qwazse

I tend to think differently. Of the folks in your neighborhood, is the SM the ideal counselor for the badge? That really should be all you need to know.

Problems like this should be reported to the SE and the SE (or his/her director of field service) should notify all units (troop + crews) in which the boy is a member. If it was something the boy did in one of his units, I'm not sure if the OA chapter would be informed. If a youth did something criminal at an OA function, as a crew advisor I would be very upset if I were left in the dark about it. I would expect to hear from the SE or DFS. I would also like to hear from the lodge advisor before having a sit-down with the youth.

I agree with SSScout. Encourage the COR to attend Round Tables and Council Meetings. As with most things financial, scale is a factor. Consecutive years with $2K surplus from hosting every pack in your district would draw the attention of your council. Coming $200 in the black one year from parents of two packs, not so much. I would suggest you consider returning the favor by purchasing a handbook for every cross-over or underwriting training for any scout in your troop who serves as den chief. That way, whoever made it possible for you to come in under budget will have still contributed indirectly to your recruitment efforts.

For this, I would count 6-8 hours of any skill-specific district level training, including camp seminars for adults (other than the garden variety, take-a-nap MB). If you've updated your first-aid/CPR with a few other scouters, or maybe took a course in range safety or orienteering, stuff that would be a huge benefit to your unit. You can look up most U of S course offerings online to get an idea of the kinds of things we're talking about. Woodbadge is on a somewhat different dimension. I can see a lot of WB-ers (such as myself) not counting it for the award. On the other hand, I couldn't argue with someone who did count. If those two weekends were all they had to spare one year, and attending WB left no margin for UoS, I'd definitely count it.

You have the right attitude. Here's the thing about bad kids: Even if you stop their advancement, expel them from your unit, etc ... They stick with you. You'll cross paths sooner or later, and when they do, you'll want to see signs that they've straightened out long enough for you to be willing to help them. Keep your guard up, but be open to accepting a little hurt to give the guy a chance to prove himself a better man. For now, be honest with the boy. Let him know that he's done something that's gonna make a lot of people keep their guard up when he deals with them. No amount of being an excellent scout over the next year is going to change that. In some folks eyes, no bling is going to hide the user/dealer "patch" he just awarded himself. So, however you challenge him (suspension from troop so he can work on addiction issues, finding new friends or talking to good old ones, postponing SMC, etc...), it will be so that he can soberly reflect on his actions, forgive himself, and walk tall even though other folks might think less of him. I get where folks who don't want to make this "all about the bird" are coming from. But if that's what the boy values, you would do well to let him know that that goal is still in play. He might even be able to spell out to you the conditions that he would have to meet before feeling that he deserved the award. He might be tougher on himself than any of us would be. Or, he might be clueless and just playing his dad and you for a fool. Regardless, if Eagle is his touchstone, use it.

Do you really need an an$wer to that que$tion? You are really wondering why the pro$s didn't proactively e$tabli$h a code of conduct? I wi$h I knew!

1. They are venturing crews, not venture crews. (Sorry, I'll take off my leader specific trainer hat now.) 2. If Seabase has a dress code, so should any BSA camp. We expect our lifeguards to adhere to a standard. It's not so far fetched to expect the same from young women and young men. 3. One of man's greatest inventions was clothing. 4. We have not trained our boys in Dinka culture. (Which carries punishment of death for not controlling one's biological displays of interest in the presence of a naked woman.) 5. Rather, our culture conditions boys to see women as prey. It conditions women that they can only achieve greatness by dressing like prey. Call it the spoils of the sexual revolution. Ideally, we would approach this on both fronts: instructing youth to dress modestly AND instructing them to regard one another as more than pieces of meat. But that ain't happening at home or school, and we scouters just are just trying to teach boys with an already limited attention span to start fires without burning the forest down. Very few of us want to be bothered with lessons on sexual harassment.

Well, this beats anything that I could possibly say about Son #1's wedding. But since you asked ... just about when you were coming to the rescue of a drunken disorderly ... The dance really started to "light up" as DIL and I started handing out glow sticks. (As I learned from an all-night scout climbing event a month earlier, things always go better with glow sticks.) What made that part of the evening special for me was memories of these former venturers dancing on the beach years ago.

