Oak Tree

In our troop, when we say "Class B" uniforms, we normally mean some type of Scouting t-shirt and whatever pants you want to wear. Yes, I know that "Class B" isn't an official term, but that's what most of the BSA world calls the activity uniform, and that's not the point, anyway. My question is this: do any of your troops normally mean "Scout pants" when you tell the Scouts to wear the activity uniform (or their "Class B" uniform)? If so, why? (Beyond just the fact that that's what the BSA says.) And if not, why do you think National describes the activity uniform in this way? What do you think is being accomplished by having uniform pants? Does it really represent the spirit of equality? Does it identify a young man as a brother to every other Scout? Does it promote comradeship, loyalty, or public recognition?

For those of you who want the answer, you'll be waiting awhile to find a quote. It is not prohibited anywhere, as Basementdweller correctly observes. The closest thing I know of is that the G2SS states that "winter camping" is not age-appropriate for Cubs. But we regularly take our pack camping in the early spring and late fall and the temperature is often below freezing. We even have a pack award for it. It usually warms up pretty quickly during the day. Heck, we even camp in the "winter", but around here, it's not what I really think of as winter. It can be 80 degrees in December. But you should always apply some judgement. Taking experienced second-year Webelos Scouts camping in the snow might be one thing, while taking a new Tiger family could be disastrous.

I've heard the Cooking rumor, too, and even recently. My presumption is that it usually means that such things are at least under discussion. Will they actually come to pass? Who knows. Same thing with the girl units. I've heard enough people coming back from Philmont who talked to people on National committees to believe that there is at least some discussion going on. We'll just have to wait and see. Some of these type rumors do come true. There is a new Scuba merit badge. We did get the red out of the uniforms (something I heard well before it happened.) Take 'em one at a time.

What all would have to change? You would need some new youth protection guidelines. Presumably you'd want to train leaders on how to deal with boys who are showing off all the time :-), but would that really be a big deal? Other countries do it all the time. Would you need a new name for the organization? I think this would be a branding transition. Can you really call it BSA? Maybe you could call it Bodacious Scouts of America but stick with the BSA brand and fleur-de-lis. Other than figuring out a few new protocols for showering at summer camp, how big of a change would it really be?

On the larger issue here, is there really a serious move afoot to include girls at all levels of Scouting? My understanding from long ago was that the BSA and the GSUSA had at least a tacit agreement that the BSA was not going to do that. That was my understanding as well. However, I have heard rumblings about having BSA sponsor some all-girl units. That would be a less-traumatic way of introducing more girls at the lower levels, and I can see where it would make it harder to argue against. Then maybe, over time, you'd end up with offering an option for a CO to combine their two single-gender units. It was a real rumor from someone who has reasonable connections.

I agree with Lisabob - even if there were enough willing men, that doesn't mean they'd be the best leaders. The best leaders, male or female, should be the ones in the positions. Now, I do see that there is some advantage to having some male role models around. And actually, Lisa, I had to smile at your comment that "you'd think there would be a huge clamor (from those same circles) to have 100% male Cub leaders." I've had a number of mothers in Cub Scouts tell me that they really liked having male den leaders. Our pack is now 100% male in the den leader/Cubmaster positions, despite having no policy or even mild inclination to prefer males over females. As a total aside, leaders are absolutely members of BSA. I don't think there is anything inconsistent about having co-ed leaders with single-sex units. That's the way almost all sports teams are at the high school and college levels.

"It's not fair that some kids have better access to swimming pools than others." That's certainly true. Most things in life aren't fair. It's not fair that some kids have way better Scoutmasters than others. For almost every requirement, some kids have it easier than others. And swimming is a pretty important skill, especially in Scouting. I personally hate the floating requirement. When I was a kid, I couldn't float at all, no way. I'd sink straight to the bottom and sit there. I don't recall for sure, but I must have passed the test with some gentle sculling. Still, it doesn't really feel like floating if you're keeping yourself afloat with hand motion.

do they really need to go ticking off more people then they already have? The answer that I think the lawyers would give is yes, they do need to protect their brand. If they are aware of people using it without authorization and do nothing to stop it, then they can lose legal protection. Hence all manner of organizations sue the little guy. Companies do it all the time, even when they don't really want to. Get your law firm to send out a "Cease and desist" letter. It seems to me like there must be some way that they could let groups get authorization more easily, but I can see where you need to retain some control. Don't want some random patrol of jokesters producing a wildly inappropriate patch.

