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@jscouter1, you may not have noticed that BSA tends to recruit from within. Consider your the staff at your summer camp. Many were scouts who attended that camp and were recruited by camp staff. There is no better resume than the character shown over consecutive days. That cuts both ways. Many staff chose to work at a camp because of the positive experiences they had while participating in camp programs. HA bases are no different.

I think the Daily Mail is using the holiday as a device to add some humor to a picture which may have been acquired some time time ago. I leave to native Brits to comment further on their countrymen’s sense of humor. But … an interesting backstory would be if, off camera, Bear Grylls talked to him about introducing his girls to scouting. We might not know until the young ladies publish their own memoir decades from now. Until then, I’m willing to let them have a small niche of normalcy and explore no further.

I did the band thing, too. Before that, the American Legion had a boys club where we went to the armory and drilled with mock rifles. Lots of activities were hosted at the armory or the VFW’s lawn. (The guy who directed me to these forums in the VFW band!) But in no uncertain terms did we consider any of that (or the marching that scouts did) military. It wasn’t until I befriended a professor in college who protested in the ‘60s that I realized how triggering much of that could be. However … It’s all a matter of what we want to hand down. Your post opened with scouts disregarding protocol. It is possible that learning to be “in uniform” has more to do with becoming a well-rounded person than it does with becoming a cog in a military establishment. We’re giving scouts a culture that they can norm to. The O/A provides a slightly different culture. In doing so, we teach youth that they can be flexible and still retain their sense of self and moral compass.

Yes. Somewhere I’ve seen posters of the scout sign, salute, handshake, attention, at ease, as well as marching formations. Many of us take it for granted because a lot of us saw our heroes in film. I had Dad, uncles, an aunt, older brothers, several cousins, in the military. There were a lot of parades. (Multiples on the same day … Mom went from street sale to street sale.) Many, many, military funerals. I’m sure some of you were immersed in that culture even more. My kids only experienced a fraction of those events, the movies they watched rarely involves military or even marching band, and their video games skipped the flag protocol part of life.

Or do the trek with strangers! Check with your council to see if they are forming a contingent or if a troop or crew is looking for scouts to round out their numbers. Many of my scouts took advantage of this.

Do you all have your own cork board or whiteboard for notices, meeting agendas, etc … ? Either that or a binder with those things would be good to have. The scribe could insert completed minutes and attendance sheets there as well. I might also suggest some drawings of stances during protocol. Many scouts wouldn’t understand this as films and videos about life in a regiment aren’t a popular thing. There are especially very few such media for young women. My daughter, when she joined our crew, didn’t understand this aspect of scouting either. If you have a female officer in your neighborhood, encourage then to drop by to visit your troop. That might help.

After CoH last night our SM and I were talking with our COR, and she asked if any of the boys had visited the nuclear power plant where she used to work. I asked if she knew anyone we could contact, and then the SM says, “Wait a minute, I have a colleague who works there!” That next adventure could be in someone’s contacts list.

Something has clearly got blown out of proportion. Do your best to iron things out. Get help if need be. There’s more to life than scouting, you have quite a few years of parenting ahead of you, and you all will be seeing each other in your community.

If this is a one patrol troop, who cares what the SPL does? That patrol’s duly elected PL needs to be challenged and mentored in taking care of her youth. It doesn’t matter if he duly elected PL has only earned Tenderfoot. Her goal is now to qualify to take her patrol hiking and camping. The SPL doesn’t have to have interest in all the young scouts. (It’s nice when we have one like that.) She has to invest in one or two scouts: the PL and APL. The SPL can be encouraged to keep doing that networking thing she’s doing and look for activities the PL and her patrol might like to do. I remind our SPLs that their job is to be as fun as it is rewarding. The absentee SM is a problem … especially if you don’t have seasoned ASMs who will take up the mentoring slack in her absence. This may mean the ASMs “renting” the most experienced ASM from the boy troop for a while to bridge that gap.

I'm gonna tweak 'schiff's observation a little because folks these days equate adventure with "big ticket" scouting. Great units find great adventure. This the "magic" of my SM growing up. He was amazed by local history, so we went on a lot of town hikes. Even in our country hikes, if someone let us take a water break on our lawn, he'd welcome them to share what they knew about local native lore. If a scout overheard some debate about which side of the state line a local landmark was, he picked up the USGS map from the Agricultural Office and arranged to take us there to see for ourselves. On a routine campout, he handed me tube, out of which unfolded a WWI canvans box kite, which I proceeded to fly for hours. (In retrospect, I think it was a scheme to keep a young SPL from nagging his PLs. ) The town hike involved a visit to the county lock-up. One meeting each year was a hobby night ... we learned to pay attention to the interests of other scouts (none of which involved activities that could get us locked up, fortunately).

I’m sorry, you didn’t mention what game your scouts play before the opening our closing meeting.

