Oak Tree

Ours is titled to an individual. You can go find past postings on this topic and see a variety of responses - some have the CO do it, some have it in the troop name (despite the insistence of others that you can't do this), some have it in individual names. Our CO didn't want to own any vehicles.

SeattlePioneer, Yes, you are right, our pack did benefit from the recruiting efforts of the DEs - they made flyers to take to the schools, yard signs for recruiting night, organized one recruiting night for the whole district, etc. I think it's more about the way it is presented. If the presented shows a video that says "here's all the ways your pack benefits", but in fact our pack doesn't actually benefit from those things, then the message rings pretty hollow. Very few of our Cub Scouts attend day camp - it just seems that the unit activities are better run, less chaotic. I agree that there have to be professionals in place at the council level to create the structure for the volunteers to operate in. We actually do offer to do our own FOS presentations. Usually the district takes us up on it, although sometimes reluctantly, and sometimes they really pressure us to use the district presenter. I suspect that they think if we use our own presenter, we won't try quite so hard to get the money (and they may be right). Sometimes we use our own presenter, but the district sends along their guy to help out with a word or two and to help collect the money, and that works fine. I guess my biggest problem with FOS is the misrepresentation. I don't really mind non-profits asking for donations. I like AvidSM's point - the money goes to pay for salaries and expenses at the council level. I'd like more transparency on where the money goes, and more efficiency in how it's spent, but mostly it's the pitch that I don't really like - and that does vary from year to year. Now that we control the message, I'm generally happier with it. So where does the money go? We have a DE for our district. We get about 1/3 of an office worker, and and 1/13 of an SE and a Controller and a Financial Specialist, etc. There are roughly two people on staff per district. I'm roughly estimating that the cost per employee of salary, benefits, office space, travel, etc comes to around $100,000. There are about 2,000 Scouts in our district. So that comes to around $100 per youth member. That's in the right ballpark. Now, what do these people do with their time? This, I'll admit, I don't have a really good feel for. Based on all the posts in this forum, it starts to feel like they must spend a lot of their time on the phone with dysfunctional units.

I've never been a big fan of FOS either. I was especially not a fan as a Cub Scout leader, where we seemed to take advantage of virtually none of the services offered by the council. Subsidize camp? Why on earth would we want to do that? I really didn't see much need for anything beyond a National registration system, and we were already paying dues that should cover that. As a Boy Scout leader we use more things. We go to summer camp. We sign up for more events. We have contact with the Eagle registrar. I see there is a need for some professionals to back up the volunteers. But it does seem like a relatively large part of the professionals' time is spent raising money, and if they didn't have to do this, they wouldn't need as many professionals or as much money. That, coupled with some startling inefficiencies in the system (why aren't all tour permits done on line? The council has the only fax machine I ever make use of...aren't most of those in museums by now?) just makes me wonder about what my money is really paying for. By and large, I'm a fan of people paying their own way. If it costs money to run council, why don't we charge for it? That's what the YMCA does. And then they offer half-price memberships to people below a certain income.

You need to get to know your COR and especially the IH (Institutional Head, Senior Pastor). I don't think you'll have any trouble convincing the parents/committee to replace this guy, but that's going to have to go through the COR/IH. Can you sit down with either of them and have an honest discussion about why they started the troop? How did he get registered as SM? Who processed all the paperwork for the charter? Quite honestly, I'm not sure why you need or want this church to be your CO. It might be easier for you all to just go find another CO. One of the parents must go to a church that would be willing to do this. Do you have another candidate for SM in mind? You'll need one, whichever route you take.

For the last two years our district camporee has focused on merit badges. I am not normally a fan of the merit badges as taught at summer camp or at merit badge universities, but these badges at the camporee were pretty well done by all accounts. Prior to this, the district used to run some type of challenge station, where you'd go around from place to place and complete the task at the station. These were not as well done, and I think there are a few reasons for this. There was nothing to lose or gain by doing the station well or poorly, for either the presenter or the participants. The stations were typically dictated by an overall camporee theme, so the troops didn't come up with them, and didn't put a whole lot of energy into them. Last year we did the historical merit badges. This year it was Geocaching. In both cases the district divided up all the requirements and asked each troop to run a station where one or two (or even one-half) requirements were covered. The troops all did pretty nice jobs with this. They could pick the requirement they were good at, do a pretty thorough job of covering it, and check each boy to whatever level they wanted to. Because the badges weren't necessarily intended to be earned there, it was fine to go home with partials. There were no time requirements - boys could move to whichever station they wanted to. There was no pressure to sign off on requirements that had not actually been achieved. I was pretty happy with this. The boys get to interact with multiple "experts", and it was definitely more organized and more effective than other styles of camporees in the past.

