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At last report they shared common HQ, so their efforts are coordinated. @@NJCubScouter, war makes strange bedfellows, or as the old middle eastern saying goes, "It is I against my brothers, [unless it's I and] my brothers against my cousins, my cousins against the world."

Oh snap! I "minused" @@CalicoPenn when I wanted to "plus" him!

Yeah, we have bad kids. We know they will poke at the fences. They know we're more than prepared to send them home if they do. Certainly the opportunity to be voted down by their peers serves as a great tool for reflection.

Our council camp staff had a brainstorming session with SMs in camp today, adding both Welding and Blacksmithing MB's was part of the discussion. @@SSScout, they dropped the Citizenship badges from the camp program.

Not gonna argue with a treasurer, @@MrBob. You're doing good work, and have a right to do it in a way that you feel complies to the standards you want to uphold. However, the sharpness of this "stick" you speak of depends on the magnitude of a boy's individual benefit. If you're talking about $300-$400 per boy for camp or for boots and a backpack -- training experience and equipment that a troop needs from every boy to be successful, the bear has harder biting flies to fuss over. If, on the other hand, your troop expects each family to raise tens of thousands of dollars for your boy to retain his membership (precisely the magnitude of sports parents' fundraising that drew an IRS opinion), then you are indeed drawing attention as a bogus tax shelter for parents' extra income! So, however, you choose to present it to your committee, try to avoid excessive drama. And be patient. Who knows? Maybe a couple of other folks in your troop have seen the writing on the wall.

I suspect many folks wouldn't come forward if it wouldn't make a difference. Many did come forward to their significant others ... but to go beyond that and risk public ridicule without a chance of vindication ... most victims draw the line well before that.I can imagine a case of this nature would take months to prep. What I wonder: what other groups face litigation under this statute.

Hmmm. Can anyone think of a rea$on - beyond control - that $ignificant national award$ related to but not under B$A's mi$$ion aren't li$ted in the IG? IHMO, this is a situation where no authority will write an explicit prohibition, but they also aren't going to publish all of the "potential distriactions" from the BSA award tracks.

The expectation that the IG would be an exhaustive list is unreasonable. Yet another of many awards that we can't expect to see in the IG any time soon. Although it is a "control" document, the IG also serves a promotional purpose ... it sells BSA awards (note the catalogue numbers). There is little vested interest in recognizing awards that are not part of its revenue stream. For example, past (expired) awards are not listed.

I did not mean that in the formal sense. But badmouthing outside of their unit ... what other end game is there? Or as that great sage of the modern music industry puts it, "Why ya gotta be so mean?"I've managed a crew with one coadvisor. I understand burnout and failure. But, anyome who can't stand even one of my youth - youth whom I consider the Almighty to have dropped at my campsite on purpose - can get with the program or go pound sand. Either option and we'll all do just fine. By the way, this is no different than when I have a youth complain about another youth. Tell me what he did. Why he did it. Can you all work it out?

So knocking on a few doors and visiting is probably a good idea in your case. Boys your age should be interacting with boys from other troops anyway. You might find a new scouting home for the next three years, or you might come to the conclusion that your current SM isn't so bad after all.

So what we have here are conflicting visions of the ultimate scouting experience. Your SM and ASMs vision is of boys in tight parade formation looking sharp. Yours is of hiking and camping independently with your mates. If everybody wants to hold on to their vision, something's gotta give. Sometimes that means parting ways. Things you need to assess: What do your parents think? Is there another troop or a crew in your area? (If a scout has earned 1st class, he may continue working towards Eagle until his 18th birthday.) Have you worked with other leaders outside of your troop (e.g. Merit Badge Counselors, NYLT).

Well, yes, that happens. But, somehow between two people who weren't the SM, this became grounds for expulsion FROM THE DISTRICT? The parents are perplexed. The SM should be infuriated. But, he is a man of few words. Maybe in the long run that's a good thing.

@@gsdad, I disagree. The leaders of my troop and crew are constantly fitting scouting to the needs and skills of our youth. The hope is that the seasoned kids can operate on their own for a few minutes while we find out what we need to do help the special needs kids adapt. But that definitely means the troop bending its program to fit the kid. Sometimes that meant walking the <insert disorder here> kid to within cell coverage so he could talk things through with his mom. (The conversation usually boiled down to, "Well, I'm here and you're there, you can handle this, and I'll see you when you get home." Then, to us, "You're doing everything I could ask of you. Thanks!") Sometimes that meant an older scout helping the kid understand an order by his patrol leader so that he wasn't bitter about it. Other times, it meant a parent taking the kid home. Other times in meant us telling the parent "Don't send that kid to camp without his meds ever again!" It often did not mean the parent had to be with the kid. It did mean constantly adjusting on everybody's part. It never meant expelling the kid. (Although suspension is always in the offering for conduct disorder kids.)

