qwazse

I'm trying to pull my eyes away, but can't resist!

One of our scout family are avid Ren-Fair participants. Husband is a smith, wife teaches belly dance, and scoutson is taking up fiddle. W. Mass. BSA might want to encourage fielding a group of scouts and advisors who LARP in homage to ancient tribes of the area. They might get in at a discount.

Leave your SM to do his thing. I'm sure things will work out.

'cause it ain't a kayak. Just so everyone is clear, the boats are rife with flotation devices, including life jackets. It's just that they don't need to be worn in calm seas. FWIW, I have seen images of Sea Scouts on large vessels without their life jackets on. Your crew member's experience may be somewhat parochial.

Wow. TMI. I'll take the EBoR at face value, and accept that the abstention wasn't coerced, but was a result of the member having some sense that he might be casting a vote out of some special interest. If a scouter is that easily cow-towed, he/she should not have been on the board in the first place. In my troop, the ECoH would not be a committee decision. The PLC organizes regular COH's and we adults help when called upon. ECoH's operate in a similar vein. There might be a line in the SM's report ... for the committee to take it or leave it. But nobody's asking for permission. So, as long as the SM and boys are willing to come out, the troop is providing a ECoH. Everything else is bluster.

They say misery loves company, but I'm not feeling it. I'd be perfectly fine if the canabis dependence epidemic only ravaged my school district.

In HS I qualified for ARC guard rescuing a very large college athlete. Five us were in the class. And none of us had it easy ... most especially the petite high school sophomore. (Think guppy slowly landing an alligator and you get the idea.) But the moral of that long drawn-out battle wasn't that "illusion of competence", but rather the sobering thought that if someone her size and tenacity were the victim, we all would have a heck of a time rescuing her.

Oh! When the life-jackets were tied to a rope, the kids weren't wearing them! That would make them too hard to throw! However, first class rank requires knowing how to perform a line rescue, where a scout swims out with a line around his body to rescue a victim. (One of the many forms of "go, with support".) Personally, I am very nervous about this one. Attempting to rescue anybody without support is extremely dangerous - no matter how trained the guard. Doing so with just a rope and your buddies at the other end is a huge step of faith. Unless your patrol is real tight and practices it regularly, I say "Don't. Just don't. The day will be rife with sorrow. No need to double it." On the other hand, had this scouter and the adults and older scouts just practiced this one very-low-tech discipline before the rest of the troop got in the water, this would have been a non-story. I've seen a few non-stories. It's a good day when reporters have to get their headline news elsewhere. So, next time you are at the waterfront, here's the challenge. Start the clock. Pick one of your cars at random. Try to improvise a rescue device from the materials found therein. (Surely you all have rope and one floatable/throwable item.) See how far across the water you can deliver your rescue device. Note especially how well your rope behaves (float vs. sink). If the aquatics director has adequate supervision and equipment, ask if you can practice actually swimming out with your improvised device. Try getting your buddies to pull you in. Compare that time to your "improvisation time". It's very sobering.

Well, in general I advise guys that most days it is a good idea to listen to their wives! SMs often find themselves correcting youth leaders' behavior. And they can't correct what they don't know about, so yes the SM should be informed. In this case, that would include the outgoing SM and incoming SM. The scout needs to be confronted that his actions are making new scouts feel unwelcome. That situation is unbecoming of a leader, and he needs to make amends. How he does that depends on your troop culture the level and recurrence of the offense and the age of the scout. Older scouts (SPL's and JASM's) might even need to apologize to the parent. This isn't that odd. We had a scout with a behavior disorder and he had to work very hard to control his emotions, which meant he had to apologize in front of the whole troop regularly and by the time he was a leader, he had to set boundaries for himself regarding stressful situations and relaxing situations. If a boy is at the point where he needs constant adult supervision, he needs to be assigned a different leadership position. As a dad, I've had to call my kids on the carpet about how they interacted with their friends. Sometimes there were blurry lines because they were all in my crew, so my position as their advisor came into play. I was always grateful when my friends wouldn't put my kid on some kind of pedestal and would let me know when there were issues to deal with. Finally, they boys need to feel comfortable with letting scouters know when a leader misbehaves. The method is "leadership development". That means sometimes they will do things wrongly. Correcting them will enable everyone to grow and learn.

I've tied life jackets to ropes to equip a safe swim area. And as our lookouts rotate in, they practice throws and retrieves, checking every coil. It is true that adrenaline clouds thinking. That's where practice comes in. This is very hard to comprehend. Although a scout was saved, and I'm sure most of us would count our lives forfeit if we knew it would spare one of our scouts, the world can ill afford to lose scouters to folly. The next challenge? Helping boys get back in the water. Going over what to look for before swimming. Proper gear inventory.

