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If the bridge any longer, you guys would be in trouble for digging too deep a trench so the rope would hang freely! Pity you didn't interpret G2SS the way these folks did: Or these guys:

Congratulations to scout for planning an awesome day! Make sure he arranges for sufficient coffee and snacks for the two adults who will wait for them patiently back at camp.

All the best with the new charter! "Even the non-scout members of the crew, i.e. the gals!, will eventually ask the question, why do we always have to check with the troop before we plan an activity?" Yep. After a year of trying to work around each others' schedules, the SM and I looked at each other and concluded "This is ridiculous!" There would always be postponements that would cause our schedules to overlap anyway. When that happened the kids sorted it out. THEY made sure the necessary leadership was divided appropriately. (More often than not, the SPL and PL's would stick with the troop.) The youth seem to have a really good sense about when to share an activity, and when each unit should go their own way. So the SPL and Crew President are to encouraged to compare notes. When they don't, they stay separate; when they do, they coordinate. I think that little bit of independence made us run smoother. There seem to be enough adults willing to support both programs. The current SM wants to stay in his position for a while, CA suits me, and the boys seem to be taking the lead as well as always. We're two units (three if you include the pack) who happen to help each other from time to time. Would venture patrols serve the same purpose? If BSA were co-ed, probably.

E92, you do know that I did not intend to pick on you personally? Of course every DE is different, and some can sift through the smoke because they've experience scouting on most of its many levels. E441, to your points: 1. Varisty: no women. Typically in our area, the sports crews are ski clubs or specialty sports. 2. Sea scouts: they would be who I would send my crew to call if they wanted a barge. They would come to my venturers if they want to backpack. My point exactly. 3. Not sure what happens in your neck of the woods, but I know of no church youth group that is truly youth led. I have Jewish friends whose kids go through personal growth programs that challenge them like the Religious Bronze award or Trust Award. Christian kids who go through same thing are strikingly few. Simply put, youth groups may be ministering to youth, but they are often not "youth getting ministry done." Venturing offers youth leaders the opportunity to guide kids in doing just that. 4. Hobbies: oh let's see we have some bag-pipers, two of whom earned BSA medals of honor. I told you about the LARPers. There are reinacters. Shooting sports crews. (Yes, when all they do is discharge firearms, that's a hobby, or an art, or a sport. Thanks for the range saftey officers, but your sharp aim doesn't make one High Adventure). Venturing gives them a "big tent" where they can share their talents to make a better community and grow up to be thoughtful and caring adults. Once you are in it, you will begin to appreciate it more. Besides, if we extended your argument downward, maybe we should get rid of about 100 merit badges. Especially those STEM ones. What's a boy scout need to bother with programming languages anyway?

"The failing of troops to provide a good older scout program motivates the adults to start venturing crews as a way to keep the older scouts in the program. " Our crew started for the opposite reason. The troop was providing a good older scout program. Then Son #1 and his thirteen y.o. buddies go blabbing at school about what a great time they were going to have at Seabase in a couple of years. The girl scouts at the table wanted in on the gig. The only way it was possible was if they went with a crew. The youth discovered they liked working together, and it kept going. It was the youth who kept me in the game. If a DE said my CO "needed" a crew, we would have brushed him off just like you did. If the young women in your community aren't asking for this sort of thing your troop is doing, it is definitely not worth the effort to pull one of your scouters off a troop or a pack to start a crew. I've met a couple of SMs who gave up doubling as Advisor, because the only person who told him there was a need was some pro. (Note to DEs: if all you are is about this year's numbers keep nudging SMs to burnout. If you really care about the long-term venturing program, cut the crap.)

Thanks E92. What I'm trying to fish for here is precedent where the OA considers a youth who was not member of a troop was still retained as an Arrowman. So, were you are any of your youth ship mates or any of the young summer camp crew *not* registered with a troop?

It's the SM's call. The way I would do it: If there are bunks and mattress set up in an alcove, electric lighting supplied, it wouldn't count. If the boys are to find there way to a room in the cave where they are supposed to set up their bedding in an appropriate leave-no-trace manner, it would count. Now maybe the bunks were put there to protect the cave floor, in which case I might be inclined to count it.