A little more details on "when I was told" matter in this case. Was it a scout executive? Cost is one of the dirty little secrets about medals. If you haven't budgeted for them, expect difficulties.

Am I missing something? The award is a ribbon with a pendant. Pretty self-explanatory how it's worn. How are similar awards described in the Insignia Guide? "... ribbon with pendant ...". No pictures of anyone wearing them. I've always thought that the awards in the guide were an exemplary, not exhaustive, list. In any case, the congressional award has been around for as long as I've been an advisor. I learned about it at a University of Scouting course. I don't know how long an award has to be around to make it in the guide ... but I agree that it would be nice to see this one in it ... if only to encourage some young scouters to consider earning it.

Receiving the award was an example of the most obvious case where the uniform and medal compliment each other. Given that one case, others may apply: courts of honor, formal dinners, community ceremonies, etc ... When we get into the realm of medals, there is a little room for personal judgement.

Why would it be interesting? It would be the most boring thing I could think of. Scout gets a medal from congress, much of the way he or she got it was through serving as a scout. Wants to wear the BSA uniform to receive the award. Who in the BSA is going to speak against it? If they did, who among us would really care? I want kids to be proud of their medals, pick the two or three that are most relevant to the moment at hand, and wear them. I don't want them to waste a moment asking, "Does this medal go with this dress?" So @@jpstodwftexas, by that principle I would say you're gravely mistaken. @@acatao, regardless of if you were asking this for yourself or a fellow scout, I hope you found an answer in the affirmative.

Might not work for the Webs (never tried). But a couple years ago for my older scouts I gave them a "reverse orienteering course" where they identified all of the new features that weren't there when the map was made, then used triangulation with their compasses to place them on the map. With a very current map, you could go place controls the night before, and the boys will have to find them and put their location on their copy of the map. As soon as they find five they return to camp. Their map gets scored by the error (i.e. total distance of their marks from true). You could make it challenging by clocking their time searching and adding it to their error. Hide lots of controls and let them go out on multiple forays. Insane, but in a fun sort of way.

Yep, asking a leader really remedied that situation. National has had decades to add "shall" and "shall not" uniform list to a handbook. If they thought that discernment was so inscrutible that every boy should ask permission from his leader, it would have been put in writing there. Most scouting things kids do including all kinds of public works, there is no problem. Even when there is one: 1. It's okay to dislike what a scout from some other part of the country did while in uniform. 2. It's okay to be that scout and have to put up with hearing why folks didn't like it. 3. It's okay if a central authority doles out disclaimers all around. It's not okay if, because someone somewhere is reckoning with any of the above, someone says, "Whatch out kid. You don't wanna put that sash on by yourself!" Somethimes, some nuanced rule in some obscure document needs to remain just that. Let kids live out their scouting carreer with enthusiasm.

I'd also accept a handwritten letter. Or typed, courier 12 point, and signed and sealed with your hand-carved letterboxing stamp.

Well, although the pins and loops gone (in spite of all indications to the contrary on scouting.org), hopefully the content will turn up in one of the sylllabi ... maybe under STEM? Another effective (albiet time-consuming) demonstration, is to trace the topography of your campground onto poster board: one contour at a time, cut out the pieces, and stack them! Then you have your 3-D jigsaw puzzle! There are tricks to containing the cost of this excersize (e.g., one board for even contours -- like the concentric contors defined by 200' and 400' lines, the other for odd ones -- contours defining 300' and 500'), but you wind up working with flimzy pieces. For this age, it's best to just use 5-10 evenly spaced contours for a given area. It'll consume about three pieces of board for roughly the same area.

"go after"? Is there even have one case where that happened? The only one I recall reading about (thanks to someone on this forum) was when a boy showed up in uniform at a town council meeting and made some frank comments that got in the paper. Seems like the kid was working on a MB requirement (communications or citizenship) and something on the docket struck his interest. The SE later sent a letter saying that the scout's views were his own and did not represent those of the BSA. No wet noodles for the unit leader, who should have been quite proud of his scout. Now, there is nothing in BSA literature anywhere that speaks against properly addressing an assembly while wearing your uniform. Yet we hemmed and hawed over that one too.

One excersize that I enjoy doing is marking an unsuspecting volunteer's fist with contour lines. The Map and Compass belt loop and pin: still part of the program?

By implication, then, a boy asking his leader about uniforming is no more likely to get an informed opinion than a boy reading his handbook about uniforming. Think about it. By her posts, we know @christeneka is about as informed a leader as any. She led a den. The uniforming issue is almost the same there as here. However, the den probably always did scouting together. Here, the boy's on his own. She's smart enough not to have confidence in an SM's opinion. Naive enough to think we'd be any more definitive. This isn't just about the OP. The fact is, some kid in my unit might ask me the same question, and so far his book and my gut are the best tools I have ... Partisan politics? No. Selling used cars? No. Doling out glue and glitter? Have yet to hear a good "Here's why not ..."