ParkMan

Your silver beaver insight is intereting. I wonder what they do for Silver Antelopes. I've only seen one person who had received one. But, I do imagine there are lots of nominations

Thank you again @jjlash. This continues to be great background info and very helpful as I discern whether this is a good fit for me. My sense is yes - this would be helpful in continuing to grow as a leader in Scouting - particularly in this era with parents and leaders from so many backgrounds. I checked again and we're still on for a summer family trip that same week. I'll have to keep it on the list for 2021.

I don't, but it sounds like he's had a number of high profile rolls. On paper, sounds like an impressive resume for a SE.

This is what we've seen in our district too. Even the DAOM did not have many nominations. I understand our neighboring districts are similar. Since we'd have 2 or 3 nominations for most categories, the selection was a discussion amongst the awards committee.

I would encourage you to decide whether you'd enjoy the role. Whatever role we taken on as volunteers, it's important to find the fun in it. Is there something about being RT commissioner that you'd enjoy? Perhaps the ability to put your mark on Roundtable and to work with others to make it happen? Perhaps the ability to find and inspire others who might have similar interests to yours. Also, you might find that this role provides some new challenges and is a fun adventure. Yet, I would not take it out of a sense of pressure. There will always be opportunities to serve and I've found it's important to take on roles you are interested in. If you look at this and say "ugh, I really don't want to do that", then don't feel compelled to.

I keep imaging 6 days of team building activities. I'm sure it's a lot more than that, but this is one of those times the vagueness isn't helping me. Btw - gotta admit, having a Summit version is a good thing. The course fee is reasonable for this and it's nice that as a East Coast person I can drive there.

I seem to recall that we've seen a the concept from national of "we don't penalize Scouts for the mistakes of adults." I wonder how that translates to a case like this?

Thanks a lot for the course info. I've been intrigued by it for a while now. It's good to get a bit more context. Sadly the Summit course conflicts with the families summer vacation.

DId you approve that this person was to be the MBC before work began? Sorry if you already answered this - but I missed it. I'm not sure the technical reason about why an unregistered MBC cannot sign off on merit badges. I agree that having someone not qualified to sign off make absolutely no sense - but I'm not aware if there is really any check on this. If there were, I have to imagine that many Eagle applications would be returned due to all the council mistakes about getting folks registered.

You and I agree here. I'm not suggesting more rules. The BSA rules are more than enough. I'm just stating that the SM be clear that he/she is enforcing rules. We have a tendency in Scouting to let rules side. We do this for lots of reasons - but the net effect in many units it that the rules are not followed. If you've not been enforcing rules, it's a little much so that that paragraph 4 of section 3.2 of the guide to advancement says something. So, before you're going to start pulling out rule books, you've got to be clear that this is the standard.

This is an excellent point I had not even considered. You most likely cannot give the grant money to council anyways due the this fact.

Since you're new to the role, I think you have to ask yourself - "is what the Scout did in line with how things are typically done?" DId the prior SM require signatures ahead of time? Did the prior SM question the qualifications of the counselor? Did the prior SM review the dates and progress on the MB? Did the prior SM permit family members as MB counselors? If the prior SM was the laid back type and if you have not changed the process, then you have to recognize that the Scout and family probably thought this was all fine. If the prior SM was a by the rules type, then this Scout and family may be taking advantage of your newness here. I would encourage you to be consistent in the rules you apply on retroactive work. It should be the rules in place when the Scout was doing the work. Given the size of the what was just turned in, it is most probably outside the bounds of what has been done before. So, you have the right to question. If a Scout walked in with 100 merit badges signed off we'd all question it. While 9 is not 100, it still a lot. It is certainly open to some questioning. It's part of the personal development and adult association methods of Scouting. Now, @David CO makes a very good point. This may come back again when others look at it. So, even if you are comfortable with everything till now - you still need to do some due diligence with the Scout. To me, the bigger question is - "Is this how you want to run things as SM?" While you may have to let something like this go, you have every ability to establish how you will do things going forward. Requiring that all Blue Cards to be signed prior to work starting is a good practice. Let your Scouts know that they need to use approved MBC and that their names need to be recorded on the Blue Cards prior to you approving. You can certainly let the Scouts know there is a new Sheriff in town. I'm a big fan of being firm, clear, fair, and compassionate. Let the Scouts know you'll enforce the rules Make the rules clear If the Scouts follow the rules, then don't look for reasons to "fail" them. Understand this is life and it's a youth program. Stuff will happen and so exceptions are OK. But, they need to be that - exceptions.

Agree with others. If you qualified for the grant, you keep it. BTW - this is different than in the Girl Scouts. In the Girl Scouts, units are owned by the GSUSA - so if they say turn over the money, then you have to. In the BSA, you are simply paying the BSA a fee and agreeing to follow some basic rules in order to utilize program and name. In the BSA you are a separate entity and so money you obtain like this belongs to your unit and your chartering organization. If you ask enough council/national people - someone will tell you that soliciting funds and applying for a grant are the same thing. But, they are really not.

Interestingly enough, I contacted the support line at national with a YPT policy question. It was a pretty technical question where the G2SS and YPT training was not descriptive enough. The response I got from national was that it's up to each SE to decide how they interpret YPT policy. So, for something cut and dry it's pretty clear what a council is to do. But, when you get into the grey areas like this one, different councils can apparently do different things. So, I don't know that I'd get too hung up on the peculiarities in this case.

