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

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,

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

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 ar

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

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 mor

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

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

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

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

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

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,

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