moosetracker

OK.. you got me there OGE.. So we need to change our project.. How about if mommy, Daddy and scoutSon build a single bat house and hang it up.. Or they can plant a single sapling tree on arbor day.. Send out one care package to a soldier over seas?? Spend an hour at a nursing home socializing..(This message has been edited by moosetracker)

Next year it will be established that the Eagle Rank should be made by the age of 13.. Maybe the project of little boy picking up trash with mommy & daddy, I proposed in the other thread would be a decent project given the young age of the Eagles.. First Class in a year.. Hmmmphhhhh... All I know is when my son entered BS is was stated as expected, and quite capable.. And since admittedly it took about a 1 1/2 years for me to get out of a slight helecopter mode (I don't think I was obnoxious, but I did hover a little).. All I know is when son looked like he couldn't make it, it made mommy worry.. Of course it didn't help he started out in a troop that decided early who the 10 scouts out of the 40 they recruited they had decided to keep.. And then spent the year letting the other boys know they "lacked" the ability to be a good scouts, until they discouraged them enough to quit.. So while 10 got ample opportunity, the 30 did not, then got harrassed for being behind, the 10 "worthy" scouts.. Anyway, I have bad memories of First class in a year.. Star by 2nd year?? Any reasoning behind this? Like I know the First class in a year had something like some sort of study that boys dropped out by feeling left behind if took too long to make first class.. Of course if all the other boys weren't pushed for 1st class in a year, and just left to make rank in thier own good time, why would any boy feel left behind?

I have yet to hear anyone comment on if they think that a scout picking up trash in a park for 2 hours with Mommy & Daddy as the other two warm bodies is a good Eagle project.. If "Yes" why? If "No" what was it you internally used as a measurement for figuring out if the project met sufficient Leadership? After all there is no time element, and the scout has 2 warm bodies.. Now what? What else are you going to use to figure out if the project meet the criteria of showing Leadership? Would it be an acceptable project if it was scout and two of scouts friends rather then Mommy & Daddy? total 6 hours picking up trash.. little leadership unless scout is running around pointing to trash and saying "Here is something to pick up.. Now over here!!" I want to see some positive, constructive suggestions on how to classified an Eagle project meets the standards of Leadership, and impact for the recipient of the project in a non-weasel-ly way.. I mean it is easy to condemn something as being wrong, it is much harder to establish the "right" way of doing things..

Absolutly.. Never been there.. Just went on the words of how people described it who were sold on it.. That's what we got, hot.. sandy.. desert like with temperture in the hundreds during the day and frigid cold at night.. Wonderful! Wonderful! Blah.. Blah.. Our scouts went to seabase!! I didn't go there either.. But the descriptions sounded more appealing, to both me and the scouts in our troop.. Pictures look nice.. Any better version on the temps? Or stories that are more appealing?

Hmmm.. Never thought about Philmont.. When was Philmont founded? I have seen pictures of the heavy uniforms and seen a few in museums.. I knew that they used canvas tents, and wheeled them to their sights in large wagons.. I just never thought the backpacking thing took effect until things were invented that allowed the backpacking thing to take effect.. And that the wool uniform was in colder weather, but they had something maybe still uncomfortably, suit-like for summer weather.. Or some ugly knicker shorts.. Forget desert hiking.. I still am not someone who sees Philmont as a "fun" place, even with all the neat equipment.. Hiking around in a desert, just doesn't seem all that fun..