Sure - that's true. We cannot mandate anything really. In almost all cases we can simply to tell people what we expect and to tell them when they are not welcome and ask them to leave. I suppose that one could get into situations and discuss calling the police to forcibly remove people from the premises - but I hope that never happens. But, really, I think these are all technicalities. In most cases, folks want to do the right thing.

My understanding matches @T2Eagle & @Sentinel947. When you're at an event organized as a Scouting event, BSA YPT rules apply. Of course a CO can impose even more restrictive rules, but they cannot waive any BSA YPT rules. If a participant decides that they don't want to follow the BSA YPT rules, then they can leave the event. It's a free society and no-one can compel anyone to attend the Scouting event. But, while there, we do require that those present follow the rules.

I'm not quite sure what we're discussing here. At a Scouting event non-leaders need to follow the YPT rules. However, it's not their job to implement them or to report on them. The YPT rules are designed to be administered and overseen by registered adults. That's why the rules all require at least one registered adult at pretty much all times. So, while awareness in the non-leader community is important, it's not required because placing non-leaders and scouts together unsupervised should not happen.

Gotcha. Yeah - it's too bad the BSA infrastructure makes this kind of thing so hard. I can see that the BSA online version has been carefully constructed such that it conveys lots of information. I further recognize that the key concern is that a volunteer trainer will omit important information which could then result in serious mistakes. I know our volunteer trainers can be successful here - it just requires a little elbow grease and some faith in the system from national.

The BSA allows for in-person YPT courses. Our council does them. There is a printed syllabus, trainers are certified, and they are required to teach the curriculum "as is". The presentation has to be up to the level of the online training. Since you're the district training chair I'd encourage a conversation with the council training chair and YPT champion.

I pulled out the Handbook on my shelf (12th edition). It had this definition of Obedient: Later, there was a quote on a Scout being Chivalrous. It had this passage which was a quote from the 1914 handbook: There are other quotes around obey that I could find - mostly having to do with either obeying the Scout Oath & Law or obeying laws. My take away is that even our printed materials don't make the case that a Scout should obey all adults. He should respect those who are "superior" - but that's as far as it goes. If an adult comes along and tells the Scout to do something different on first aid, the Scout needs to show that he/she respectfully considered it, but made a different decision. This is the lesson I think we teach - we need to respect adults - but not necessarily obey them.

Strikes me that this is part of the natural process of development for kids/young adults. When you're very young, you tend to have few places where you serve as a leader or an owner of a task. At 6, you're mostly playing, having fun, doing a few chores. By 10, you start to take on tasks - some of them with responsibility. By 15 the tasks are more complex, and you're starting to own projects where you have to interact with adults. By 18, you're taking on adult roles. As you progress, you're going to hit this natural conflict of "youth do as adults direct" vs. "people who own and are responsible for tasks have to interact professionally with adults" I think most 13/14 year olds would have a hard time with this. But, I do see that generally as Scouts grow older the become more confident in owning the task and interacting with adults. Some of the best Scout youth leaders I've seen have no problems respectfully telling an adult no.

Thanks a lot for the comments @fred8033. I very much see what you're saying. I'm sorry if my own comments came off as "too bad, so sad - you should have joined a big troop." It was not my intent to make this a big vs. small discussion. At the core of what I've seen in our larger troop experience is a sense of "let's make sure the Scouts we serve are provided opportunities to enjoy and learn from Scouting." It's been my experience that our ASMs, Troop Committee Members, and Merit Badge Counselors work to make sure they do their job - provide the infrastructure so that Scouts can run their own program. So, as you run down the list of needed infrastructure, what you see in our larger troop is effort is expended to make sure the support is there. MBC is a good example of that. It's not that we're trying to keep our MBC to ourselves - not at all. In fact, we proposed to the district that we establish a network of MB coordinators in larger troops to help build up the list of MBC. (That offer was declined.) It's that we looked at what our Scouts were requesting and said - hey, we've got 100 parents, let's see if we can put something together to support what our scouts are asking for. In our trips and activities, we routinely have friends from other troops join us. We routinely lend out gear and supplies. We routinely hold joint trips with other units. We don't try to cut corners on advancement. Not at all. No-one is making our MBC soft sell requirements. Scouts earn their merit badges with us. We just don't believe in having a ton of hoops to go line up a MBC. We have someone who will make sure you don't have to go find a guy four towns over who will counsel you on First Aid. There's nothing we do that a smaller troop cannot do - nothing. Further, we'd bend over backwards to help smaller troops. But, the small troops rarely ask. In fact, most of the support we lend outside the troop is to other big troops.

Units really do need to have a plan to replace 20% of their membership every year. Cub Scouts cross over, Scouts BSA & Venture Scouts age out. Further, if you're less than 30 Scouts, you need a plan to get to 30. From reading the article, it sounds like the new SM is getting focused on that. From looking online, is appears that the troop's CO has a pack as well. If so, and those Scouts don't cross over to that troop, is there a reason? A program problem perhaps? In addition to @mrkstvns great list, I'd enocurage the SM to have an honest sitdown with the families, the remaining leaders, and the COR. This troops #1 focus needs to be program, but #2 needs to be growth. They need a defined plan to grow again.

Please elaborate - why? *EDIT* Sorry, I advanced pages and see now. Would it be correct to say that you don't agree with bigger troops and how they do things?

I agree with @Navybone On this topic, I would only try to bring it back to the initial line of discussion in the thread to say that I believe it's important for Councils to remember that our roles here are to deliver the Scouting program to Scouts. For most of us, we got involved with a specific unit to help there. Sure, most of us are willing to help another unit from time to time when asked. But, there are practical limits to that. I believe councils need to tread very lightly in how they conscript unit level volunteers into council level programs.