Oak Tree

Yes, what I hear him saying is "We practice 'Don't ask, don't tell'". Same as what many other councils and units do. He may need to clarify this at National's request.

Do you have any idea where they're going? http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2011-02-16-church_growth_15_ST_N.htm Growing denominations include Pentecostals, Assemblies of God, Church of God, Jehovah's Witnesses, Presbyterian Church in America.

You do realize that they wear a big rainbow on their shoulder? You've hung around with middle school kids, and you're telling me none of them would possibly make fun of that? No Scouts from any other troop you've ever encountered would make fun of that?

"He said he has seen Rainbow scouts teased because of the groups name" Ya think?

Yeah, nolesrule, that's why I said your mileage may vary. I think my district would definitely argue that the statement is indeed a requirement. The Eagle application is a pretty official looking piece of paper. It lists the statement as part of requirement 6, and then says "All requirements were completed prior to my 18th birthday." You can argue that this is just a typo or a bureaucratic statement or something, but on plain reading, the statement is part of requirement 6 on the required application. Now in practice, I've seen Eagle boards let a Scout write his statement on the spot when he had overlooked it. Heck, if you argue it's not a real requirement, you shouldn't need one at all. So I'm sticking with the idea that it's required by 18. I will grant that filling out the application and signing it would not be required by 18, but you'd better have a pretty good reason not to have done so. I'd be willing to argue that point before the board, but I wouldn't depend on them to buy it. I was lucky to get the Eagle BOR Lead to agree you could even turn it in late. nolesrule, here's a hypothetical question for you: if the Eagle application form itself is not a requirement, could you get Eagle without doing one at all? Just on principal?

My question is how can that be changed to exclude the multiple option? Your IH could insist that different people hold those two positions. But there is no "check and balance" going on in any official fashion - the COR can dictate anything he wants unless the IH wants to start dictating. The IH can really dictate how the unit is to be run, although very few do. The only way to overrule an IH would be if he did something so egregious as to get his membership revoked, or for the unit's charter to be removed. I do think that for established units, you'd be wise to separate those duties, and that can be a unit policy. Or you could go try to change it on a National level, but I'm not betting that's going to happen.

Our district's written policy is that the package should be delivered to the council office before the 18th birthday. When I pressed the district Eagle BOR chairman about it, he agreed that they would accept it delivered after that, but that he really didn't want to state that, because then people would start to parse what had to be done by when, and he never wanted to be in the position of denying a boy his Eagle because the Scoutmaster conference was done late. The written requirement, I believe, is that the Eagle application and completed project workbook should be delivered to the council office in "a timely fashion" - which our district said would mean about one week under ordinary circumstances. My parsing of the requirements says: the following things must happen prior to the 18th birthday - the Eagle application form must be filled out all the way down to and including the Scout's signature (i.e., all merit badges, all leadership, all participation, everything that the Scout has to fill out on the form.) - the Eagle project workbook must be complete including all signatures - the statement of your ambition, life purpose, list of other leadership positions must be done - the Scoutmaster conference must be completed things that may happen on or after the 18th birthday (your mileage may vary) - the Scoutmaster's and Committee Chair's signatures (although the Scoutmaster normally signs after the conference, so it would be unusual but not impossible for these to be on different days) - dropping off the form at the council office - actually receiving recommendations from the people the Scout listed (the Scout's requirement is to "list the names") - local council certification - board of review - Scout executive signature

My kids would be with the recreational troop down the street. Right. That's one of the great things about the BSA is the diversity of programs we can offer. I like the way Piedmont Council CA lists out their troops - this troop focuses on X, this troop on Y, gives their sizes, when and where they meet. You get to pick. The hard part of dealing with a lot of "recreational" Scouts is that troop meetings can't really focus on preparing for the upcoming trip, because there are too many Scouts who aren't going on the trip and don't care. So now we split them up and have the Scouts who are going do the preparation. But then we have to have something for the others, and if that's too interesting, then the Scouts who are preparing for the trip can be anxious to finish the trip planning so that they can go do the other activity. I think you could build pretty good patrol pride if everyone was expecting to go on most trips. So, yeah, a 'select' team isn't for everyone. I never wanted my kids to ever get on one of those sports teams. And obviously, those types of Boy Scout troops are few and far between. But if some people want to join them, more power to them. I think it could be a great experience for them.

