Oak Tree

Our district tells the Scouts to show up for the EBOR in full uniform. All of our Scouts have seemed to think this was a reasonable requirement, although most of them do not normally wear the pants in our troop. I'm ok with this. It's not a big deal.

I agree with Merlyn on this one - it does sound like a relaxation of the policy, and as Twocubdad points out, it seems reasonable to give the leadership on the ground more latitude. So I like the refinement.

The 2009-2010 Insignia Guide, page 9, Cub Scout and Webelos Scout insignia Quote: "Unit number, cloth, white on red, [part numbers], Cub Scout and Cub Scout leader" What are all the other leaders in the pack doing? I think the simplest thing would be to go along with the crowd on this one. I think it's fine to ask what the official answer is, but I wouldn't worry too much about it from a practical point of view. At uniform inspection time I could never find another leader with a completely correct uniform, and yet they were all successfully fulfilling their positions.

"Never heard that a youth can be dual-registered in a troop and a team. So not certain if so." We have many youths who are dual-registered in a troop and team, and I've talked to other leaders who have the same situation. My son, for example, is registered in a troop, a team, and a crew, all in our council. "It is my understanding that a youth can be registered only TWO units in a council." That is definitely not the case in practice here. As above, we have a number of boys who are triply registered. I can't confirm that you can be registered in more than two crews, but we actually have Scouts who are registered in four units.

Yeah, so the creation of a new unit solely for the sake of creating a unit is a bad idea. I wouldn't want to create a Varsity team unless the troop leadership supported the move. Can they? Yes, generally speaking. The rules as I understand them, and as they are enforced in our council, are this: you need to have five Scouts to create a new unit. Those five Scouts must have their *primary* registration in the new unit (to stop the creation of phantom units where every registration is just a copy of the one in the first unit). In practice this has meant that we can only carve out a new Varsity team or Venturing crew out of an existing unit at recharter time, when we can designate Scouts as primary in those units. Sometimes this can be a great way to retain older boys. But sometimes, as you say, it can split an existing unit.

I didn't know there were regional offices, either. Seems like it might save money by closing them - cheaper to have one location with lots of people than five smaller locations. Plus you don't have to pay moving expenses when you reassign someone from one region to another. Ok with me.

I thought that the official site twittered about this, but I can't find it now. I did find this on a council site: MERIT BADGE UPDATE: These merit badges have been approved and are in development with the following tentative launch dates. Scuba: Q4 2009 Scouting Heritage: Q4 2009 GPS/GIS: Q1 2010 Robotics: Q2 2010 Per http://www.narragansettbsa.org/volunteers/districts/cachalot/index.htm So I don't know how official it is, but it's pretty consistent.

WalleyeSM, Yes, a youth can be dual-registered in a troop and a team. Or triply-registered in a troop, team, and crew. Or even, based on what I've seen, be quad-registered in a troop, team, crew, and ship (even though a ship is a specialized crew). And then you could be a den chief, too, and be active in all five units from one CO.

So much of it depends on the demographics of your area. Our district got so big it had to split. Several of the larger troops cap the number of Webelos they'll take in. With new people moving in all the time, getting new units started is pretty much routine. If I were going to be a DE, I'd sure look for a district in a growing county. But as a unit leader, by and large, I never have to talk to my DE. Just run a quality program, and the let the DE do whatever it is they do.

That process certainly sounds unpleasant. Makes me happy for our district, as goofy as it can be sometimes. If you get your Eagle proposal to the Eagle guy by the X day of the month (near the end), then your project will be reviewed at the monthly meeting that happens early the next month. I think you generally have the right to a more predictable process. But you're more likely to get it by being friendly. All these people are volunteers. I've found my life to go much better once I started to assume that everyone wants to do a good job as a volunteer, and just try to figure out how I could help them do it.

We've had years where we took too many adults to camp (never as many as the troop Eamonn mentions, though!) The extra adults would hang around together, not look for ways to help with the troop, and mostly kibitz. All-in-all it didn't make for great adult camaraderie. And the other thing is that the Scouts don't get to hang around with each other without adults watching over their every move. This year we were more like 30 Scouts to 4 adults. Everything worked great. As for the clubbiness, I think that I would describe it in our district more as a network that gets built up. When a new person (like me) comes into the district, I didn't feel unwelcome. But at the same time, the people who had been around for years clearly knew each other, would greet each other at roundtables, and would laugh and joke. I can't think of any time that anyone did anything to shut me out, but at the beginning I felt very much like an outsider. I try to remember that whenever I see new people in the pack or the troop or the district.

That is too bad. My course was spent mostly in a dining hall, but the speakers were great. Sure, a lot of us have had some of the leadership stuff before, either in corporate presentations or in military training (a lot of both in our council). But that didn't stop us from having a lot of fun and getting what we could out of the course. It was easily the best taught course I've taken in Scouting. The first member of my patrol got his beads tonight - about one year after the course. Three of us also attended. We've stayed in touch via email, primarily.

You don't really give enough information to be able to offer a meaningful opinion. Would I start a crew? Yes, I would. But my situation will be different from yours. There's a lot to consider. Do you have the time? The knowledge? The kids? Enough adult support? Support from your spouse? Etc.

I would have brought the knowledge of how to tie a Turk's head knot. Other than that, I really think they gave us everything we needed and I had a great time.