Welcome to the forums! Step 1: find out what the Boy Scout Handbook says about SPL and PL positions. Step 2: Arrange to have a conference with the SM. Respectfully show him what you've read. And, let him know that you think the next round of elections should be scheduled at the troop's earliest possible convenience. Be patient if you don't like the answer. There are lots of ways that scouters may, from time to time fail to deliver on the promise of scouting. And it takes a while for them to come around. The good news is that you guys have a lot of opportunities to go camping. Leverage that and try to get your patrol to operate independently. For example, you all could make a good plan for a local hike or other activity and request a couple of adults to chaperon you. Other patrols might begin to follow suit. If not you're still having fun with or without the SPL/ASPL.

Life jackets would have been nice. What about throw rings? Rope? "Next level of scouting." Is that the one where boys do a line rescue?

@Mich08212, here's what's weird to me (and I think most of us who are Eagle scouts): the last thing we would ever do is wait for some committee to plan this thing. Not to sound too much like The Little Red Hen but when I did mine: I got the date from the church to reserve the hall. I let the troop know when it was happening. I invited the speakers. I asked scouts if they would participate. I asked the SM if he would do his usual shtick. I stuffed the invites and addressed the envelopes (typed, I think, triple spaced). Mama and her friends on the women's auxiliary made cookies and punch. I typed up the program (can't remember who paid for the copies). A friend (sister to two of our scouts) inserted a poem she wrote herself - that was the only thing I didn't ask someone to do, and a pleasant surprise. Well, the president's letter ... no clue who requisitioned that. My sons' were more complicated affairs linked to HS graduation parties, so their were more hoops to jump through as a family. But ... we did not wait for some stinking committee's rubber stamp. Guests, leaders, and scouts could show up (or not) as they wish. If the committee wouldn't approve, we wouldn't care because, well, we were Eagle scouts and could lite our own fires. Deny us matches, and we had flint and steel (not stainless) blades, deny us that, we have a lens, deny that, batteries (even back in my day there were a few lying around). We didn't fight for our right to party, we just partied. I'm really sorry your troop culture has turned sour. But, don't throw your dimes down on a lawyer. You don't need one. Your son has his scout buddies and his college buddies and his family. He can do this whenever he pleases. Invite whomever he pleases: granddad, SM, maybe even you! If the committee complains, give them a name of that lawyer you were going see. Tell them they can spend their $$s demanding your son to cease and desist vs. you demanding them to permit.

@mashmaster, I forgot to ask ... what was the remaining hurricane damage like? Did that affect the itinerary?

Harsh reality: younger guards often misjudge. God be with the family as they mourn.

Success!!!!!

Sounds to me like whatever hoops needed to be jumped through were done so successfully. The award kit is in the scout's hands. To me, the buck is stopping at the committee. There could be some sour grapes because the boy pushed the deadlines, and that's where there may be more to the story. But, that's not particularly relevant. What is relevant? When the troop gets into the habit of providing space, time, every scout in uniform, honor guard, etc ... for every ECoH, families feel entitled to that. Then committees feel like they need to govern it. Letting adults run around with scissors making rules ... sooner or later someone's gonna get hurt!

Making the horse drink the water you took the trouble to lead him to. I get it. But as scouters, we need to also double check our motives for high speed, low drag. Efficiency is all fine and good until some teen tosses and turns in unfamiliar bedding and rolls or sleepwalks overboard! If that happens, that delay at the airport because some kid has to check a sleeping bag will seem trivial. Have a shakedown meeting, let them show you what they're actually bringing. If they've stuffed it in their duffel, you're good. If you've got four guys who can't part with their down bags, have them go together, put them in a big case and check it at their own expense. Finally, this ain't the Queen Mary. If you're running late getting to Seabase, call from the airport. The captain will just linger at the bar across the street until you get there. For anyone with more lead time than @69RoadRunner, I suggest one or more shakedown weekends before the trip. Have the boys come on the outing with exactly what their packing for the trip. Have the QM plan for a nice cookout and breakfast. But at your meeting place, practice fitting each persons' gear in one of those bins they have at check-in lines. Call your airline's local office and see if they will send a volunteer to go through this with the boys. Better yet, have your airport's TSA walk them through boarding and checking. Your Sea scouts might have a lot of pro tips about stowing gear, etc ...