Doesn't everyone know this? Where's our cultural literacy going to these days? :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JlVqfC8-UI Try typing "hug him and squeeze him" into google with google instant turned on, and it will suggest completing the phrase with "and call him George." You can note that while this is the common version of the phrase, it does not appear in exactly this order in the actual cartoon.

The combination of wind and rain can drive water in from the sides - that's one reason why I prefer flys that go to the ground. For ordinary wind, most tents do fairly well. I've been through some decent wind with groups of Scouts and families, and we haven't really seen any tents fail under typical wind load. That said, your sturdier tents will have more guy-out points. That will attach the tent to the ground more firmly and it will hold its shape better. It will also reduce flapping of the material in the wind. I'd go with something like the Kelty Palisade. The google reviews liked the roominess, the vestibule, the set-up, and the solid performance. I'm sure there are other tents like this too.

Personally, I'd go with a 6-man tent. The one you list is bigger, although maybe that's ok. I also personally will not buy a tent that doesn't have a fly that goes all the way to the ground. I'd also go with a bigger vestibule. That said, in sunny weather, pretty much any tent will do.

I get a very vivid picture of the situation from your writing - you do a nice job with the descriptions. I was a Cubmaster for four years and I have personal experience with a variety of other situations involving some seriously misbehaving children. Here's my opinion: You CANNOT fix this child through Cub Scouts. He will resist any scheme (widgets, whatever) that you put in place. He will not change his behavior to become liked - he is always (at least as far as you're concerned) going to be a holy terror. AS THE CUBMASTER in charge of an event, DO I, at that moment, have the authority to SEND HIM HOME Yes. Absolutely. And I left off the reason that you listed, because you can do so at your discretion for any reason. My opinion - the best you're going to do is to make it clear that he can't follow the rules and be non-disruptive, and at that point they'll probably give up on coming. You could set up some rules for acceptable behavior, with the rule that his grandmother has to take him out of the room when he violates those rules. I don't see him fixing his behavior, but maybe you'll get lucky.

I sent (what I thought was) a pretty compelling email to everyone in the church who I thought appropriate, as well as to ALL of my parents, and got NOT ONE RESPONSE. I did this a few times before I realized I was never going to get many, if any, responses to these types of notes. From then on I did all of my recruiting one-on-one. I got a lot better at asking people individually if they would do it. They are much more willing to say yes when asked to do a specific thing. Not always, but often.

American Red Cross Leave No Trace

BadenP - Yep, roger that. Rex has no time for the minutiae of BSA policy politics anyway. Still, even with just the title, add that to the donations and the support of Exxon and whatever, and I'm still saying that if he wanted to get something done, he could just shoot his good friend Bob an email and things would happen. I'm still curious to see how some of these companies reconcile their sponsorship with their diversity policies. Some companies will not make matching donations to BSA because of the gay issue. Exxon isn't in that camp, yet, but some other big companies, like IBM, are. At some point we'll get to see which customers carry the most weight.

I don't think Rex Tillerson will be demanding any ridiculous items in response to being a donor. His day job is being the CEO of Exxon. He was at the National Jamboree, spent time talking with regular Scouts and Scouters. He was wearing his own uniform from when his son was in Scouts. I'm sure he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he's the National President. If he wants to implement something, he can probably make it happen. The only thing I think he might concern himself with would be items of national policy. I've often wondered how the CEOs of these Fortune 500 companies perceive the discrimination complaints against the BSA. I'm sure Exxon is aggressive about not allowing discrimination based on sexuality or religion or gender. I'd think the CEOs would virtually have to align themselves with that policy in any public statements, but then you do have the other national customers - the large COs - lining up on the other side.

