Oak Tree

Kudu, Great job with the trek and the report. "sorta surprised the other adults let a subversive influence like Kudu get his nose in their tents" - I'm not as surprised - I know many troops that would welcome another volunteer who plans optional events that enhance the program. I do give a thumbs-up to the Scoutmaster for encouraging this. Also a big thumbs up to Kudu for how he went about it. He doesn't say so here, but I'm getting the impression he didn't go in there and say "You're doing this all wrong. Let me establish a sub-group within your troop that does things the right way." Looks like a great job of managing the troop's adults as well as the Scouts.

Tahawk, As long as we're talking about theoretical possibilities here, I'm going to hold you to what you might theoretically reply. I don't think blackmail is any more a concern than being prosecuted for theft, but your response to my concern does not match your initial statement. What you suggested: "If you give me the cell phone, we can try to deal with this as a matter between Scouts and your family and try not to get the police involved." Then: " I didn't suggest that you say you will not contact the police " - well, you said you would try not to. Pretty much has the same implication. " unless he gave your ownership of the phone, as opposed to temporary custody," - in your initial statement, all you said was "give", not "let me retain temporary custody of" or "let me have it until we sort this out". I think if your argument of theft is right, then the argument of blackmail is also right. But IANAL. I would never try to take it from him physically if he didn't give it up. Things could get complicated pretty quickly though if you add in other hypotheticals. What if he says, "You can't make me. In fact, I'm going to email this picture I just took to a whole bunch of people." In practice, it might also depend on how big he is and how easily I might just snatch the phone out of his hands for an inspection, or whether or not I could coerce him into going with me to see some other authority (his Scoutmaster, the camp director). This isn't McDonalds, which burned half the skin off a woman's thighs. You're right that we aren't government officials. But even if we're not legally acting in loco parentis, it still feels like there's a lot of semi-parenting that has to be done.

SeattlePioneer - I'm not sure I get what you're saying...we all agree that BSA has the right to set the age anywhere it wants to. The discussion is over whether it should. Also, how often it would matter is pretty much irrelevant on this forum, but I do agree it would be pretty rare in these parts. And Twocub, I find myself almost always in agreement with you, but I'll have to differ on this one. Sure, the BSA has to deal in generalities, but they very often have ways in place to handle exceptions. You have to qualify for Eagle by 18, unless you go through the exception process. You have to have your board of review within three months of that birthday, unless you go through the exception process. A unit has to have at least five Scouts to charter/recharter, unless they go through the exception process. The rules in the G2SS come with my personal favorite G2SS line - "Every possible contingency will not be covered with a hard-and-fast rule, and rules are poor substitutes for experience." For Philmont you have to meet the height/weight guidelines, unless you go through the exception process. It would be easy enough for them to allow for some type of exception process here.

Tahawk, I'm curious. Do you have an example of a youth leader being prosecuted for such a confiscation? I do like your two alternative ways of stating the possible solution to the problem. But with the first option, aren't you now guilty of blackmail? "Give me something of value, or I will release information about you to someone that you don't want to know about it."

I agree on point one; you have two publications that say opposite things. I would interpret the "Scouts never handle discipline issues" as referring to serious discipline issues. Question 10 - I'd say that while Scouts can get others to stop inappropriate behavior, it's the expectation and ultimate responsibility that adults may have to step in. Scouts should not hand down punishments. But saying things like "no games until cleanup is done" is not a punishment, although it could be interpreted as a way of administering discipline. 2. IANAL, but I cannot believe that this would be illegal. Adults in charge of kids remove things from their possession regularly. It could be a knife. It could be a noisemaker. Whatever. In this case, I just cannot believe that it would be illegal. 3. This question, and others throughout the training, are poorly worded. I decided just to roll with it. Quizzes have trick questions; so be it. Words have different definitions in different contexts. It can be hard to take the way it is used in one context and expect it to apply precisely the same way in another context. That's just language. Makes it hard for computers to do a good job translating things.

Total of two, which may have been done at any time since joining.