When my oldest son crossed over into the troop, the two best ASMs were female. They "got" the program, treated the boys the way the program suggests, and volunteered to help out with all manner of adult jobs. Without the two of them I suspect the troop would have pretty much folded. We had male ASMs who made inappropriate comments to the boys, who acted like dictators to the boys, who ignored safety rules with the boys, who did way less than sufficient planning. I think the worst thing about them was that they would sometimes report feeling discriminated against at the district level. One said when she went to the district Eagle boards of review, they made sure she was always on a board of four adults (i.e., there were at least three men on every board). Sometimes the old boys' network had a way of making itself known, even if it wasn't official outright discrimination. I really found myself disappointed by this treatment. They seemed to just let it roll off their backs, with a "that's-just-how-it-is" attitude, although they certainly gravitated toward work where they felt welcome. I did have a couple dads in the troop mention how strange it felt to have women leaders in the troop, but they were doing so more as a comparison with how Scouting had changed since their youth. I'm not aware that we ever had any issues with women serving, and I doubt strongly that any argument advanced in this regard would convince me that it was appropriate to ban women from any particular role. A particular woman? Sure, just the same as a particular man. Not everyone is suited for everything, but I'd prefer to evaluate people as individuals, not just as a representative of their gender (or race, or religion, or ...)

In general I'm not a big fan of unions. without the union, those same businesses would prefer to pay YOU the pennies on the dollar I find that highly unlikely. I work for a large company that has no unions (and in general there are no unions for my field of work) and pay is competitive. Businesses will pay what they need to in order to hire the people they need. Some work can move around easily, some can't. Over time, unions can't, in general, get companies to may them more than they are worth. Some unions do have strangleholds, and some employers are effectively monopolies, so that complicates the picture a bit. But for normal labor maintaining town parks, I don't even see why that needs to be a government job. Just bid it out.

ooh, I like that idea. :-) Wear all six of the acquatics badges on the sides of your swim trunks/uniform pants. A great option for any Scout who can't wear enough patches on his shirt. I'm just glad we have yet another option for uniform pants. For awhile, we called them the old pants/new pants. And then there were the old old pants, and the old new pants, and the new pants. But now I'm just going to give up on trying to put a name on any particular style.

We get great parent participation at den meetings and pack meetings (and we have lots of registered parents who help out at troop meetings.) If you attend, I think it's certainly a responsibility to not be disruptive or disrespectful. With Cub Scouts, the boys will very much take their cues from you. With Boy Scouts, less so. But the comments you make, the attitude you show, it all has an effect. And there certainly is a pretty significant correlation between the kids whose parents are registered leaders, and the kids who stick with the program.

I have bulging manly arms and I love the roll-up sleeves. Wear the shirt that way about 80% of the time. Maybe the reason the sleeves roll-up over my forearms is that I have a generally overgrown body, height and weight, that requires a pretty good sized shirt to start with. oldsm, do you look like Popeye? I think he'd have a lot of trouble with the roll-up sleeves.

And if you decide it is for you, I certainly would recommend not posting anything that would immediately disqualify you nor anything that might allow people to identify you. Something like, say, a declaration of atheism/agnosticism and a first name and last initial. :-) If you hang around the forums long enough, you can acquire thousands of postings. Someone you know might actually be able to id you based on a composite.