The council I grew up in was and still is one county, one district, one council. It was a sparsely populated rural county. Somewhere around 35 units, maybe 1000 youth. It's in a part of the country where there were historically small councils. When they run a Wood Badge course, it's a five council event. I realize that small councils can be inefficient, but they also have some real advantages. Communication gaps are less frequent - there's much less of a sense of "them", some mysterious powers-that-be. Even today, almost 30 years after I graduated from Scouting as a youth, I can look up their council leadership - executive board officers and members and advisory board members, and see that I know about a dozen of them. There's the guy who lived across the street from me when I was pre-school age and played with his son. There's the newspaper photographer who took several pictures of me and came to my house to have me write his union a quick computer program. There's the high school principal I talked with regularly, the high school physics teacher who was great, a guy from my church, my high school track coach, a guy that I ran track with, the owner of the local drug store, and a good friend's father. My current council covers 12 counties and has 13 districts, but it's a very unequal distribution. My district is one-fifth of a county, and other districts cover multiple counties, and one is primarily a military base (might be the same district Nike refers to). I'd guess it takes 15 minutes to drive across the district east-west, and 10 minutes north-south. Area-wise, we're probably not even 10% the size of the largest district. The council serves around 20,000 youth. I can't even find the list of executive board members for my current council on the web, and I doubt that I know any of them. If my district hosts a training, it's no more than a 10-minute drive for anyone in the district. Sometimes we have to go to other districts to take training, and the farthest I've gone for that is a little over an hour. I did take IOLS in the next council over, because ours wasn't offered at a convenient time. That was about a two hour drive. The Midnight Sun Council in Alaska seems like it has to be the largest council in the 50 states. Piedmont Council in CA lists themselves as the smallest council - very strong program, but just six troops and three packs, according to their web site. "Year after year more than 50% of our eligible youth participate in the councils many programsthis currently comprises more than 1000 of our young citizens. In support of these youth are some 300 adult volunteers and three full time staff members." It's not clear from their web site if the council exactly mirrors the town borders, but the town is 1.7 square miles, with a population of around 10,000.

Except that it [no-fault divorce] did, by profoundly changing the culture and expectations of those in the culture. But the divorce rate started falling when we got up to nine states with no-fault divorce. And as more and more states adopted it, the divorce rate kept falling. (Sheesh, doesn't everyone pay close attention to the links I post?) --- Mr. Boyce, you may be correct that we haven't been focusing on the overall societal impact. Do you believe that allowing gay marriage will cause families to stop uniting? How would you measure this? Perhaps you'd expect to see more divorces? More kids raised by single mothers? Fewer marriages, with a marriage rate falling faster in states that have gay marriage than in those that don't? I looked up the first one for the first state to approve gay marriage. Massachusetts approved same-sex marriages in 2004. Since that time their divorce rate has fallen significantly. In the five years 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, it looks like the divorce rate averaged around 2.5 divorces per 1000 people. Starting in 2004 it fell fairly sharply, all the way down to 1.8 in 2009. That's something like a 25%+ drop in the divorce rate, to the lowest in the nation (and substantially below the next state, Pennsylvania, at 2.3). It certainly doesn't look like families started falling apart there. http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_DIVORCE_20100813.html http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2010/04/09/2010-mass-divorce-rate-down-after-gay-marriage/ Just curious about what you think is going to happen. Feel free to find something out there to back up the claim.

I can think of a variety of reasons that I might withhold signing the Scout Spirit requirement. So far I haven't had to do it. If the Scout became openly hostile to Scouting and was only there because his parent was demanding it, I think I wouldn't sign. All the better to help the boy. If a Scout was openly involved in some very unScoutlike behavior in a troop setting, we'd have to talk about it. I'd listen to him explain what happened, and he could tell me whether he thought he was right or not, and whether it was displaying Scout Spirit - and we might even come to some agreement on a delay. The harder issues are the ones where I don't have direct knowledge. I know that some number of the Scouts swear when the adults aren't around. I've had a report on at least two, but probably just because of circumstances. I haven't heard him swear. Unless I get a report that it is really openly bothering someone, I'm not sure I'd hold him up. For all I know, some of the other Scouts I've already approved are doing the same thing. Likewise, not sure that I'd fail a Scout for an admitted one time trial of marijuana. I'd talk about it with him, ask him why, listen to what happened - in essence I want to evaluate this one item in the context of the Scout's entire conduct. I'm much more likely to have an issue if there are multiple indicators that things are going badly. But I like Eamonn's story of the kid who stole the donkey. That just seems like a one-time prank to me - I doubt I would have seen any reason to fail him for that. Arrest for a crime would be an issue. Maybe I'm a rubber stamp. But it's a large troop, and I want to be consistent in my treatment of the Scouts. I expect them to behave with some semblance of civilization while they're around me. I don't want to start witch hunts, nor do I want to get all the Scouts into a "can't talk to Mr. Oak Tree" mode where they're afraid to talk to me. Attendance at meetings - I'm a rubber stamp. Don't really consider that to be part of Scout Spirit (nor is it, really, by the BSA's definition, by my reading.) Uniform wear - The great majority of Scouts remove the uniform the instant they are permitted to. If a Scout refused to button or tuck in his shirt when asked, that could be a problem. All of the Scouts have a uniform, so I want them to wear it when it's expected - if someone openly declared he wasn't going to wear the uniform, I'd wonder. Don't really ever see failing a Scout on Scout Spirit due to the uniform. Vandalizing cars - I'd guess this might hold up things. Some of this would depend on how much time the Scout has left. It would certainly depend on what "vandalizing" meant, and how it was known to be him. Mostly I'm with Eamonn and packsaddle - we do our best to work with the Scouts and their families and see if we can work things out and rebuild.

