mrbertelsen

Thanks to all fellow scouters for your valuable input. I have spoken with the boy and his father. Here are the facts. a. He voted before the rules were explained. b. He took the liberty of voting by proxy for family members for a total of 4 votes. c. Including the proxy votes the total number of votes for his car was 7. d. The ballot counters overode the actual counts to distribute the trophys more evenly. This was agreed upon by the PWD committee. e. There were other boys who also stuffed the box. f. The ballot box was not monitored. My decision is the boy will keep the trophy. There was no intent to win at all costs in his story. I keep saying the point of the PWD is that a scout and his parent(s) spend time together to build and race a car. That goal was achieved. But there is another great truth about the PWD that must be stated. Some will participate with integrity. Some will make mistakes that don't matter. And some will try to win at any costs. But no matter the mix of participants some will win and some will lose. We adults all know we must prepare our kids for that fact of life. The PWD is a great analogy to convey that information to a cub scout stessing that the choice of integrity is best. Yours in Scouting, Mike-543

The rules will be changed for next years event. I am looking for advice on how to handle the problem from this year. ------ At our Pinewood Derby one boy "stuffed" the ballot box for best design with his own car number. At the same time ballot counters from the PWD committee not knowing about the stuffing overrode the ballot counts to limit the number of trophys one boy could earn. The boy that cheated ended up winning one of the trophies for best design as a result. I intend to speak privately to the boy with his parents and see what he has to say. If he admits guilt I plan to tell him only that he would of won without cheating and allow him to keep the tropy. I don't support cheating but I can't teach someone not to cheat if they are shamed out of the pack. But at the same time: "there are no 'little' acts of dishonesty. A person who is dishonest in small things will most likely be dishonest in the more important matters. A person who does even the smallest things with integrity will do the same in more important matters." Indeed this is one of those small matters. I think it is a great opportunity for a life-lesson. Looking for comments and advice, Thanks, MRB-543