Some few athletic classes actually have the capability to do this now (determine who is to be held to a higher standard). In the old world, the goal might have been to run the mile in 9 minutes. Athletes could breeze through it, other people would have to struggle hard to make it, some people couldn't do it. If the class is supposed to be about learning how to get more fit but they get graded on their time, the athlete gets a good grade despite doing nothing to actually get more fit. They came along with heart rate monitors. (I highly recommend the book Spark for an inspiring description of this can work.) Now they can tell not just how fast you ran, but how hard your body was working. And they can tell you how hard you need to work in order to get a certain grade, or whatever (which is directly related to what you need to do to get more physically fit). In the past, could the PE teacher have tried to push the guys harder? Sure. But it's a tough judgement call, and it can be painful when you get it wrong. Should we push some kids harder? I don't really like the word 'push' in that sentence. We should motivate them. We should recognize that they can do more, and we should inspire them to do it. Not because they have to, but because they want to. One of the big downsides to Eagle, in my opinion, is that it's pass/fail. People learn early on that if you're only going to get rewarded for passing, why should you try to get an 'A'? Even the 11-year olds can see that if they want to get Tenderfoot and/or Physical Fitness, there's no point in trying too hard on that first test. Whatever you reward, you will get more of. Reward people for just doing the minimum, you'll get more people doing just the minimum. Reward people for running slow on the first test, and you'll get more people running slow on the first test. Even if you figure out how to motivate some of the higher-potential kids to do more, it doesn't really fix the problem that boys will still look around, and they will see less talented/less well-behaved/less smart/less fit boys getting Eagle, and they'll wonder what it really says. The fact is, people can and do get Eagle for doing around the minimum. This encourages some and discourages others. I'm not too worried about it. We're having fun in the outdoors, and we're learning and making great friends. That's enough for me.

Sure, you can joke about certain topics without being prejudiced. Watching Michael on The Office dealing with learning that Oscar is gay, for example, is laugh-out-loud funny without being derogatory to gays. But I'm taking kcs_hiker at his word, here, that the jokes and stories were indeed negative, derogatory, prejudiced, whatever. I've known guys like those (or at least, I think I do, based on the briefest of descriptions), and I'm not picturing a Jay Leno style gentle delivery. I do agree with Beavah that the word 'homophobic' is an awful construction. People who make jokes about blacks we call 'racist', not 'Negrophobic'. People who belittle women we call 'sexist', not 'gynophobic'. If you try to fire old people, you are guilty of 'ageism', not 'gerontophobia'. If you generally think of yourself as better than all those white trash families, you are an 'elitist', not a 'penurophobe'. If you make fun of fat people, you are exhibiting either 'fat-ism' (170,000 hits on google) or 'weight-ism' (265,000 hits), but you are not likely to be called an 'obesiphobe'. (4 hits, which all look to be mocking the term.) It is certainly clever wording to get your opponents labelled with what amounts to an ad hominem attack. Wikipedia actually has way more discussion of this term than one might expect. It even references a group of psychologists from the University of Arkansas who conducted research that showed that participants responses were not fear-based but reflected a disapproval of homosexuality that was due to other factors, such as disgust. There's no great alternative, though. 'Heterosexism' is one suggestion. 'Sexual prejudice' is another. The most parallel construction would be something like 'sexual orientation-ism', and that sure doesn't roll off the tongue. One other word like that is 'xenophobe.' I guess we live with 'homophobia.' Nothing else is likely to come along any time soon from what I can see. I will say, though, that I don't really find most of these other items appropriately funny, either: It's OK to joke about Senator McCain's age and forgetfulness even when it would be completely inappropriate to joke about the elderly more generally. I don't like these because they don't seem to actually be joking about any actual forgetfulness on McCain's part. They just seem to think that it's funny that old people get dementia sometimes. It's OK to joke about Sarah Palin's intelligence, even if it's not OK to do that about women more generally. Yes, by coming across poorly in national interviews that you yourself wanted, you've got to be prepared for some ribbing. But a lot of the jokes I hear about Sarah Palin seem much more hostile than funny. It's OK to joke about Senator Kennedy as a drunken Irishman, Not a fan of portraying the Irish as drunks. Or of Polish people as the 'Polocks' of the overwhelming jokes of my childhood. Now, jokes about him being a drunk or a poor driver, those kind of go with the territory. Governor Schwartzenegger as da Austrian Terminator Here's one we agree on. No issue at all with joking about Arnold or calling him Austrian. Is there some prejudice that Austrians are normally robots that we'd be reinforcing? Arnold makes fun of himself all the time. And yes, Michael Jackson was a pretty rich target. Were the jokes just that he seemed to gradually becoming white? Or did they feel a little more hostile? Were there any jokes about anything else? If a group of white Scouters is sitting around making jokes only about gays and blacks, that just doesn't seem quite right somehow. You'd need to hear the jokes, I guess, to be sure. Without that, it's hard to argue, since we could be imagining very different jokes.