In the end, it's hard to think of any particular troop job that has to be done by adult, assuming that we could train a kid to do the job. There is no reason that an adult has to be the treasurer or the advancement coordinator or the equipment coordinator. But in practice it can take a lot of adult work to get the kids into the position where they'd be successful at that job. I've had a 17-year old with a credit card do complete trip planning, including the reservations. In our troop, I think it's unlikely that we'd get a kid to do the advancement or the finances. The jobs that I would never really ask a kid to do would be the ones where they have to be in charge of the adults. I wouldn't ask the SPL to recruit new ASMs. I'm not going to ask the boys to collect medical forms, or make decisions on which family gets financial aid (which would probably rule out the treasurer position, too). I'm not going to ask the boys to deal with any unhappy parents. I wouldn't ask them to attend Roundtable, nor to be responsible for making sure adults get the right training. What we usually do is assign a boy to a job, and assign an adult coach. This might be for court-of-honor planning, or trip planning, or the QM/equipment coordinator, or Chaplain/Chaplain's Aide, or PL/patrol advisor. In each case, I ask the adult to only provide coaching as needed. Some boys are very capable and need little coaching. Other boys will sometimes almost abdicate their position and do nothing unless directly instructed. There's always a fine line between letting boys fail in their position and providing the help necessary for the troop to have a successful function. Some failures boys would learn from. Other failures would just frustrate people. My rule of thumb is that I look to the adults to provide the framework, and for the Scouts to lead within that framework.

I'll add my voice to the chorus. I generally like the color changes. They sure did get the red out. It's gone from the unit numerals, the trained strip, the shoulder loops, the hat, the socks. The buttons are clear or gone and that also simplifies the look. I like the choice of fabrics and I'm good with the darker green color for the pants. I like the gadget loops and the roll-up long sleeves. The only things I don't like about it are the pockets. They look to be smaller and higher, which doesn't appeal to my fashion sense (and admittedly, I know it's not my fashion sense that we're worried about here, but it's the only opinion I have). And I don't get the shoulder pocket at all.

Gold Winger, You will also be in the company of the Insignia Guide, which says that shoulder loops are worn "on shoulder epaulets." This is in the Cub Scout section, Boy Scout section, and Venturing section. Webster's dictionary says an epaulet is "something that ornaments or protects the shoulder: as a: an ornamental fringed shoulder pad formerly worn as part of a military uniform b: an ornamental strip or loop sewn across the shoulder of a dress or coat." It looks like epalmer is using definition (a) while the rest of us are using definition (b).

I assume that most troops would find owning a bus to be a prohibitive operation for a variety of reasons. And those are represented in some of the comments here. But nevertheless a number of troops do own them. We see them at summer camp every year. I had a long conversation with one of the guys from one of those troops, because I was curious about how they handled it. They had bought their bus at auction from the school district. The guy I talked to was a mechanic in his day job, and he kept the bus running. So they got the bus cheap and had free labor for the upkeep. They were a big troop, and he said that they had gone camping in places where they could park one bus but wouldn't have been able to bring 8 cars (or whatever). I think they had a high ratio of Scouts to adults, and they often travelled fairly long distances. It can be hard to find lots of adults to do the driving for the long trips. I don't think I've seen any of these buses towing a trailer. My guess is that they have a second car on the trip and it would tow the trailer. It's good to have another car along anyway.

I guess I wouldn't count it, either, since you're not building a shelter. Plus, you're not really doing OA as a merit badge project. I wouldn't count the OA Ordeal service hours for anything else, either. As for the no double-dipping rule, I can see how that's intended to stop Scouts from seeking out shortcuts and trying to do even less than what might appear to be the minimum. In that sense, I support the rule. In particular, I wouldn't count service hours for multiple Scout requirements. For other situations, I'd want to look at the particulars. I would, for example, count a 50-mile backpacking trip as a requirement for the Backpacking merit badge as well as for the 50-Miler award.

Actually, I can't find a reference for "thrice" in either the ACGP&P or The Scoutmaster Handbook. They both say the same thing and only mention two recognitions - "as soon as possible", and at a court of honor.

Bayou Beaver, I looked at the form you linked to. Right after item 6, it says "The two items listed below are not required to qualify." Then it lists visits from your commissioner, and then the line that you reference. I think you may not have looked up and apparently missed the "not required" part of that.

Sysprog, Welcome. You sound concerned, but in reality, I don't know that there's much you can do here. "Is it 'legal'?" Well, yes, there is no law against it. And there are no BSA police that are going to come down on the pack for fraudulently claiming an event is a non-Scouting event. Are the Webelos camping with their parents? If so, and the parents are on-site with the kids, this really doesn't seem any different than a group of families going camping together. "Can the pack get in trouble?" I wouldn't think so. Expectations are pretty clearly set. People know the Scouting rules don't apply. But I'm just a guy with an opinion. Do you have a son in the den? Can you tell us more about the nature of your concern? What is your position in the pack?

The 1949 Handbook has numbered stars in it, so I don't think that's a recent innovation. I've always seen multiple stars shown as 3/4" from center to center. In practice, that's probably not much different from what SWScouter says, but I'd just never seen it written that way. The latest Insignia Guide doesn't actually list this anywhere that I can find, but it's shown as 3/4" on the leader uniform inspection sheet: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34048.pdf

We just include the den dues with the annual pack dues, and expect the den leaders to submit for reimbursement. I've got nothing against doing the dues at the den level, which is how it's typically described in the literature, but I think it's a pain to keep track of.

We do about four outings per year. We'll typically have one of them real close (within a half-hour) to make it easy for new families to try out. Then there will be two or so that might be middle distance - something in the one to three hour range. And then we'll often do one that's even further away. We've had lots of families join us for these trips. We once picked a national park that was seven hours away for a summertime campout - and had surprisingly high turnout. Sometimes the more dedicated campers are more likely to come if you put something really interesting on the agenda.