Yes, ScoutNut is right, there is no official limit on how much a boy can tap dad. But I don't care, I'm not in favor of a kid saying "I'm the captain, my dad is the XO, follow his orders." Also not a huge fan of dad doing all the work. The reason is primarily that Scouts tend not to lead their fathers. So I'd wonder about the leadership. I do know dads usually are helping out, pushing on things here and there, but they should not be person that most appears to deserve the leadership award. ----- As for unit leader, just for the record: "unit leader The adult leader of a unit is a Cubmaster, Scoutmaster, Coach, Advisor, or Skipper." From http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Media/LOS/All.aspx#def-head-u

I know of one troop that solved this problem by charging very high dues but not charging anything for the camping trips. You would tend to get a very self-selected group - active campers could get more than their money's worth, but less active Scouts would feel like they were wasting money. I thought it was a clever solution to the problem. And by getting more committed Scouts, they could really amp up their program. Worked for them. I considered whether we might want to implement it, but I decided against it. Still, it was an interesting idea.

I do agree that education might help in this situation. Boy Scouts even has a decent video, as creepy as it is to watch it with a room full of fifth-graders. My questions would be - why is Scouts the right place to educate people about child abuse? If it's so important, shouldn't the schools be doing it? I know that some of the education is for our own benefit as an organization, but which is more common - a teacher molesting a kid or a Scoutmaster doing it? I don't really know. Sure, inconvenience to 1000 Scoutmasters is worth it to protect 1 boy from abuse. But what if it's 50,000 Scoutmasters? And 800,000 youth? You can just keeping adding requirements and some Scoutmasters and some kids are going to get turned off - I think you have to strike a balance. And I'd be curious to know if there is evidence that the training actually helps (I agree it might, but I don't know). What I've seen of analyses of the D.A.R.E. program suggested it didn't work to keep kids away from drugs. Nor does sex education apparently reduce sex.

what IS to stop a unit from deciding not to participate in the fundraisers the council takes a piece of and instead do their own thing? Nothing. It's just that the council makes it easy to participate in its approved fundraisers, so most units do that. Not all, though.

AnnLaurelB, This one really isn't that complicated. Everyone on the forum here is saying the same thing - this is not a Scout event. (And the thing is, if it was a Scout event, you'd have even better insurance coverage.) But do some people see lines where others don't? You betcha. In this case, though, you have pretty strong evidence given the general agreement of the forum, that this particular person is wrong. And I actually work with lots of nice lawyers who have their sons in Scouts, and every now and then it can be nice to have someone say what the law actually means.

I wanted to weigh in on the Eamonn/Scoutfish debate about the line and whether it's a fine line or a chasm. the premis is this: Just because I invite a few co workers of my boss ( yeah, he's that cool) to my house for a pig pickin or other cookout/ party event - does not make it a work event , nor do any normal work protocals take place. What if your boss does it? What if the company has a softball team that plays in a league? My company does set up sports leagues and it is indeed workman's comp if you get injured while playing. If I am invited to my (now Webelos) leaders house for a party, and I take my son, who plays with his sons..then it is just that...a party, not a scout event But Scouts can have a party, too. If the den leader invites only Scouts, does that make it a Scouting event? How can you tell? There are some church youth groups that roughly correspond to a Scout troop. If the youth group goes camping, is it a Scout event? What makes the difference? Usually with most groups it's pretty clear most/all of the time. But I can easily imagine situations where the line isn't so clear.

Is this really a risk?!? No. I mean, you can get sued any time, but I can't see how it could possibly matter whether there were other Scouts there. I don't think it could be construed as a Scout event, and even if it could, the BSA covers the CO with their insurance. So to summarize, this is a ridiculous notion.

I'd definitely take it slowly, and I would have explored his statement a bit. I think the membership application does say that all members have to recognize they need to do their duty to God. I would tend not to dig too much into this, as the more you dig, the more likely you are to create an issue. The worst case would be where the boy starts telling other boys that he doesn't believe in God and he told you so. Then, boom, there's an issue where you didn't want one. The parents are much more likely to make this an issue than the other Scouts are. Good luck with this one.