Lots of great units around here. What they need … Youth willing to hold themselves to the Scout Oath and Law and Outdoor code. Rest assured, that everything else will collapse if enough youth in your unit let this slip. A sponsor with space for meeting and storage who is in it for the long run. A community enthused about scouts to the point that they provide use of some property, opportunities for service, opportunities to fundraise, and the occasional cash donation. Teachable adults who enjoy each other’s company, and have time and talent to spare for scouting. A council and region with scouting pros who can identify when, where, and how to muster all of the above. There’s a lot of detail in all of the above.

Thanks for getting the quote. There are two tragedies. The victim and his family, and the youth who has to live with his decision to handle a weapon, the net effect being another boy's death. I agree that an adult leaving a weapon armed would be negligence. But, lacking proceedings, we are only speculating on the sequence of events. We aren't told who armed the weapon. An "unsupervised" older scout may have had the combination to the gun safe, known how to load a magazine, and how to fire the weapon. Or, he may not have known how to properly disarm the weapon, and the next youth could handle it, leading to the accidental discharge. The paths to tragedy are many. For us to apply what happened here so that we can forestall mahem in the future, we need to know every point of failure. If the investigation could assign less punitive fault, we might have the facts sooner and all be able to more readily proceed into the future.

@malraux, it's not clear to me what the event was. Larger bores are permitted for older scouts and venturers. An older scout or adult may have been using the rifle when the youth was downrange. IMHO the make of the firearm is immaterial. The fundamental question is how a 12 year old scout found himself in the line of fire. Maybe being able to understand this is most pressing to me because 11-12 year olds are now the majority of our troop. Keeping them out of harms way is a formidable challenge. Once a year, we hold a demonstration of a variety of firearms that a couple of our troop's scouters (also RSO's) have collected. But, every model is displayed with empty chambers/clips. And still we go over the safety lecture before the scouts handle the weapons. (The whole point is to teach scouts to identify firearms and handle them safely.)

I don’t see anything particularly surprising about an AK-47. Any firearm left loaded is problematic.

this. We scouters miss a lot. You can find lots of topics on this forum about how we're trying to sort out some behavior or another that's way above our pay grade. Many times, the only reason we know how bad things became was when parents let us know. And, mine is not the most boy-led troop out there, so it's not necessarily because of any physical distance from the adults. Parents have helped us suss out problems from uncouth speech to contraband. Yes, parents are concerned that they are making their sons to be the "snitch." They really aren't. Yes, parents feel like their son might be the only one who's bothered by this. That's rarely the case. Often, the scout needs someone to be their voice. Often multiple scouts are affected. Often the scouts causing trouble, will realize the error of their ways if call out, apologize and can mend their ways. Only rarely will it take the committee to sort it out. That usually happens when things have gone on for too long, and someone will need to be suspended for the good of the troop. Still, these problems might not be a reason for any particular boy wanting to quit. So, if you bring it up to an SM, try not to link it to your scout wanting to quit. My first year as a scout, my troop had a couple of bullies and some inappropriate PLs, and it didn't make me want to quit. Things had to be fixed, but I wasn't about to let that stuff ruin my fun.

Oh, I’m dealing with a dozen articulate 12 year olds these days. Some of them are very witty, and I see the exhaustion on the older boys’ faces as they try to keep up with their conversation. Well, in our troop tents are sacrosanct. Foul language is also treated seriously. Unkind, discourteous, and unclean. These things can be really discouraging to younger scouts. The net effect in our troop is that older scouts who behave like these don’t get elected into O/A. It sometimes takes a few election cycles for them to elevate their behavior. But, young scouts might not have the patience for that. I had a relatives switch to Trail Life because behaviors like these went unchecked. On the bright side, your son sounds like the kind of kid I want in my troop. He notices little things.

Oh, for the love of all that is right and holy ... Let the kid take a break from troop life! I've seen so many "wrecked" teens who were in this for their dads or grandpas. Maybe you have an exit plan, but I've seen plenty of dads who don't, here are some steps: Thank him for telling you this early rather than holding it in. Invite him to keep doing that going forward. Make it clear that if he wants to limit his scouting activities, he can. If he wants to resign from the troop, this is the perfect time to do it before they recharter him for the coming year. Tell him he needs to let his SM and PL that he will only be staying to the end of the year. (Obviously, you may want to give the SM the heads-up.) Let him know that you want, just like the Good Book says, to bring him up in the way he should go -- not the way you needed to go when you were a kid. Being a part of his life is more important than any bling in the world. Let him know that the Oath and Law and Outdoor code don't stop because he's off the charter. You expect him to be noble and grow up strong and good. The world's counting on it. (Well, at least one stranger on the internet is.) A year or two away from the troop, and maybe a few camping trips with his boring family, boredom with summer chores when everyone else is at camp, and he might reconsider. Until then, forget this "transitional bump" and (with all due respect to @InquisitiveScouter) troop life is not something worth negotiating a reward with your kid. There are far more serious things to trade for (academic excellence, craftsmanship, family financial health). A scout is trustworthy, take him at his word. If he changes his mind in a few months, take him at his word. Oh, and @FireStone, don't be afraid to keep on scouting if you have a fulfilling role in your troop/district, but remember that we're here for you even if you're off the roster for the sake of your son.