I'd also like to give kudos to Beavah for being willing to change his position when provided with an argument to the contrary position. I've found the black and white vs. gray thing to vary between young adults and older adults. There are certain things that young people are more likely to see in black and white, and there are other things that older people are more likely to see that way. In general, in all societies, it is young people who tend to be flexible in seeing that old ways aren't working and new ways need to be adopted. I've never had Scouts rigorously push the black and white policy guidelines the way that some adults here do. Sometimes they can be too flexible in these regards, and that is one reason why we end up putting certain defined guidelines in place. On the other hand, young people can also take positions that are a bit out of the mainstream. My biggest concern about putting a 21-year old in charge of a troop would be his ability to get along with the rest of the adults. At the same time, I've also seen a few 40-something adults get removed from their position roughly due to their inability to get along with the rest of the adults. Still, there's a certain maturity and judgment that comes from experience, that can lead an adult to have a quiet confidence in his ability - you can see it in some experienced professors and how they run their classrooms, or some experienced generals when they are interviewed in depth on some of the news shows, or some experienced Scoutmasters. Those people don't feel the need to argue with you when they disagree. They listen to your position intently, they lay out principles, they remain calm, they know how to build consensus. I think Beavah's right that all of us older people can be more stuck in most of our ways, but the better leaders among our age group tend to have more maturity at this one particular type of gray-area thinking than do the younger people.

teacher/scout, Sounds like a good plan to me, too. Here's how I would "finagle" it in one of our units. Have the COR also be registered as the official CC. Then she can delegate all of her duties, including her vote, to you.

The flip side of the coin is that its the job of the CO and the committee to identify and recruit qualified leaders, so maybe any kind of age restriction should be put into their hands? That would be my position.

probably b/c folks are considered minors until 21 You can google for legal definitions of minor and you'll find them everywhere, and they all pretty much say that you are a minor until age 18, except for certain specific instances. At 18 you can enter into a contract. From http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002256----000-.html - minor means any person under the age of eighteen years;

We have seen this work well, and not so well, in our pack. There were cases where the younger brother seemed to resent having his older brother be any type of official "leader" for him. The cases that worked better were those with more of an age gap - with a five-year difference, things were good. With two years, more sibling rivalry. I got to the point where the stated rule was that we would not have brothers as den chiefs, but we'd be happy to have the brother as den chief for another den. I did make an exception when justified.

All elections are in some part popularity contests. If the adults get to pick, then the question becomes which Scouts are popular with the adults. We had one particular case where the boy in question was a kid named Eddie Haskell. Some of the ASMs thought he was great. The kids, not so much. Out of six candidates, he was the only one not elected that year. He was the highest ranking Scout, and he was very active. The dad couldn't understand it. Some of the ASMs couldn't understand it, and were asking how we could change it so the adults determined the outcome. I knew exactly why he wasn't elected. Let the boys vote. Tell them the criteria. Announce the results and again mention the criteria. They can choose to follow the criteria or not. That's always been the case.

http://www.unc.edu/~nielsen/soci111/m17/hs13012a.gif By looking at this graph you'd think that marriage was headed for the trash heap and that soon all marriages would end in divorce. But as the graph on this page shows: http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2010/01/fact_checking_t.html the divorce rate actually peaked in 1980 and has declined ever since (you can verify with other web sites) - even as No-fault divorce spread across all 50 states. Turns out that no-fault divorce was not actually the cause. I doubt that gay marriage will do it either.

Yes, you have it right. Yes, it is easy now. Troop Committee Challenge used to be done in person.

The Troop Committee openly and knowingly choose to break trhe rules when they asked your son to be the Outdoor Coordinator. Bzzzt. It is not against the rules to ask a non-committee member to be the outdoor coordinator. If somehow it were possible that somebody became Scoutmaster who did not meet the BSA's qualificatons, and a disaster happens on a camp out, will the BSA insurance pay? Yes. But woo-hoo! Beavah, look, someone has turned it into a discussion about insurance! They broke rules Scoutfish, I don't see how they broke any rules. They were not official committee members - they were just acting as committee members. Many troops will say that "all parents are members of the committee" but not register them all. Are they "breaking the rules"? Not at all. When it comes down to it, the COR can do whatever he wants here anyway. He can ignore the committee vote. He can use it as advisory only. It's not like there is some binding law here that's being broken. The biggest problem comes from expectations and communications. If the COR had been clear about this with everyone up front, then I think that things would be fine.