All I'm saying is everyone who has to judge if a project has enough meat to it to showcase that the boy has learned leadership, and if it is a project with enough impact and value to be considered worthy of an eagle project (Which the book does state is still something the board has to come to a concesses on.) Has to have some sort of a mental yardstick of comparison in which to judge. A person evaluating projects over a time period would get a sense of it by comparing psst project and comeing up with an average and from that what would be not enough or what would be too much. A person starting out, may have a more concrete yardstick by which to judge similar to the 100 hour, until they get enough projects under their belt to get that internal meter by averaging all the projects they have seen over time. Whatever concrete yardsticks the new guy uses though, it shouldn't be a rule, more a guideline that can be ignored when something presents itself that common sense says it is not necessary to apply.. Over time, you get enough exceptions that all of a sudden you will find you are slowly moving into judging by experience, rather then by a concrete yardstick.. From what my son stated, he sounds like he is moving out of the concrete yardstick phase, but just is not yet ready to let it go.. And yes, still a little of that youthful it's right because I say so.. bureaucracy be d**ned!! That may take a while longer, and in some cases has it's place.. But as you say, in this case will play out to the scouts favor if he chooses to fight.. Luckily, from what I know except for the one scout I mentioned when it was brought up by one board member and voted down.. Our board takes up this 100 hour thing at the proposal, not to deny the boy after the project is completed.. Like I said, best the board internalize their reasoning as to why a project lacks enough proof of leadership, and just state that based on the collective experience of the average Eagle project the project at hand needs a little more proof of leadership.. Then make the suggestions on what can be done to beef the project up.. Because with the wording in bold neon sign at the front of the new book, they are going to run up to more opposition if they keep using it. I guess it does state if a scout feels his project meet criteria, he can ignore the boards recommendations, do the project and then ask for someone else to validate the project was sufficient.. Although if it were me, I would not want to do a lengthy project on a gamble that during arbitration, someone else will see thing my way.. But, then that is the youth thing and bureaucracy be d**ned!! So we may have a few choose that path.

You know it is hard having a debate on this board with your own son calling you out.. bnelon - True, but still in the workbook states that the project must show enough Leadership and impact to be deemed worthy.. Which leaves the board still in charge of coming to a consensus as to if a project put before them does show enough Leadership and impact to be worthy.. Truely.. if a scout came to you with the project of going to a park with Mommy & Daddy to pick up garbage for 2 hours.. Would you consider this a worthy enough Eagle project?.. It has the 2 extra volunteers other then the scout.. Hours don't count.. But does this show enough leadership? Why? What would be your critera for whether or not it shows enough Leadership?.. Does this project have enough impact for the reciepient? Why? What would be your critera for whether or not is has enough impact.. Now you may tell the scout the project is denied due to not showing enough Leadership or enough impact.. The workbook states the board can reject a project based on lack of those items.. But, there was something in your mind, some sort of expected level or threshold, some sort of internal measurement you used in coming to that determination. It may not be the 100 hour rule, but there is something.. From what I know our board did accept one project with the main bulk of the project being the scout, the father and someone who knew how to construct some sort of BBQ for the church (I think brick & mortar was involved, so the guy was probably a mason).. But the board added to the project a community BBQ where the scout hosted the BBQ and promoted it, and organized the people to cook and serve and clean-up.. Because the project alone showed not enough leadership.. There was some doubt as to who would really be leading the construction of the BBQ, between a father and a guy who built them for a living being the only other two volunteers. That the board has some sort of collective idea about what constitutes enough leadership is fine by me.. If in part they use the 100 hour rule is ok if they do allow circumstances that the rule can be over-ridden due to other items showing that enough leadership & impact is being met without it. That means it is a guideline, and not a rule.. I am sure a similar guideline is mentally used to figure out if a project might be too cumbersome for a scout.. I don't know if our board has ever denied a scout, but I know they issue a warning to them, and ask them to rethink it and figure out if they can take on only a portion leaving other pieces to future projects.. I think I was taken back when that one scout did complete the project and stated he came in under 100 hours and someone on the board stated that the project failed due to it not meeting the 100 hours. To their credit though the head of the Eagle board stood up for the project being worthwhile and worthy without the 100 hour timeline.. I guess I always knew hours was a guideline they used for accepting a project, but I was surprised someone thought to reject a completed project due to hours.. But to truth this was the one and only time I have ever heard the board raising the issue on a completed project, the person who raised the issue might have been new and overly zealous, or a visitor.. Which they do invite visitors on the board to get a feel for what the board is all about and take the knowledge back to their troops.(This message has been edited by moosetracker)

