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My magic number would be 50 for camping MB. But, I would strip all of the "Boy Scout Camping" or "With your Troop or Patrol" or "Long term camp" stipulations. There is nothing magic about camping under the auspices of Scouting. And, I believe there is something special when a boy helps his family, youth group, our other party enjoy the outdoors. BSA is missing the boat by giving a boy the impression that he's not really scouting in those circumstances.

@@mds3d, just as a rule of thumb: keep the press outside the gate! When we had an event (a death) that drew public attention we agreed that the Charter Organization could choose the person to whom all inquiry's would be directed. That person, answered very few questions of the press, and would not allow recording devices on the property ... nor would that person give a reporter my name (even though the affected family allowed me to speak for them). This made sure that the only people contacting me were vetted by the family. I had a prepared statement -- a profound disappointment to the one reporter who did call. But it covered how we all felt without allowing one person to be a "special source" leading to some non-existent "other side of the story." A reporter was on our committee, involved intimately with the tragedy, and he could have run with this. We would have trusted him to do right by us. He refused.

@@patbutler00, welcome to the forums. And, thanks for your encouragement of those (presumably) young Eagles. True enough Eagle scouts as a class will often get what you are looking for in terms of project-orient work. Same for girls who've earned GS\USA's gold award (or, older women who've earned GS First Class, but chances are more recent credentials will speak for them more reliably). The National Eagle Scout Association (NESA) is the alumni association for Eagles. They would love to hear your testimony. The local chapter might ask you to get involved in mentoring a youth or two. Now, I have honest concerns that NESA has oversold its brand. (E.g., most First-Class scouts make good employees too.) But, that does not diminish the fact that folks who tell me about a young person's admirable traits often don't realize (like I do) that they were scouts who earned an award of distinction or served in a demanding position of responsibility.

You missed one. The ageist policy on rank advancement that was codified in the mid 60's will be repealed.

@@Jameson76, welcome to the forums. It would be optimistic indeed if any policy change would garner 200,000+ members -- enough at $33 a pop to dramatically offset liability and credit lines. From what I've heard from (and about) Mike Surbaugh while he was our SE, he's more pragmatic than optimistic. But, let's unpack your argument. Let's say that BSA believes this move is a cash cow, and over the next few years it gets them the $ you assert that they need so desperately. That would translate into 200K+ registrations they would not otherwise get. Let's assume that that would be 10% new leaders, 60% young women, and 30% brothers of those young women. That would be 60K boys entering the program. Let's also assume that BSA's bet on net losses due to this policy shift is about 10K boys. That bet could be dead wrong, but let's just suppose that's what they're thinking. This "cash grab" then translates 50K+ boys served. So, even if BSA's motives were purely capitalistic, I could envision them believing this as a way to serve more boys than they do now. Based on the snippets that we've been fed from the market surveys, I personally don't see any of those projections as realistic ... thus I don't find the need to replenish funds as a logical motivation of BSA's shift. But, even if it were, linking income to more boys served is about as well-oiled as a capitalist economy can get.

@@Pack18Alex, good to know that there's one leader out there ready to receive at least one girls' den. In other news, Son #1 was at the wedding of one of the young women responsible for reactivation our crew. (Needless to say half the party were my 1st gen of venturers.) The bride asked him what I thought about the new policy. There was excitement and enthusiasm about the change. Not clear if that would translate into anything practical. I would like to think one or two of them would make great pack leaders.

Two words to your camporee leadership: Never Again. It's one thing to have all the scouts do a round robin, learn something about the badge, then come back to sign up for counseling to earn it. It's completely different to send scouts in without an inkling of if they care.

It takes a long time to discover your niche as an adult leader in scouting. I disagree with the DE's formula. My gut tells me he steered you to a pack because he felt a boy-talk in a middle school would be too daunting. Give it a year. See how this work. In the mean time get as much training as you have time for. Especially now as BSA is jumping tracks with opening the program to girls, guys paying attention to policy and actually trying to implement it fairly will become precious. Grab a Webelos handbook and understand the new curriculum. Oh, and these guys are church people, remind them to lead in prayer for results. (Not as strange as it seams, Ben Franklin effectively did the same thing when Congress was deadlocked on framing the Constitution.)