Check out the graphic in this article. Something of a trend here. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/gay-marriage-opponents-now-in-minority/

We never did "bridging" for any rank but for the Webelos Scouts who were moving on to Boy Scouts. And in that case we separated the rank ceremony from the bridging ceremony. Not everyone has to earn rank.

How valuable to the Scout Depends, but I've generally seen this be a pretty positive experience for the Scout. The planning process is not always great, and it can result in a lot of nagging by parents, but I'll give a plus to this one. the benefiting organization, Depends again. Most of the projects appear to be something that the organization truly needs. We may have a small number where the organization didn't keep it up (e.g., a refurbished park area becomes overgrown) or where the idea was more the Scout's than the organizations (e.g., how about I put up some signs marking this trail?). On average, the organizations are getting some pretty good work, though. the Troop Definitely good for the younger guys to see the older ones leading these projects. The service work is a good time for people to come together and meet each other. the community? Varies a lot. It depends on how much the community makes use of the organization. Some of our public parks have bridges in wet areas and they get tons of use. Other projects may see a lot less use by the general public. How beneficial is it to have a formal and bureaucratic approval process that a Scout must follow? Again, it depends. It depends a lot on how bureaucratic we're talking about. In our district they recently simplified the process a lot, trying to get down to the minimum requirements of the BSA (i.e., following the "no more" part of "No more, no less"). The old process was way out of hand. It was not beneficial. It was a detriment to every Scout, as far as I was concerned. The new process is a lot better. It seems very reasonable, and I think it's of the level that's appropriate for a Scout to work through. Does this really build "leadership skills"? Yes. Absolutely. As long as mom and dad don't do all the work. How often are the Scouts doing the Eagle Project and how often are the parents or Troop Leaders main actors? I don't know. Behind the scenes, I often suspect the parents are doing a lot of the work. Out in front of the group, we generally have the Scout in charge. People know this and so they reinforce it with each other. My oldest son was 17 when he did his project and he wouldn't even tell me when they were having their work days. He'd just text five of his friends from the troop, they'd all drive over. I stopped by with lunch for them one time - there were no adults present, nor did there need to be. That was one extreme. At the other end are projects where the dad is basically coaching the son on everything ("Don't you think you should have those guys start working on moving the logs?"). Getting the plans in, though - I think that varies a lot, and there are some cases where I'm fairly sure the parent is at least standing over the Scout telling him what to type, if not actually doing some of the work themselves. In addition, it seems to be highly common for the parent to provide the initiative - I've had some parents sit back and say "It's all up to him" and then nothing happens, whereas proactive parents who help provide some framework are more likely to make progress. ("Bob, let's brainstorm what a schedule would look like for completing your Eagle project.") Also, if parents are willing to provide all of the financial support for a project, that can remove an obstacle. In that sense, Scouts have very unequal situations to work with. Would you continue Eagle projects as requirements, end the practice I would continue it. It's a huge part of the BSA brand in the public eye and generally good for the Scouts and the troops. or modify it in specific ways My biggest concern with the project is that it's very unequal from Scout to Scout, from troop to troop, and from council to council, and this is true for many aspects of the project. - I'd like to see the process made much more regular from district to district, with a reduction in the bureaucracy. - I really think there need to be guidelines to the size of project that is expected. "Enough to show leadership" is an exceptionally vague requirement, and in the absence of common practice, I could imagine interpreting that as 2 hours of work or 200 hours of work in different situations. - Troops can vary by how supportive the troop is - do they keep a list of potential Eagle projects? Do they come to the Scout and ask him if he wants to do one of those, or pick his own? Do they have an adult who will sit down with him and coach him through the process? Do they have enough Scouts that will show up at Eagle service projects? Because of this type of variation (and similar variation in other parts of the program), you will tend to see some troops that produce Eagle after Eagle, even though their average Scout isn't any more talented than Scouts in other troops. And I'm not saying those Eagles don't deserve it. It's just that troops that remove obstacles can have a lot more Eagles than troops that don't. I'd like to see that variation reduced, but I'm not sure exactly what I'd recommend to do that. - Parental support is also a huge factor. I'd like to see the impact of that variation reduced in some fashion.