Shoes? Depends on the boat and the captain. Some rubber soles, in tropical heat, on some decks, will scuff and leave marks. Those old decks typically were not comfortable to walk on barefoot, so you needed deck shoes. Most modern decks, barefoot is the most comfortable. What are you doing bossing boys around telling them what and what not to sleep in? If they can stuff their sack in that duffel along with the rest of their gear, let them! I wouldn't have a scout waste a dime on the store unless Mamma isn't letting him out of the house with his own sheet and blanket. Remember, $ wasted on gear = one less coffee they may buy you later! If they want their summertime sleeping bag allow it. You are an HA organizer, not a drill instructor. Let the scouts know it will be hot and they might want to condition for that. If it's going to be a hot evening where you are, send them a quick e-mail that it might might be a good night to try sleeping in the gear they plan to take on the trip. They should practice unpacking and repacking it ... just like you do with the backpack that you surely keep at the end of your bed.

Well @scoutldr, how about if he was no longer a scout? As we know, the cut-off date for completing the rank is inherently ageist. Why shouldn't a committee decide that 19 is too old for a party ... especially if the young man was too busy with college to turn in an adult application? (I'm not saying he didn't register, but it seemed clear to me that the OP did not know whether he did or not.) Would our troop behave that way? Well, I don't know. Certainly if a youth had earned Eagle, but his family suddenly had to relocate to our neighborhood, we would take it upon ourselves to host his ECoH. Heck, depending on the situation, we might conscript Mrs. Q or Son #2 to bake a cake for the kid. We wouldn't tell him that his original troop was obliged to hold a ceremony. If one of our Eagles suddenly transferred to another troop before scheduling his ECoH? I can't imagine us insisting that he have it with his new troop. We'd work together to make it work. Period. But, it's not like we'd feel obliged to do so.

@xd00z1, welcome to the forums! And ... Do it. DO it! DO IT! The program was designed for venturers to take on these kinds of responsibilities.

Thanks for the specification. It sounds like the woman in charge was the Camp Director. It also sounds like she interpreted the court order in a way that allowed your ex to be present at camp. It's not clear how much contact with your son she allowed. In general, BSA camp directors answer (directly or indirectly) to council scout executives. That's why you or your lawyer contacting him/her to file a complaint would be the next step. The goal should be to clearly understand the BSA policy and determine what, specifically, the court order restricts/allows. This has implications for how the camp is conducted, but also might give insight on what rights you may have when your ex is in custody. On a personal level, I have found that if there's any possibility for each bio-parent to spend their custodial week (or weekends) with their son/daughter at camp, it goes well for the family. In addition to the child getting some quality time with each parent, parents get to know other adults quite well, and there's a lot of advice out there from the school of hard knocks!

@Keithami, welcome to the forums. You probably want to contact your council's scout executive. Was this a cub camp? Was the counselor in charge a volunteer (e.g., your son's den leader or Cubmaster)? Or, a professional? I ask because volunteers aren't in the habit of calling the police on non-custodial parents. All of our training teaches us that parents have a right to observe any scouting activity. Moreover, many Packs require that a parent or guardian stay at camp with their boy. I can't speak to what professionals are trained to do, but young counselors are definitely not prepared for this sort of thing. As an assistant scoutmaster I, certainly wasn't prepared when a situation like this happened with recently divorced friends whose son was in our troop. I got to be the guy to tell the couple that they need to learn to coparent in spite of their breakup. I will say this, although scouting did not work out for him, he and my Son #2 were close, and I got to see him grow up strong and good.

@KC4KEV, welcome to the forums. Look, if each kid is raking in thousands of dollars on these fundraisers, the IRS will be interested. If it's a couple hundred in the boy's pocket, it would cost more to process the paperwork than the taxes that would be collected. BSA does care about what kind of fundraiser it is. That's why you should send a unit fundraising application to your council. You do want the earnings to be spent on scouting stuff. For example, a uniform: no scout has to buy one, but when he does and he wears it, it makes your unit look sharp. The funds you gave that boy benefit the pack.

When the troop re-charters (probably happened in October/November if yours is like most) any 18 year old will be dropped from the roster unless he: Fills out an adult application for Assistant Scout Master or Unit College Scouting Reserve. Completes youth protection training. If ASM, completes Introduction to Outdoor Leaders Skills or obtains a waiver in a timely fashion. If he did not do this -- if he is nether ASM or UCSR -- he is no longer on the roster. If the committee does not want to make time in the troop schedule to recognize someone who is no longer a member, it's their call. No DE would gainsay them. Would any BSA professional care if a troop has a ECoH for a scout who is no longer on the roster? No. But, would they want to intervene here? No. I would not waste your breath calling a DE. You did the right thing asking for more info from the SM. Good luck.