Basementdweller

a WDL would love an adult lead troop. The meeting is orderly and on time. Boy led can be messy late and poorly organized. Over the last three years my crossover rate went from 10% to 90%. First year we had a female den leader who treated the boys like a bear den and a class room experience. Second year we did all of the activities very hands on, the boys did not sit during the meeting.

Trying to get my head around all the drama here. a 17 year old scout, while on camp staff, is called gay and spouts back he is not gay but bisexual. Another troop member also on staff digs up pics from facebook and start the rumor mill going. Upon returning from camp staff duties.....The Adult Troop leadership call the Scout into a private meeting in which the events were discussed in some fashion. Scouts mom asks SM about meeting and was told nothing, beyond his hands were tied. I assume scout spoke with parents about topic of the meeting. I think a parent should have been asked to attend the meeting.....But we do not know the topic of the meeting so we are speculating on whether it was appropriate or not. Just curious, Why would you contact the SE? Was the scout who was the rumor monger spoken too? Just wondering if this is getting blown way out of proportion

You guys are completely ridiculous and have your head in the sand. there are far more worse prescription drugs than MJ that are available and much more addicting. Vicodin, Oxycontin, Demeral, Percocet, Darvocet, Xanax, Dilaudid, Ritlin and amphetamines. The first 8 are worse than MJ for sure. All are perfectly legal and your parents and leaders are taking them now. Best of all, these are all able to be used during a scout event with a prescription, which is easily gotten from a pill mill. Addiction is human condition whether the drug is prescribed or a street drug. What about the Bath salt thing now?????

I would ask the group when the last time their Pack camped???? kinda go around the table......set up a ringer before hand that says "we never camp". Then have a series of set up of reasons why they don't camp....have the answers to the excuses. Have materials available as handouts as to rental gear and access to council property. I don't like this as a fundraiser, but the boys will benefit with the council.

Universal health care is needed, like it or not. OR we need to give hospitals and doctors the right to turn away patients who cannot pay. We have large number of people who can afford health insurance and chose not to have any because they know hospitals and doctors have to take them. We shot $200 million dollars worth of missles into libya for what??????? how many aircraft carriers do we need deployed 1.5million dollars a day?????? How many f-22's at $338 million each or a total cost of $63 billion dollars for the program???? not trying to pick on the military......But healthcare is a huge problem too, robots and steerable catheters at hundreds of thousands of dollars a piece. Americans want world class health care at third world prices. I have issue with an alcoholic who gets on the liver donor list and gets a new liver or the smoker who gets a new heart and lungs.......Death boards will be a reality. Leukemia isn't the death sentence it once was, but the treatment is experimental and my insurance won't pay for it. so it is a treatment for the rich. So reduce spending and keep taxes at current levels. I got an idea, how about getting rid of that stupid mortgage interest deduction? this will put people into house they can actually afford.

I have a unique perspective regarding homeless and beggars....... I have lived in my house a really long time and for the longest time I thought it was neighborhood dogs dumping my trash cans and tearing open the bags.........nope it was the homeless guys collecting aluminum and tin cans. So now I have a big tote that i just toss anything metal in and they have stopped dumping all my trash all over the alley looking for the recyclables. The intersections have guys holding signs up begging for help. So is giving him 5 bucks so he can go buy a maddog or wild irish rose wine and bowl of wendys chili helping him???? no. Son and I work the food pantry, people lie, cheat and steal there too. Had one elderly couple go thru the line twice.....third time, the lady in charge turned them away. The church also is a sign up location for electric assistance.....Had one lady come in, she had a $600 electric bill, saw while she was sitting in line. Even with the high temps my biggest bill has been $150...key turn the dang thermostat up. my house temp has been 80 all summer. AT ALL TIMES is hard..... Especially when we eat store brand groceries and rarely eat out. Then you have families come in to the food pantry drinking mcdonalds milkshakes and complaining about the brands of peanut butter and cereal available. When loading groceries in the trunk of one car the lady had made the rounds to all the food pantrys and didn't have room in her trunk for our box. Is that right???? Had a Rich suburban church want to turn a Big house a few streets over into a male homeless shelter..... I went to the meeting and asked the church representatives why they chose our neighborhood????? It seems they bought the house cheap and were planning on rehabing it. I asked why they didn't build it in their neighborhood or on the same property as their church. Their leader spoke up and said that their church was too far away from the services these types of people need. I inquired exactly What types of services were they refering too......I already knew...most of the local churches have soup kitchens open various days of the week so most days you can get free meals in the area. I mentioned that this would place an unfair burden on the local churches and hoped that the church intended on donating additional money to the churches to help with the additional meals needed. Well they ignored my continuing line of question...... The community board had a hearing, well a large number of neighbors turned out told them what we thought....well they agreed and told the church leaders to pack it up and put it in their own community. For the record this is a community that also refuses to keep their own people convicted in sex crimes. They instituted a law that makes it illegal for a convicted sexual offender to live with in 1,000 feet of a school or park, well guess what that leaves absolutely no where for them to live. So where do they live????? Yep in my neighborhood. I get real tired of being the dumping zone for city. To help other people at all times. Yes it is in the oath, but I would like to add, the people have to be trying to help themselves first.