I think we'll have to wait for the annual meeting and see what the real announcement looks like. I don't object to having this option available, but I agree that this is not the thing that's going to make a big difference to Boy Scouts. The thing that makes Scouting a distinctive activity is the focus on the outdoors and camping. That's the brand. It's never going to be the case that Boy Scouts and the Robotics Club get mixed up in your mind.

I'd think that most of the causality runs in the other direction. Good troops that have a good program will have good retention, and they will also happen to meet the quality requirements. I don't think most of them get better because of trying to meet the requirements - they got better because they wanted to offer a better program.

I got to watch some Scouts do the EDGE requirement. They mostly just bleep over 'EDGE' and see 'teach someone a square knot.' I think the EDGE stuff is useful as a situational leadership model - saying that when groups are in different stages, then different styles of leadership are appropriate. As a teaching model I don't see the point of using it. But for the Scouts, it's just one more requirement to do in a long line of requirements that may or may not make any sense to them. They don't worry about whether it's stupid to teach them internet safety yet again, they just sit through it and get it checked off. They don't worry about EDGE - they just know that they should understand the square knot well enough to teach it. Yes, it's a tempest in a teapot. But we have to argue about something :-)

It at least means that Rex Tillerson is a customer.

We don't have "bylaws" by that name, but we do have some operating procedures, some of which sound a lot like by-laws. I think that it can be useful to detail how you're going to handle a situation ahead of time, especially if that's a situation that comes up again and again from time to time. We've never had to resort to our document in terms of how we would handle unruly Scouts. Maybe we're just lucky. At this point, I feel like we could remove that section, and just deal with it if it ever comes up. But I can see how some people might feel better if it were written down. They might say something like "Any inappropriate behavior by a leader will be addressed through a one-on-one discussion with the committee chair, who has the power to take action as he or she determines to be fair, without necessarily consulting with other members of the committee."

I'd say they are all different sizes and styles of customers. I agree with Eamonn that units view the kids/parents/families as the primary customer. And districts are there to support the unit leaders. I agree with Beavah only in the theoretical sense that what councils do is sell charters. They really make their money by selling memberships, and the membership number appears to be the coin of the realm. And not just member numbers, but the number of units. It seems to me like council views one of their primary jobs to be starting new units. I think individual COs barely register. They don't complain, they don't show up, they aren't that hard to find. If you have some people who want to start a unit, you can find a place to host it. I do think big donors are customers. But they are the customers in the sense that you don't want to do anything to tick them off. I think this is one reason the BSA is so quick to expel volunteers who have any kind of question mark over their head. National chartering partners definitely are an important customer. This probably is the primary reason for some of the conservatism that shows through - a number of these groups might have particular items they are focused on, and the BSA is loathe to change any of these. This diverse focus is one reason why professionals might not come across the best they could. In my council I've had no issues whatsoever - I've genuinely had good dealings with the SE, the DE, the Field Director, the office personnel. We did connect up with one guy who seemed to be really lazy, but other than that, I can't complain anything like what I hear from some of the rest of you. Our state parks, on the other hand, appear to have no customer focus whatsoever. I guess that's what happens when all (or most) of your money comes from the government and you don't get rewarded based on how much money you bring in.

I would guess the practice comes from places where you had to bring your own water. When you were ready to leave, you dumped what you had left on the fire, which may not have cooled it all the way down to room temperature. So as your last act before you leave, you go ahead and empty one last store of water onto the fire. I'm presuming that removal for encouraging Cub Scouts to do it is more about youth protection and nothing to do with Leave No Trace violations.

moosetracker, I don't think we have a direct contradiction. The pictures were of "enclosed fire pits". You can also have an open raised fire. A lot of those have removable lids. Your solution is a good one for some situations.