Yeah, I have told them that bnelon44.. Although there are things they can use "by the book" to weigh if the project is worthy.. ..Service, impact, and leadership are the objectives and measurements. Use these as your criteria to consider, select, develop, and evaluate your project... ...Attention: Unit, District, and Council Reviewers Eagle Scout projects must be evaluated primarily on impact: the extent of benefit to the religious institution, school, or community, and on the leadership provided by the candidate. There must also be evidence of planning and development... I know from what they talk about, they have had to discuss with the canidate ideas on what was needed to be added to a project in order to obtain enough leadership.. Enough Leadership is still left up to the board to interpret, and has been handed to them a a tool for measurement.. Now you can't stop these guys from mentally doing their approximation of on average 100 hours will show enough leadership.. Since the 100 hours is not what the boy puts in, but the combined hours of all the people who are helping him, The project could be 4 hours in length with 20 volunteers at the project, and a given extra 20 hours with planning and gathering materials, but the boy only personnally spends 6 hours because he has his mother driving him, he is working with his Eagle project counsilor with mom having driven him & waiting, He is working with someone for donations with mom having driven him and waiting, He is discussing details with the people he is doing the project for, with mom having driven him and waiting.. And all of their time is counted for the 20 hours.. So in total the scout only works on the project for 10 hours, but it is a 100 hour project.. Honestly if the scout truely marks all the time all the people around him give to help him with his project 100 hours is easy to rack up.. Problem is the scouts I see still take some time people give to him to help him for granted, and never mark it down.. We had one kid state at the projects conclusion that the project only racked up 50 hours. Our 100 hour board still gave it to him, because one of the board members went to the project and knew it was a worthy project.. But I gave him a tongue lashing because it was easily 200+ hours, he just took the time that others donated to the cause for granted.. I do think they will buawk at the piece that says leading 2 people shows enough leadership.. "Yeah I'm doing a project with my Mommy and Daddy, for about 2 hours of picking up garbage.." But MIB.. Adding to the workbook is adding to the workbook, you might think it is just defining what was meant, but it is your interpretation of what is meant.. Or you are adding on what you think should be there and assume to be an oversight. (I am curious if the council approved workbook has the 100 hour approximation.. It may not if that is an interpretion of our district rather then the council.) I think our Council/District is pretty reasonable, but there are horror stories of other council/Districts have "interpreted" the workbook in such a way that the boys spend months just rewriting and rewriting their proposals and end up with a master thesis before the end.. The council has a right to tighten up safty measures they think are not clear (like how many parents/guardians should be in attendance for a Pack campout), or not strict enough, they are allowed the right to make the training more difficult (such as not allowing testing out of IOLS).. But, the one thing that has always been set in stone, not to be added or subtracted from is the advancement. Now as for interpretation.. The words in the workbook/merit badge should be left alone, and allow different people to interpret as they will, then the there can be a healthy debate between the people on the subject.. MIB - I truely think our board should stop calculating the 100 hours, because the book says in black & white that you can not.. Start calculating if the project shows enough leadership.. Now how you mentally calculate that is up to you. But, verbally to the scout it should be the concesses of the board, that the project does not show enough leadership..

SSScout is correct I did not notice before the link bnelon44 posted is one from a specific Troop Website.. I guess I can't force my husband to crack the whip until it is at least on some Official National Website in either fillable or unfillable form.. PChadbo.. You don't think I can get my husband to march?? I just need to swap out his "happy, friendly & cooperative" pills for the "mean, grumpy & crabby" ones for the day.. In other words swap my pills for his and then he will be ready to give marching orders too.. Sounds too like this passage was just added, if it wasn't in the old one.. So I guess they were within their rights to alter it until this new book comes into being.. Therefore, I guess the message can be toned down to a "Hey, Guys.. No more Council altered workbook.." Rather then "HEY.. SMUCKKA HEADS !!! ".... My husband can do informative in a nice, friendly, happy way.. And will not need to be pumped up on steroids for the delivery..