We've had den chiefs join our den campouts, and it was always a great success. If he's into the job enough to want to come along, he should do fine. We always had ours tent alone. On another point: As a side note, Webelos doesn't need to be capitalized. What shortridge means by this, I believe, is that it doesn't need to be in ALL CAPS. It does need to be capitalized. You can find lots of details on how Scouting uses various words at the Language of Scouting Web site: http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Media/LOS.aspx Some of it is pretty consistent. I think it feels wrong to capitalize Web site, though. And it says that Webelos is only used as an adjective. The boy is a Webelos Scout, not a Webelos. This seems to be contrary to how almost every Cub Scouter uses the word.

click23 got the most important ones. Many uniform myths can be dispelled by the Insignia Guide. Usually not as big a deal as some of the others. I'd also suggest having a copy of the Troop Committee Guidebook. You pretty much need a copy of Boy Scout Requirements for other reasons, but it can be handy for myth-busting as well.

When I first looked at tjhammer's chart, I thought, "Wow, people get a lot more liberal when they move from Alabama to Massachusetts." Then I decided that maybe I was reading the chart wrong. :-) Younger people are far more accepting of gay marriage than older people are (news flash, I know). As the old people die off, the overall sentiment will grow more in favor of accepting gay marriage. Now, you might argue that all this graph shows is that people grow more conservative as they grow older. Certainly a possibility, but really? That much more conservative? So let's add a time dimension to this and see how societal attitudes overall are changing over time. And Brent, you are right that the military's position on Don't Ask, Don't Tell is not legally related to the right of free assembly. I was just using it as one more data point showing the overall shift of societal attitudes and ongoing isolation of the BSA position. Here are some of the other data points. National Opinion Research Center Poll What about sexual relations between two adults of the same sex - do you think it is always wrong? 1991: 76% say it is always wrong 2006: 56% UCLA Freshman Study It is important to have laws prohibiting homosexual relationships. 1987: 53% agree 2007: 26% 2003 Gallup Now Id like you to think about how your attitudes toward gays and lesbians might have changed in the past few years. More accepting: 32% Less accepting: 8% In general, do you think homosexuals should or should not have equal rights in terms of job opportunities? Gallup 1977: Should - 56%, Should Not - 33% Gallup 2007: Should - 89%, Should Not - 8% Gallup Polls, 1997->2003 Do you think homosexuals should or should not be hired for each of the following occupations? Percent answering "Should" Salesperson: 68%->92% Doctors: 44%->82% Armed Forces: 51%->80% Newsweek Do you think gays and lesbians should or should not be able to serve openly in the military? 1998 Should: 56% 2007 Should: 68% Newsweek Does this apply to you? Have a friend or close acquaintance who is gay or lesbian 1985: 22% 2000: 56% Do you think marriages between homosexuals/same sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages? Gallup 1999: 35% say it should Gallup 2007: 46% UCLA Freshmen Study Same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status. 1997: 50% 2007: 68% Would you favor or oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt a child? 1977: Favor: 14% 2007: Favor: 57% How long will this trend continue? Hard to say. Based on the attitudes of the younger generation, looks like it might go on for awhile. There is a pretty significant core resistance cohort, though, that appears to primarily be religion-based. For now, in the short term, it appears to limit the support of gay rights to around 55 or 60%. Still, that's a majority. Over a longer time, too, I think that the younger people will continue to be more accepting, and as the older people die off, things are inevitably going to change over the next couple of decades. And gay marriage is now legal in 4 states. At some point, people will realize it doesn't really hurt them much to allow this. Gays get married, life goes on. It's also legal in 7 European countries and in Canada. Fortune, 2006: "Some 249 of the Fortune 500 offer health and other benefits to the same-sex partners of their employees. That's up from just 28 a decade ago." (In 1982 it was 0. In 2009 it's 293.) The times, they are a-changing.