Welcome to the forum, and thanks in advance for all you’ll do for the boys!

If I had a choice between a mini medal and a plaque, I’d take the mini medal. But, how about an electronic medal in the form of a screen that scrolls all of your awards. Make it solar powered so that the wearer had to spend time outdoors to keep it blinging,

@Jmatt0613, yep. your in the big leagues. Like I said earlier, don’t treat your proposal as an end in itself. Treat it as a way to say there’s a problem. This is an opportunity for you to listen to other scouters in your troop and get the idea mill going. You’re scared because you think you have something important and you are uncertain if it will be accepted. In those situations I remove all doubt by assuming that my idea will be rejected outright. That way I have nothing to worry about. Don’t expect your idea to pass instantly. Don’t take it personally. In fact, I always worry when someone buys into my ideas hook line and sinker. That usually means I’m stuck with a lot of work to get it done! But, if someone is willing to mull over what they like or not about it, that may mean that that person is willing to help me make it work.

Hi @tc79. Welcome to the forums. Contact your district executive regarding this. Other packs must have encountered the same problem, and it would be a good round table topic.

Every adult in the troop should look in the mirror together. This is not necessarily about an intimidating adult. The MC and others in the board could be on even terms with the scout. But, in a formal process designed to get feedback on troop life, when a scout knows that two of the adults in the room don’t trust the SM … a “standard BoR question” can leave a scout thinking about how much his/her response will be used to indict the leader who is not in the room. When a brain starts running in that direction, it gives the mouth nothing to say. In a troop where the SM trusts the CC and MC, I would assure the scout that we have a bond of brotherly love even when we disagree, affirm that a sincere observation respectfully delivered matters, and encourage him to convey that to the board. (Yes, I’ve said that to scouts in my units.) This is not that environment. We both agree that something needs to be repaired between these caring adults. We don’t know if the SM is dodging the problem. She may be working on it, but she may think it would take more time than the scout deserved to wait to complete a personal growth conference. So, she phoned a friend. The “independent” boots on the ground thought it was a good idea in this case. If we truly had a deficient scout, he might have clammed up at the second board as well. But, the second board concluded that the boy in front of them was a life scout. I wouldn’t call that dodging the problem, I would call it keeping the youths’ personal growth from becoming a pawn in the adults’ problem. Could what happened be stressful for other scouts? From personal experience, I’ve observed that to be the case. But not every scout handles interpersonal stress the same way, and not every scout has their BoR at a time of peak stress. Let’s hope that both of those factors (along with resolution on the part of adults) come into play at future BoR’s.

“Trust issues” was repeated enough times to make it the real bottom line here. It’s astounding how quickly a teen will catch on to that stuff. It may even be why the scout was intimidated at this BoR. Youth who are trying to be loyal to every adult in their troop … their response when they perceive a loaded question is to freeze. And if you don’t think “What makes a good leader?” isn’t a loaded question in an environment where scouters have been at odds, it’s time to polish the mirror. Whatever ails your scouters needs to be fixed. In the meantime, I’d cut the SM a little slack. She’s trying to help the scout accomplish whit should at this point be a fairly minor task.

@mtgavin, welcome to the forums! Fred answered your two questions (in four parts). His and other replies were making assumptions in the negative. I’d like to frame things positively. As a crew advisor I had been put in similar situations. So, to help bring clarity for scouts, scouters and parents, this is how I describe how to proceed … A BoR can be suspended to give a scout time to rectify deficiencies. In this case, the board should promptly write a letter regarding the perceived deficiencies (i.e., reticence in answering questions) and give the scout an opportunity to complete the review (i.e., as soon as next week). If time is of the essence, a handwritten letter will do. Done is better than perfect. An SM or ASM would then be able to listen to the scout, and coach him/her in how to overcome the problem. What’s not clear is if the SM discussed this with the scout’s troop CC. Working between multiple units, I’ve found that communication on all fronts is necessary. So, in a case like this when different people constitute the reconvened board, I would want the chair of the reconvened board to have the letter that the suspended board sent to the scout. Let’s not assume there’s something interpersonal between MCs and scouts. Sometimes scouts have a bad day. Sometimes that day falls at exactly the wrong time for adults in one party to help in short order. Given multi-way communication between all parties, this is a great model to the scout on how thoughtful and caring adults can work together and provide opportunities for growth.