Welcome! And thanks for all you do for the boys!

I was just talking to a scouter at his JOTA station. How many of your troops have trained your boys to operate a ham radio? When was the last time you brought in a game Commisioner (that's how I learned how to rig a hook line and sinker)? Ever hold a hobby night where the scouts present their hobby to the rest of the boys? Break down an electric or two cycle motor? Get some retired extinguishers and practice putting out grease fires? Note to self: I need to remind my SPL that I have several old motors.

Lots of stories on here about people's first time in front of a crowd. Some things to level the playing field: Use chairs, sit in a circle or around a big table. Randomly call "switch" to mix up seating positions. Volunteer the parents based on their talents. As nervous as you may be, there's bound to be a boy in that crowd just as apprehensive. Look for him. Have fun.

@@Phrogger, kudos to you for helping your son give it the "college try." Sometimes we have retention problems, other times we can't keep the little buggers away! And by little buggers different classes of crossovers flag at different age and to different degrees. Obviously, if I thought there was a pattern, I'd be pitching it to national by now. Sometimes tweaking along the points you made helps, other times it doesn't. But, the other thing we've observed: Lot's of boys come back after a couple of year's hiatus. The one thing that is hard for such older boys; however, is shifts in leadership. Some can flex with it, other's feel the troop shifting under their feet and don't fit in anymore. I don't think I could tell in advance who would be which type of returning scout.

DL comes and says, "It's either them or me." CC replies, "But I just processed your application!" DL: "Did you process anyone else's." CC: "None came forward." DL: "Your options: a) garner my replacement, or b) get the parent/boy out of my sight." CC: "I see your point ...." Not pretty, but it happens.

The shirts have been pressed and hanging in the cupboard for a while. How girls should earn Eagle: do the requirements as written. How they should integrate into troops: Charter as a unit of girls. (In a year IT business logic should support that.) Collaborate with the CO's other BSA units, sharing resources/opportunities with their permission. How they should handle OA Follow the lead of national chiefs (for once). Membership requirements as written should suffice if the chiefs recommend inviting those all-female units. If the chiefs do not recommend it, the committee must rewrite regulations to stipulate "troop for boys." It should be a familiar exercise, having done it once to gerrymander explorers out of the equation. That's ironed out enough for any scouter willing to give it a go.

It sounds like you are getting mixed messages. That's no surprise. SM's may tolerate things that ASM's have no patience for. Clearly, you want to get to a point where neither you nor an ASM have to remind them to stay on task. The only way through this, I think, is persistent after-action review. This is where you guide the guys with open-ended questions after each event. The three boiler-plate ones are: What went well? What didn't go so well? What should we do differently next time? You might be more familiar with "Thorns and roses." Same principle. It's up to the leaders to decide if participants are the PLC or the troop as a whole. In your case, sounds like it needs to be the troop as a whole, at least for a couple of meetings and events. What I've seen happen when this is done is that some of the things the leader likes to see happen become the scouts' idea, But, the leader also gets an idea of some of the scouts' priorities. This allows you all to tweak plans to catch up on some things the boys my be missing, or set goals the boys might value. But let's not whitewash things. You've got a tough crowd. Some attitudes have shifted, or they were never quite right in the first place. When that's happened to us, we've emphasized that everyone must develop leadership skills, even if they aren't wearing a patch.

Welcome! And thanks for all you do for the youth!

Welcome, and thanks for all you do for the boys.

I understand the sentiment. The program is in a sense being handed over to mavericks. But why? GS/USA broke unwritten rules by dropping the concept of First Class Scout. Any attempt to have a program that truly would parallel Cubs and Boy Scouts requires tremendous nonconformity on the part of the leaders of a community's GS troops. Their outdoor program gets lawyer-ed to death. I don't think they feel rewarded at this point.