I have to believe that the failure rate is 1: People not wearing PFDs. 2. People wearing PFDs incorrectly. 3. Way, way down the list - PFD failure. "U.S. Coast Guard statistics show that approximately 70% of all fatal boating accident deaths are caused by drowning. Of those who drowned, approximately 90% were not wearing their Personal Flotation Device (PFD)" "The safest PFD is the one you are actually wearing" "PFD Maintenance Your PFDs must be in serviceable condition, which means:The buckles or zippers must work correctly.The straps must be securely attached and not torn.The fabric must not be frayed or deteriorated.The seams must not be torn.The buoyant material must still be resilient and not compressed, waterlogged, or moldy." From http://www.ehow.com/facts_6973271_maximum-device-keep-person-afloat_.html "No Failure-Related Drownings The U.S. Coast Guard reports no instance of anyone drowning while wearing a properly selected, fitted and fastened PFD" and "Only Inflatables Actually Fail" Those with foam cores are leak-proof - that is, it doesn't matter if they are sealed properly. From the US Coast Guard "While the number of people who boat has steadily increased, the number of drownings (excluding other fatalities) has decreased from about 1500 to 500 annually (from 1971 to 1996) since Type III PFDs were introduced. Equally important, the number of drownings when a PFD was "used" has decreased from nearly 200 to about 55 over the same period. So, while the total number of drownings has been significantly reduced (especially in light of increased boating) the drownings with a PFD used has been even more significantly reduced." and "[in 2006] About 51 people died in accidents where PFDs were used, but only in a few of those cases is there any indication that a higher performing PFD might have prevented the drowning. In the majority of cases, other contributing factors would have overcome the benefits of any PFD. The factors include: being trapped in an overturned boat, being held under a boulder or log by the strong currents of white water, removing the PFD for some reason (like swimming to shore), becoming hypothermic due to the duration of exposure in cold water, suffering other injuries that led to drowning, etc."

I've got three, more or less. One for cold weather. It's a zero-degree bag with about a foot of down on top of the feet. One for cool weather that serves as the main bag for most trips. It was originally a 10-degree bag, but I'm sure it's more like a 20 or 25 degree bag by now. One for warm/hot weather. It's a forty-degree down bag that packs down to a baseball. I thought about doing the 50-degree bag, but for the extra ounce of down, I went with the forty-degree bag.

I'm just sick of going through this crap every spring. Our troop used to rearrange patrols completely each year. My wife dreaded that time of year because we'd been unable to figure out any way to do it without making some parent angry, and she didn't like seeing me absorbed with some unhappy parent. One year we had a situation with the new Scouts that really made some people very frustrated. After their time in Cubs, there were some really strong friendships and some really bad anti-friendships. There was no way to split the boys that made people satisfied - and in retrospect, our problem was that we tried to come up with such a way. We would have been better off making it clear right off the top that people were going to have to deal with being unhappy. The system that you described may have worked ok. I did use that system one year to remix all eight patrols. It was lucky enough that it was going to work out evenly. But what happened was the two most unliked Scouts didn't get picked in the first round, so they had to be buddies even though they were barely passing acquaintances. Then, of course, no other pair wanted to pair up with those two, so it was the next least-liked pair that got stuck with them. Now I had a group of the four "worst" Scouts in the troop. The other groups of four were all reasonable, and one of those groups generously agreed to merge with the other four. The patrol, not unexpectedly, completely fell apart over the following months and eventually got split up and merged among the other patrols. Now we do very little adjusting of patrols, just what a single boy or two might ask for, or when the PLC decides that a patrol has stopped being viable. We only got one patrol of new Scouts this year. Ah, the bliss. Next year we'll get two. I haven't decided what we want to do at that point. The NSPs work very well for us. That's not on the table for changing. The earlier the troop has moved the Scouts into regular patrols, the worse feedback the boys have given. They now recommend keeping the NSPs for a year. We'll see how it goes - each group has a somewhat different personality. I have no great solution here, other that what Eagledad says - make sure you're very clear with the parents ahead of time about what you're going to do. Especially if there's a hint that there's going to be a problem, communicate clearly and frequently. At least, that's what I'll try to tell myself. Some years, no issues at all. A magic pill would be great.

I'm not sure I get why it would be hard to get this by the LDS. Just allow units to have the option. That's the way Venturing is set up, and the LDS uses Venturing with only male crews. I find it hard to believe the LDS is the real sticking point here. We'd have to change the name. Maybe keep it as BSA, but have it be the "Bisexual Scouts of America." Oh, wait, I may have that wrong... "Bodacious Scouts of America" "Button-wearing Scouts of America" Maybe we'd go with "Brave Scouts of America". After all, by declaration, a Scout is brave.