We've done this with the pack. With proper supervision, it does not seem all that dangerous. I guess I'd recommend watching it and seeing how it's working before deciding whether it seems dangerous or not. We've had a few injuries over the years, but I can't remember any that happened in a controlled environment. Seems like free play is the most dangerous thing the kids can do.

We used to joke that we needed to have a Sarcasm translating strip so that one of us could clue in the boys that the leaders were not actually serious when they made statements like "I bet that would go over real well."

Reading back over my post, I guess I could summarize it this way. Role model or businessman? Neither describes what I'm looking for.

By and large the presidents have relatively little effect on the economy, but they get all kinds of blame or credit. They do have some impact at the very highest levels, deciding to push for large tax cuts or a balanced budget, but they were not responsible for the Great Depression in the thirties, or the boom in the fifties. Nor for stagflation in the seventies. So except at the very highest level of direction setting, I don't really care what kind of an economist the President is. The President will do things to make it look like he's doing something, but the economy is unbelievably large and it takes a mighty large push to get it to do anything. As far as a role model goes, I'd say that while character is what you do while no one's looking, looking Presidential and being a good role model is what you do that everyone sees. I do prefer that my President looks and acts Presidential. Per Scoutfish's original question, this is where the President would "represent the company in a good light", and this is a basic requirement of the job. I think this is where some of Carter's failings can be attributed - he generally made us feel worse. No Olympics, no Christmas tree, talk of "malaise", hostages, failed rescue attempt - as a kid I never understood how robbing athletes of their dream was the appropriate response to Russia invading Afghanistan. He just seemed like he was clinically depressed or something. Reagan did feel like "morning in America" - it was ok to be proud of your country again. His writings, released later, are actually quite good and represent a pretty coherent philosophy. I do like Ford, for the reasons stated above, and I believe the pardon was the right thing to do. I'm also a great Eisenhower fan - reading back over some of his life leaves me very much impressed with the man. Teddy Roosevelt, too, all but for that Bull Moose thing. I think a President's greatest impact is on matters that aren't always high in visibility - the judges that get appointed leave a lasting legacy, many smaller decisions tend to be made in ways that will satisfy the party faithful, whereas on many big decisions the President will tack toward the middle. Hence Clinton reformed Welfare. Bush 41 approved new taxes. Obama says he's opposed to gay marriage. Etc. So what would I ask from a President? 1. look and act Presidential while representing the country (I think that Ford, Carter, and Bush 43 had challenges here, otherwise I think we did OK from FDR forward) 2. don't screw up in a major way (LBJ screwed up Vietnam, Nixon blew it with Watergate, Clinton had the whole Monica thing) 3. push for policies I agree with - generally, support freedom, don't explode the economy, encourage people to take responsibility for their own lives 4. don't be inept at other Presidential responsibilities (surround yourself with smart people)

Parents should not be attending Webelos den meetings Unfortunately, as a general policy this is contrary to BSA rules, which state that parents in general are welcome to attend any event. Usually it's not a problem. In this case, where you are losing other participants to this guy, I think you have to give him some hard and fast rules. You are well within your rights to demand that dad not attend, especially if you have the other leaders (CM, CC) backing you. Really, it's unlikely that you're going to change super-dad's personality. They probably won't cross over to Boy Scouts, if I had to guess (I'd bet on older brothers mocking him). So making some demands now will likely save others who are sick of dealing with him. Personally, I'd ask him what he hopes to gain by having his son in Webelos. Then I'd give him my list of expected behaviors from parents, and say that if he can follow those rules, he's welcome to stay. When he doesn't, he's gone.

We are a fairly large troop, but we do not have any requirements on the SPL position. As long as we're giving the SPL plenty of leadership responsibility, so that the troop knows that the selection matters, then we've found that the Scouts take the election seriously. They've never elected someone under First Class. We ask each candidate to speak prior to the election. If there are a lot of candidates, this can take awhile. We do the election by paper ballot. The Scoutmaster counts the votes. We do require a majority vote, so if we don't get that on the first round, we'll either do a run-off or an instant run-off (by having the Scouts select their second choice on the original ballot). Last time around we only had two candidates, so there was no need for any plans for a run-off. All we did this time was hand out blank pieces of paper and asked the Scouts to write the name of their first choice. We've usually just used blank paper. After the election, the SPL chooses his ASPL. After that, the patrols choose their patrol leaders, and then the SPL, with advice from the Scoutmaster, appoints Scouts to the rest of the positions (more or less, with exceptions for JASM and den chiefs).