This happens. Actually, the worst case I know of did not involve scouting. The otherwise very competent varsity freshmen on a girls soccer team were not taking their cues from the goalie ... to the point that during a game, they asserted from the field that they didn't have to listen to her. Needless to say, that loss were humiliating. I only heard about it because I was announcing the following game, and prior to the opening, the coach visited me in the press box (which is odd) and requested that, after the usual introduction of each starting player on the visiting team, I read through his team's starting line up quickly instead of waiting for each individual to take center field. As I did that, they were to walk out on the field together holding hands. This was not the girls' proudest moment. But, they did manage to eke out a couple of wins during the remainder of the season. With scouting, it's not always as clear cut. Boys and their PL are goofs at a camporee. Do, I, as an SM/ASM ask the SPL to run a tighter ship, or do I encourage the him, as he's on his second term, to lighten up? Chances are, I recommend one or the other but: I set a time with the SPL for us to evaluate if my suggestion is working. Trust me, years ago I wouldn't have done the part in bold. So, maybe, @@ItsBrian, your way through this is tell the SM you will try to use the lighter touch as he suggests, but ask if you and he can review how it's going in a month.

Should you be mad that this forum scooped BSA? I think one or more of us had dredged up quotes of Mike referencing "accessible to families" since last year. The "youth"/"children" rhetoric has been in CSEs' talking points for some time. Partly on account of venturing. But also with ideal that if BSA takes care of the boys, a similar synergy will happen with girls. It didn't. AHG came close, but they were counting on years of constancy, regarding BSA's membership bans. So, they dropped us. No girls program stepped up to fill the void. Meanwhile, we have a silent insurrection of scouters who insist on making their efforts count for girls as much as they do with boys. Whatever you think of their means, you gotta respect them as men of action ... supporting co-ed experiences any way they can. So, BSA had passed up some key junctions over the years where they could have said, "Listen guys, if girls aren't being served a program of methods and ideals desirable to them and their parents; we're all gonna suck it up and make it happen for them ... for the nation." They could have said this 40 years ago. I'm sure some execs were thinking about it, but concluded the demand was insufficient. Then they could have evaluate the need to change tracks every few years and put an executive summary of that to the Report to the Nation. They didn't. Instead they wallowed in self-denial that this constituency should be their "first G". Then, they probably hired some consultant to figure out how they could market this without enraging their base. And that genius told them to bury the headline. Frankly, I'd have fired the guy on the spot. Scouters are, and have been a plain-spoken lot. So, a very expensive summer was wasted in unnecessary obfuscation. So, now, instead of rolling into fertile ground, it feels like the train is jumping tracks. From a boots-on-the-ground level here are our options, as far as I can tell: Stay mad about the summer's double-speak. Do our best to preserve our outstanding boys' program. Help address the desires of girls and their parents who would like what we (as local scouters running some pretty good units) have to offer. I'm fine with 2 or 3, although some doing one while some do the other will make for more mess at camporees and such. I don't think #1 will do much good unless you are on a council board and can knock on a lot of doors until the air is cleared. In other words, staying hot is not getting the train back on the previous track. But, it may help the guys in the field roll along.

So, on account of some scout who might have to face down micro-aggression from a hypothetical scouter "out there" with some agenda looking to hear his/her precious shibboleth during a personal growth conference, you're saying that I should tell all the good scouters on the interweb to curb their enthusiasm? Well, maybe I'll change my tune ... as soon as they scratch the tenth point from the Law!

sometimes you get a class that's just a little rough. No scouter knows the right balance of firm and friendly to ask from the SPL in such cases.

There is a cultural gap ... A story at the Brits' expense: Year's ago, at a family picnic, one of Son #2's teenage friends commented, in my hearing, that her brother "looked like such a girl." My uninvited reply, "He has quite the manly frame, only in a British theatre sort of way." The boy was never a scout, but he grew up to be a fine actor.

During a really tough production period on the shop floor Son #1 got his crew to exceed targets and maintain a flawless safety rating. And wrap each day ahead of schedule so the opposite shift could pick up where he left off. The opposite shift did not reciprocate. When he tried to point out that there was no reason they should be leaving a mess of unfinished product for his guys to roll out, he was told by the guy who worked opposite him, "You really stress out too much." It took a while, but the VPs eventually sorted out who was a drag on the company. (Hint, it wasn't Son #1.)