You're distressed enough to talk to other scouters about it. That's reason enough to hold off on the SMC. Without yelling at the boy, you need to be very clear that you are upset and need to figure out if he really does have scout spirit, or if he's been playing you for a fool all this time. Tell him you don't need an answer now, but in a couple of weeks, you will need to know what's more important to him: scouting or his drug of choice.

What is compelling about NA cultures is the sheer level of resourcefulness. Understanding Other cultures, even in the most rudimentary sense of going through ceremonial motions, begins to show a youth how resourceful humans can be.

And Darwin face-palms. The secular myth of origins allows that high degree of empathy confers survival advantage among species with very social individuals. Or, in terms we understand, a scout is kind. There is something very good about a patrol of boys learning to adjust to one another's disabilities. With a new scout, this will involve some parental guidance, but soon the boys will gain the respect for the disability they need to deal with the situation.

SM either has a lot of assistance, the troop is truly in he hands of a solid PLC, or he may have OCD and should seek immediate psychiatric attention! I bet posts from the troop scribe would tell a more interesting story.

There is always a conflict.

Yes. Yes, which is why a lot of those parents make do with whatever. It's a lot to pay for a silly look. but as long as he's not tripping them and hurting himself when he runs/walks, I assure you, the psychological damage will be minimal. The only look you really have to worry about is the size of the smile on the boy's face!

We usually have enough drivers willing to camp with us direct contact adults to cover the boys who want to go. Most of our trips are within a 60 mile radius. The more distant ones are more challenging activities and attract fewer youth.

I half-way agree with Stosh. Bullying always conjures a long-term, somewhat subtle, behavior in my mind. Probably because I think that's the kind of behavior the average scout can slip into if we don't encourage all of the boys to think first about everyone having fun and being cared for. But I can easily see a kid with conduct disorder very quickly choosing "marks" who are less likely retaliate and attempting acts of sheer brutality. (Speed bullying?) A church-camp setting is just ripe for that kind of thing because Christian community in the American church is more of a thought experiment. In scouting we usually get fair warning about those types because parents know them from school or sports. I suspect some of BP's prep school kids posed as much trouble as boys from the hood. This might have been 2C's situation as well. Kids often fly under the radar until they are forced to reckon with "real world" tasks. The good news is more often than not, when the task at hand is truly real, kids are stellar at supporting the weaker link.

Not everything is amenable to a Socratic solution ... Especially if you are facing down 5 hungry boys!

Because, after all, none of us have ever had a friend who would return to the same watering hole of pain and abuse time after time. I don't whitewash it with my kids. The bait feels pain, the fish feels pain, any nerve-bearing beast conceived feels pain. But, there is a difference between pain and cruelty. Fishing teaches us to be less cruel.

Ditto. But stay positive. Just because things don't come up roses immediately doesn't mean you did the wrong thing. The kid is getting a light shined on a dark spot of his life. It ain't gonna be pretty. And I would suspend him until his mom tells me that he has been showing her the utmost respect for a few weeks. The family has issues that you (and your committee) can't fix. In all this, you need to emphasize that for him to move forward, he needs to act like a 1st class scout. We have a boy like this, but the family worked very hard to give him a set of coping strategies (e.g., leave the room, walk it off, avoid fisticuffs), and the kid has the stones to apologize. Also, in these situations, an SPL may feel guilty for bearing the bad news that got the kid suspended. Keep an ear open about that.

What you are arguing over is documentation. What if all of your boys decided not to go to a BSA facility this year, but they all got comprehensive sports physicals? Or, maybe the practice they go to has a doc that waives his fee for scouts if he can just print pertinent medical info from his database, set aside an evening for each patrol, review and updates each boys status, clears them to participate in whatever, and with parents' consent, prints everything in a binder for you -- with a separate sheet of med schedules for your contingent's health officer? Would you still want national to require you to jot everything down on their form as well, just because whatever you are doing is as strenuous as BSA's training bases?

Did it tonight. SM gave the boys present a paper and pen and said "Give me a list of two patrols." There were some points of contention, but the boys worked it out.

One more question now that I've reviewed your post ... Do you mean the "primary" adult? Or, are you talking the 4th-string driver. Also, what is your average distance to your "insertion" or "extraction" points? If it's just those longer distance trips that are a chronic problem: have a plan B location that doesn't involve transportation. Some of the hikes that I plan, actually involve thinking through with the boys alternate insertion points. Once I did have to fall back on a "Plan C" because of heavy rains the week before.