Clearly it's much easier for the council to have the Scout round up the letters. What can happen, though, is that the council can say, "We'll schedule your BoR once we have the letters or we have made other contact with the references." Then the cone of silence descends. Obviously the council has to wait some amount of time to see if the letters come in. How long? The rules say that if the forms are not returned "in a timely manner", they have to make contact. How long is "timely"? I've had boys waiting months. When we check back with the council, they say, "Oh, right, we still haven't had a letter or contact with so-and-so." They didn't bother to tell us. Just very frustrating. It doesn't seem like you should have to push on council every step along the way. I had a Scout miss out on an Eagle palm due to this type of delay.

No, the last time I checked, I was definitely not female. Toastmasters is a fine suggestion. It was the wording before it that struck me as a bit condescending. And there is absolutely no doubt that men's and women's brains are wired differently. I was enjoying the self-referential nature of the problem, in that you appeared to be dismissively stereotyping a group of people during a discussion of how to stop people from dismissively stereotyping a group of people. I'm not trying to come across as hostile. I think, though, that you might again be participating in an interesting case of demonstrating the issue while discussing the issue. It is apparently quite difficult to get people not to be defensive when it is suggested that their comments are inappropriate. Your alternative of talking directly about it rather than going to the CO is certainly a potential direction, and I have no issue with a discussion of that. I don't even have an issue with a discussion of how men and women might approach solving problems differently, although I'll point out that it's hard to go from an average for some group of people to predicting a specific response by a given individual. So here I sit, bemused by the whole thing. We're all anonymous individuals on the internet. How might I best get you to at least give some thought to how your previous posting came across? How might I get you to attend to the quality of the relationships here while still trying to solve the problem? Is there any way I can get you not to try to dominate and assume authority, and not to be defensive when that authority is questioned? Since you're a man, maybe not. :-) Anyway, here I am, in your words, trying to "work it out amongst themselves, even if it means getting in each others face a time again." Is the problem that I'm not getting in your face aggressively enough? Somehow I doubt that would help much. So, let me ask the two parallel questions, then: How could I get you to consider that your comments (perceived as sexist) were possibly inappropriate? How could a guy get another guy to consider that his comments (perceived as racist/homophobic) were possibly inappropriate?