And for all this time I thought the Basement was your Castle.. I guess I was wrong..

We only have the Council Program meeting every 2 months, and just had it 2 weeks back. So they will have roughly about 6 weeks.. My husband says the guy in charge of advancement is a black & white guy. On this issue, let us hope that is true. I don't know how long a "council" Eagle workbook has been in place, but I am sure my kids didn't use it. I found the "fillable PDF" on-line form (not our council) and directed my son & his friend to that, because they would have otherwise have needed ump-teen copies of a paper workbook until they got a workable copy.. They are just of the computer age, they were both more comfortable with that..

bnelon44 - You don't need to say that twice to me.. I am in perfect agreement with you. Hopefully this new book has tightened up the loose ends to my councils satisfaction, because like-it or lump-it that is what they should be using.. I think I may become a hen-pecking wife, and force my husband to march into the next council planning meeting for Advancement with the new workbook in hand, and that little paragraph highlighted..

So I printed out the new workbook for husband & son yesterday, because they were going to the Eagle board that night. That way they could introduce it. I read some, around the parts you guys indicated was different. They said "Sounds like the old one..".. Don't ask me, I wasn't keeping up on it.. Then they said something else I thought was strange.. Is this a change to the National Eagle project workbook or the council Eagle project workbook?.. Well news to me our council put out it's own workbook (Could put out it's own workbook).. Oh yeah, nationals was not clear enough, so council made their own.. Really!!! Wow.. Does council make up it's own merit badge books too?? Maybe by their comments councils now is close to the council Eagle project workbook, but still... REALLY!!! I guess if the scout uses the workbook they get in the mail when they turn Life scout or go to the Council website for a workbook, they would get the council workbook.. But, I guess I have to ask.. What if they just go on line surf the net & download "A" workbook, from any other site? Do they get National's workbook, or some other councils "council made workbook".. Of course I guess there are still scouts come to the eagle board with proposals that were concieved without the benefit of any workbook.. They had two boys from one place last night. One scout's proposal was approved, the other denied.. The one who was denied was because he wanted to do family research for the benifit of one man, have scouts in another state do some of the research (which he could not lead them in, because he would not be present).. Then he himself travel to some other country in order to personally present it to this one guy. It had nothing to do with benifiting the community. The scout had no alternative proposals, and when shocked this would not do. The committee read out of the Eagle project workbook, about it benefiting church, school, community.. Scoutmaster said he was new and didn't know anything about the workbook.. Well one of his scouts passed the board without benefit of the workbook, neither Nationals workbook or the councils workbook..

OK.. So this guy will not be our next president.. (I hope).. He is pretty radical on his demands, and I see alot of debt, and some jobs gained, some lost.. But.. alot of debt.. Anyone got a trillion? I would like to just pocket that myself (Debt free)!!

Couldn't get to the link, it said it couldn't be brought up. I tried the base page occupywallstreet.org, and couldn't get that either. Maybe the site is down. Anyway one list of demands from as you say someone "off his rocker" is worthless.. I would imagine the ideas of what they want are varied.. It is more an uprising of what they don't want anymore.. Me, I would think the protest would be better targeted in Washington, trying to throw the lobbiest out, and to take back democracy and our rights for our vote to count on issues.. Then the various ideas of what people want can be a varied as they are in the occupywallstreet protests, because what we want and get would again be in the peoples hands by a majority vote.