So scoutfish.....exactly what are you selling???? Cub scout day and resident camp????? or Pack family camping???? or Scout owned camps for pack camping????? Who is your audience? Parents, general public, Pack leaders????? Depends on who and what you are trying to sell as to how I would tackle the monster.

Well I have had to deal with MJ usage by an adult at camp. It was not a medical MJ issue but a parent smoking a blunt in the smoking area. I smelled it knew what it was an asked him to leave. I will follow the guide to safe scouting. Far as other meds go....there are a lot out there that are far worse than mj, not advocating or criticizing. How many people shop doctors to get a treatment the way they want? I did with my knee surgery last winter, but it was basis on recommendations from others and insurance coverage. Same works for those who NEED or DESIRE pain meds. We have a couple pain pill mills in our neighborhoods, they close them down only for them to reopen with new foreign doctors.....it takes nearly a year for the authorities to close them again for them only to reopen.....We have visitors from three states away seeing them. I am going to bet each and everyone here would be surprise to know they probably know one or more people with addiction problems. Many people self medicate, exercise, food, caffeine, alcohol, and medication, legal or other. It is pretty easy to get all righteous on the internet about it till you actually have to deal with it. Then the lines blur.

Depends on the private school Several around here would welcome him, others would bounce him out. Public school nothing..... Remember scouting is like that private school, membership is optional.

At 17 this young man is hardly a child. At 17 most of who he is going to be as a man is in place. It was handled poorly. I would not have permitted my son to be questioned by the Adult troop leadership in that manner. To be real honest, his sexuality isn't their business anyhow.

Wow lots of opinions...... Losing an 11 year old boy to girls......No Losing an 11 year old boy to cars, and jobs, no. Sports yes lazy disinterested parents yes Divorce yes moving yes The reason we lose boys is failure of the Webelos Den leaders treat this as a transition. I am very successful at transitioning boys from Webelos to Boy Scouts. I did lose a couple to disinterested parents and sports, not all boys are interested and their parents definitely are not interested. What works for me. Have ASM's who are ADL with Webelos. The Webelos Den camps with the troop twice for a total of 5 camp outs during their webelos year. We treat the webelos program as a single year, Most will earn their AOL in 10 months. Summer Webelos Resident Camp for all. The Webelos Den joins the troop for opening and closing each meeting. While a small thing, have the boys chose a Den Name and elect a Den Leader. Attend a Webelos event, Webelos weekend or Webelos woods. Interestingly enough, the first troop meeting after they cross over, the parents are actually surprised by having to fill out another application to join the troop.

The quality of scouting is directly related to the ADULT leadership. If the SM and ASM's hold the youth to consistently meeting the advancement standards. While the program is boy led..... Advancement is over seen by the adults thru Scout master conferences, and Board of reviews. I know that we have spoken too the SPL and PL about some questionable sign offs. Far as First Class in a weekend....it is completely ridiculous and a misapplication of the program. I do not like the trail to first class or eagle summer camp programs. I would like to see a change in advancement....to make first class a minimum age, just like high adventure......14 minimum.......just saying maybe 9 months as scout, 9 months as tenderfoot 9 months at second class. This would let the scout have fun and just enjoy scouting with out the huge push on advancement.