Trevorum writes: "Leading change to become more diverse is critical for Scouting to remain relevant." This quote is not mine, nor is it from Merlyn's people. It is straight from BSA National. Think about that. So what does National really mean? Are they playing lip service to the diversity idea? Are they continuing to think of diversity in racial terms, and mean that we have to reach out to blacks and Hispanics? Do they recognize that in the general public, the idea that Boy Scouts are leading change to become more diverse would seem almost laughable? On the biggest, most obvious diversity issues, Boy Scouts are glaringly non-diverse. The issues even have a shorthand notation, the 3 Gs (girls, God, and gays). In the 1970s Scouting tried to become more diverse and appeal to inner-city kids. That is widely viewed as a disastrous period. There are great ways to pursue diversity, and there are ham-handed ways to pursue diversity. Some products, in an attempt to appeal to women, do what designers dismissively describe as "Shrink It and Pink It". You can't just stick a label on something to make it diverse. You also probably shouldn't compromise the things that made you successful in the first place. Mainstream liberal churches are all shrinking, partly because of their very attempt to appeal to more people. On the other hand, many, many organizations have broadened their membership. At many universities, no college club is allowed to be restrictive. The Black Students Alliance has to accept white members. Women Coming Together has to accept men. The Vietnamese Student Network has to accept people from Ireland. (Well, something like that. I'm just making up the names, but the policy is correctly depicted.) And it's not just universities. The YMCA accepts everyone, Christian or not. In 1990, they had 13.5 million members, today they have 20.9 million. Habitat for Humanity has a ministry that is "based on the conviction that to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, we must love and care for one another." But it accepts all volunteers and all those in need without regard to their religion. So what type of change is National talking about when it says Leading change to become more diverse is critical? One thought might be that some people in National do recognize that things are actually going to have to change and are subtly trying to build pressure in that direction. If you were in National, and you recognized that change needed to come, but you had a number of religious organizations that disagreed and that were in influential positions, how would you go about introducing change? When the U.S. military drops the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, as it surely will do before Obama's term ends, then won't there be more pressure for Scouts to drop it, too? The percentage support for gay marriage appears to be around 47%, given elections in California and Maine. That's way higher than it used to be, and it's only going to climb. Voters will eventually approve gay marriage. My personal opinion is that the gay issue is the biggest visible diversity issue. Girls might be a less controversial one to tackle, especially if BSA started off by offering to support girl-only groups that were more on the BSA model than on the GSA model. And on God, I don't think BSA will drop its requirement for a belief in God anytime in the foreseeable future, but it's possible there could be some ongoing reinterpretation of the requirement. I have this fear in the back of my mind that the diversity idea is mostly lip service, but I actually think that some people must get it. I wouldn't be surprised to see girl-only troops. And maybe, just maybe, someone is thinking about how we get to a local-option on gays (for councils and/or units). What do you think they meant?

I don't have enough experience with EBORs to know if I'd hold a Scout back or not. I can certainly imagine situations where I might. If the letter-writers unanimously did not recommend the Scout, that would be an issue. If the letter-writers discuss things that are generally known about the Scout, it would be easy enough to discuss. What would be hard would be if one letter-writer related something in confidence. "This boy told me conspiratorialy that he actually hates Scouts and he's only getting Eagle to get his dad off his back and he actually plans to take his medal out to the shooting range and blow holes in it and then dip it in urine and display it at the next school art conference, just to get back at his dad. I'm kind of laid back with the kids, so he must have thought I'd be cool with it, but I just can't recommend him under these circumstances." I imagine that most of the time, though, it would be hard to turn down a boy just based on one letter writer. NJCubScouter, how about this? Talk to the Scoutmaster, confirm that he agrees to sign the document, have him sign a blank piece of paper, take a picture with his cell phone, email it to you, and then you print his signature onto the form. Not that I've ever heard of anyone doing that... He could also just sign a power of attorney, authorizing someone to sign for him, but that's so much more boring.

How does a Scout "actively serve" if he does nothing? Ed, Ed, Ed, you seem to insist on applying a logical, common-sense interpretation to the wording. Stop that! I've done it myself, and my sons' Webelos books had their own definition of active, which was very much more than just being registered. But for the troops, National has spoken pretty clearly. So just for the record, here's how I would parse it, officially: "actively" = having an active registration. Your membership is active. There are indeed times when normal, regular people use the word active to mean registered. One of the definitions on dictionary.com is "Currently in use or effect: an active membership." "serve" = hold office. If I asked someone "Who is serving as your troop's historian?", they would typically respond with the name of the Scout holding the position, whether or not he is doing anything. I think the problem is that the combination of words strongly suggests that the Scout should actually *do* something. But there I go with logic again. By National's definition, the word actively is redundant in the requirement, so why do they include it at all? I guess the rationale would be that they want to push the Scout to do the role, and they want to show it's ok for the Scoutmaster to push the boy to do the role, but that they'd still have the minimal interpretation of actively serve to be hold the title.

packsaddle, you've got me laughing pretty good here. Touch. Maybe instead I should say, "Think of some time when you were in a group where you felt like you were a new guy and there was an old boys' network, and how it might make you feel to have them speak dismissively of your group."