It's true that people can be concerned about the rules. I think the COR could easily manage the set up and yet still follow the official rules. Rules: The COR/IH picks the SM. In order to give the COR a good idea of whom to recommend to the IH, the COR will take a vote of people who are active on the committee, regardless of their registration. Rules: You must be 21 to be on the committee. Nevertheless, you can have non-committee people attend committee meetings. They can still be active on committee items. Work can be delegated to anyone (in most cases) - and the official registered CC can easily delegate all functions of CC except the title. The weird part of the current situation is that the COR appeared to be ok with the current arrangement, all the way up until things got nasty. If your husband or son was elected as SM, they would be in the perfect position to make all the changes they want. Seems like an odd time to walk away.

Over the psst few years I'd say our troop has elected maybe 50% of those who run. But we have a relatively low percentage of those eligible who choose to run - I'm not sure of the exact number, but it's going to be something like 25%. (so for example, maybe 30 eligible Scouts, 10 run, 5 elected). When I ask the ones who don't run why they don't, they just look at me like I'm from some other generation or some other out-of-touch demographic. "Why would I?", they ask. "Not the Ordeal. Not dressing up like Indians. And I don't care about the sash or flap." There's obviously a lot of troop culture that goes into this - if you have active OA members who are enjoying it, I'm sure more people are likely to run. Our OA members have only some very sporadic attendance. Still, that's the meaning of the "OA Brand" in their eyes - some Scouts who do a weird Ordeal thing and dress up like Indians. I'm sure if I told them that could also go do some service, that would really boost the numbers. The ones who do stand for election seem to do it because of the recognition aspect, the same reason that people generally join honor societies everywhere. My opinion - the honor would be much more attractive if it wasn't so strongly associated with the two items I mentioned. Other honor societies do not have day-long induction ceremonies. Also, boring us to death at summer camp with long monotonous dance numbers is something I'd get rid of, and even the induction ceremony could do with a fair bit of shortening. I think I'd add something that makes the OA look more fun. Include some kind of public benefit that only the OA guys get to do - an OA motorboat, or an OA air-conditioned lounge, or an OA machine gun down at the range, or something. Even if you have fun chapter meetings and a fun conclave, you need something that the non-members can see.

I did once send out a note after a winter backpacking trip detailing all of the preparation that the leaders had made and what type of extras we had just-in-case (extra fuel, extra down jacket, hand warmers, extra gloves, load lightening options, extraction options, etc). I think it went a long ways to convincing people that we did know what we were doing. Several people asked me if there was some particular parent who had expressed concern.

Who gets to decide what are stupid rules? You do. There is a proud tradition to civil disobedience. Also a long tradition of pretend speed limits. Riddle: What's the most common legal lie these days?...."I have read and agree to the terms and conditions ..."

You could camp here: http://www.gb.nrao.edu/nrqz/

you can't ignore them. Literally? Are you sure? I pretty much think you can. If a leader walks into a public restroom and I know there's only one Scout in there, I'm going to ignore that "rule" and not call the SE. Yep. It's true. You've got me. People ignore this rule all the time. It's not a law. It's some editor's choice of wording. Maybe they didn't want to use the word "serious" because they were worried people would debate what that meant. So instead they went way over to the other side, still knowing that people will only be reporting the serious items, because it turns out that most people actually use some judgment.

Well, I do have various data points on my council's membership for various years. The Learning for Life program is very much a come-and-go kind of thing. I don't know how they really track "members". The reports mostly focus on traditional membership, and I'm fine with that.