I understand Troop and Crew membership, I also understand the Divorce reasons......but beyond that it just seems like an opportunity for bad behavior.

Tampa there was huge drama bout 6 month ago when the latest rendition of the g2ss came out it basically disallowed Patrol only camping. When you camp as a troop and only have one functional patrol then that is troop camping.

Well ya know......As a CM most if not all of my Cub parents have a facebook account...... It is a fantastic useful tool to keep intouch with them, share pictures and calendars. I was a naysayer, but after a year of using it, it works, Most people in an urban enviorment now have a smart phone and all of them have facebook apps on their phones. During our last pack meeting the parents had posted pics from the pack meeting during the meeting and I was surprised to see pictures of myself seconds after they were taken posted on facebook. With that said, change in schedule, just post it on facebook, then call the two people who don't use it. pretty simple. Same goes for the troop. some parents expect pictures of outings to be posted during the outings. just sayin.

I would have enjoyed watching that wild west show.

My understanding is that you can no longer camp as a patrol Not gonna mince words with ya.

For us 300 feet is irrelevant, because on our backpacking trips we take one patrol at a time. The adults cook separate, but stay in the same site, CO rules. We let the boys do their own thing and not interfere unless asked by the PL.

This kinda behavior gives scouting a bad rep in the outdoor community. First you should never ever haul an entire troop into the back country. This sort of outing should be limited to parties of 10 max including adults. so the entire 300 foot thing is irrelevant. I read postings on several other forums on a regular basis that are very anti boy scout because of large groups and poor behavior. I know I have received this sort of abuse in the backcountry and my boys were too tired to cook let alone act up. People roll into a campsite and in a very loud way say, oh no there are boy scouts here we gotta camp some where else. there was only 8 of us. One of my roles is to teach back country and front country etiquette.

Ya know scoutfish, I did some really bone head things as a young man. But in that light, I never ever took pictures of it or would I have discussed it in the presence of an adult or any one I had the least amount of respect for like one of our troop leaders. Could you imagine using the media of the day, bragging around the campfire, to tell your SM what you had been up to, "Wow can't wait to get home, sunday night partying with my girlfriend, her parents are out of town and they have a great liquor cabinet. " Ahhhh no. I am sure the SM would have grabbed me by the back of the neck and straightened me right out and my parents would have made sure I had something else to do sunday night. I am not going to make excuses for unscoutlike behavior, I am not going to make excuses for being dumb enough to brag to your adult scout leadership. As a youth I made more than my fair share of mistakes, I paid the price in discipline and lectures. I will just treat this the same way.

Interesting some points here. Of course I am interested in how a scout behaves at home, school and church. I believe that it should be brought up in a SMC and BOR. Most scouts take BOR seriously and may take a correction to heart, maybe more so than just a SMC. Their good or bad behavior reflects on us like it or not. Picture facebook pics, first pic scout in uniform flag ceremony, next pic obviously drunk and holding up a beer can. just something to think about.

and your point being????

Just looking for some thoughts from my peers. I believe that scouting isn't something like a scout shirt, you put it on at the door and take it off when you leave. A large number of our youth take the moral high road and are not mean, unkind or post pictures of themselves drinking or smoking or making out with there girl friends. So generally the group does not feel this should be brought up in a board of review but by the SM in a SM conference. OGE you are correct issues should be dealt with as soon as they come up. With that said, as an ASM do I hand it off or direct the SM to take a look at it???(This message has been edited by Basementdweller)

The youth and parents are very active on facebook. So is asking a scout about some posting fair game pictures of him drinking on facebook Or say him discussing a romantic encounter???? Or him being unkind????? Lying about missing a campout or not buying the grub for the weekend??? thoughts

kcs......while boys can vote at 18 and drink at 21. I have met many a 25 year old who is still a boy and I have met the rare 14 year old who is a man. Age does not truly define manhood.