There is a new article on MSN.com "Who are the occupiers".. Here is one: Elad Ozeri, 31, from Jerusalem, Israel, came down to the protest with his 18-month old son, Ron. He moved to New York two months ago, where his wife is studying for her doctorate. It was his first day at the camp, and he said hell try to spend a week there. While he spoke with msnbc.com, Ron ate a bagel and toddled around his dad. Why are you here? We had a similar demonstration in Israel the whole summer. I think it was almost the same idea but maybe it was more political in Israel, I dont know. Its (the protest there) how to live, how to make a living, how to pay the rent and you know, I think the idea is to stop the robber barons. And I think its the same idea here: to have a decent life, a simple life. Well I don't have two examples.. But I have one, that it might not be Anti-Semitic.. So did Isreal have a similar protest this summer?.. If so can you call a protest in Isreal anti-Semitic?.. Wouldn't they then be protesting against themselves???(This message has been edited by moosetracker)

So I see no real camping involved.. Just Blogging and tweeting... High Ho, for the electronic age.. What does this have to do with scouts at all.. It might as well be "Go Dancing with Miss Piggy!" Seriously, what benefit is this to scouting???

The story of the 3 boys was nice, couldn't get to the link within the site for the contest though as it would only let people who had Foxfire browsers to enter.. I'm not about to load down a browser I don't use just to see one site. So can you post the info about the contest here?

Ahhh.. but if you look at the on-line video about District committee meeting each group is suppose to be meeting with their "group".. at different tables while the DE & DC walk around to see how they are doing.. Our group doesn't, but it has been talked about doing it.. Thing is where we meet would not accomidate it.. It is a small room with 1 table. Yeah I don't think the UC's are suppose to be there, but these guys were trying to do multi-jobs both as UC and helping on different committees for district, so they wanted to be at the district board also.

Scoutfish the UC's job is not to direct scouts to one troop or another.. He should stay out of that unless someone asks directly for various reason, most likely because they haven't found what they are looking for in their own narrow search.. They are more there as an intermediate between Council/District & the Unit.. Help if the unit is about to implode over some inner turmoil as an "outside" intermediery.. Help with advise about problems by bringing to the unit differing ideas because they have seen other options though their own unit experience (which should not be the same unit they are UC for) or by seeing good ideas in other units that they have been a UC for..

As the training chair asked to get the app from my trainers. I suspect you are right.. They did something that move any Unit Commissioner off the committee. Then want our committee with more then the District chairs for a position.. But, even if they fill out the paperwork no one but the district chairs ever show up to a meeting. No need to, we don't meet in specific groups. Just each go around the table and report for our position. Reason why I am not so good about collecting the apps. I may ask once or twice, but I don't force the issue.

I would suggest a DIFFERENT UC to be working for the full Charter Org, if you did suggest that.. Not THAT UC!.. All he need do is sign up for both ignore the boy scouts and continue on as he is doing now.

I originally got the impression this started when he interview your troop for his son, then choose another troop, then became the UC of the Pack and was just set on his troop as the best. If this started when he was the cub master, he was playing games then.. It is not an innocent conflict of interest. It shows he angled for this position for the sole purpose of what he is using it to do.. This information should be included into the talks you have with the District Commissioner.. This is not conflict of interest. This is deliberate sabbatoge..

Depends on how deep into the district training staffing you go. I do not need to get anyone who is doing a piece for IOLS or OWLs, this is just a open invite for anyone with scoutcraft skills to help out.. But, if they are running Specifics, Baloo, Den Chief etc, and they are not signed up as a District anything.. Then I am to get an app. from them.. I am not good at this though, half the time I do, half the time I don't.. Do not know if being a UC would mean you are already district committee, because there was something this year where our UC's that were on district committee were pulled out of district committee because they were some other group.. I never understood that.

Paint ball guns not to exceed a pressure level of 60 psi This one seems odd.. I thought paint ball was a banned activity. Or is it ok to use a paintball gun on a target, just not a person and they are limiting the pressure level of that?