to talk about but just don't fit in a thread about the legal aspects. You're welcome to start a thread.

Sorry, I don't buy that. The moderators keep trying to keep this thread as just news about the court case. We have split off other threads, including what's fair, and nobody seems to be interested in keeping those threads going. Everyone just piles more into this thread, which by the way, is some hundreds of pages long if you include the previous ones we capped. When we try and tamp some of the anger down it's because the original intent (information about the court case) gets pushed to the side by everyone's opinions about what is right/wrong about everyone else's opinions. Personally, I think a discussion about what's fair would be good as it brings up a lot of ethical issues. But as long as the discussion is stuck on winners and losers, it's a dead end. Best of luck.

Time is money in this case. A much cheaper high adventure or summer camp can be done but it costs time. I read through some of the thesis and my impression is there have been numerous forces against the BSA that nobody has figured out how to deal with and it's been going on since the 50's. The East coast was already losing membership in the 60's, and that was the supposed golden age. Add in a culture war, the changing economy, poor management, sexual abuse and here we are. On the other hand, this past weekend I went camping for the first time in 18 months and kids still like playing in the outdoors. They will still help the younger scouts and they just smile when they make their first dutch oven cake. They still don't like boring meetings and their brains are still a bit mushy at times. The kids haven't changed. I'm still hopeful.

What is the class designation?

That's us. The greater wyoming council had the Northern 2/3 of the state and longs peak had the rest, along with parts of colorado and nebraska. I was told the greater Wyoming council is down to less than 100 people. That's scouts and adults. But they do have a camp right outside of Yellowstone.