"... They shouldn't call themselves a BSA Venture Crew ..." They don't. The call themselves Venturing crews!!! Look, I am constantly talking my crew down off of that soapbox. Just because we'd rather hike a few miles into camp, dig our own latrines, maybe set up a tent, then drop off cliffs or shoot trap the next day, doesn't mean we can't benefit from crews with other emphases. When dozens of crews gather for an Area Summit, there's lots to do. Sure, my youth will have a warm fire in some clearing -- rain or snow, but ... Who's gonna decorate the dining hall for the dance the next evening? Who's procuring a barge so we can have a cruise on the river? Who's organizing morning worship? Who's throwing out the first pitch at the baseball game? Doncha think that some of those crews have something to add to your weekend, thanks to dedicating their time to arts and hobbies, sports, youth ministry, and seafaring. And E92, it's only a win-win if all of those diverse crews are engaging somehow. You DEs threw out some pretty big carrots, but no sticks. Y'all said "come take advantage of our sweet insurance package and try out our council camps for your retreats." What you didn't say was "In return we expect your top youth to work our other crews' top youth."

Don't disrespect the role-playing crews. One of my scouts fell in with a live-action role playing (LARP) group and is having a great time. (Theatre major, go figure.) The boy Eagled and aged out from our troop this year. Then when our Area Venturing Officers Association was having a "Knights of Independence" theme, a LARPing crew helped organize some camp-wide games. It's not a problem if a crew's super-activities don't touch on HA. It is a problem if crews aren't gathering to mash-up ideas and activities. HA is fun. HA with swords and chainmail = ridiculous fun.

So if a boy transfers from a troop to a crew, does he lose his OA membership? If so, how would you enforce it, and has anyone tried? If not, then do we have a precedent of allowing venturers to be arrowmen?

Stosh, I understand the potential to draw top leaders, and have heard earfuls from adults worrying about it. But, as a youth I was a top leader, and was not distracted by explorers. So I always took the fears of naysayers with a grain of salt. Half of our troop's top youth leaders don't bother with our crew. The other half are in the crew AND lead the troop. Several of our events (backpacking, service projects) include the troop. Seeing other youth organize activities in our crew and other crews enabled our SPL's to put together more troop programs without adult meddling. It seems that our most active and responsible boys in the troop are our most active and responsible youth in the crew. Boys who quit the troop at some point never seem to join the crew. (Trust me, my boys tried to invite them.) So, I have not seen any leadership drain. We did lose boys whose parents were up in arms about our youth-led mindset -- probably included my refusal to fret over "first class first year." But again, none of those boys joined our crew. The advisors in our venturing committee pushed to drop paper crews from the roster. At the very least I was seeing our registrar waste ink over these guys. At the worst, UC's were getting assigned to ghosts. At the very worst we were feeding our Crew president a bunch of useless names and #s. Anyway I suspect that some of our membership loss was from us "boots on the ground" insisting that our SE take the BS out of the BSA. To be honest, if your crew as not done anything public involving your VOA (or the scouts in your district if you don't have a VOA), then you don't deserve our coverage.

To be honest, thinking back on lashing the second and third story of our summer camp tower in my youth, part of my adrenaline pump is screaming "hardhat on, 'biner in!"

Different troops have different visions for their summer camp. Ours is to return to the exact same spot year after year!

Regardless of who gets elected, you'll be able to help with the discussion among the responsible boys in your troop. You've clearly been putting a lot of thought into this. Definitely try to change your camping arrangements. Your adults are on the right track. Ideally, you put the patrol sites on opposite sides of the adult site with at least a stones throw between sites. Don't worry about that patrol of three. They'll be fine. Some hints: you don't always need a fly. One three-man tent sets up in a hurry. Single burner stove can cook up soup for three easily. The best way to get someone to do what you want is to make them think it was their idea. Your first act as SPL should be to listen. Ask they guys how they like their patrols. What could be better about them. Ideally, the "PL Reports" are part of each meeting. Not the PLC. Lacking any major activity they should be short and sweet. You might want to give them a default phrase "Sir, the Owl patrol has nothing to report tonight, but y'all just wait until next week." Like Stosh said below, most SPLs start out as "top down" managers and quickly learn how to be a "come along-side" leader.

It's a rare troop that will tolerate a crew operating in lock-step with the troop. There is often an adult (sometimes a youth, either boy scout or venturer) that will generate sour grapes. Someone will demand a separate space (or time-slot) for meetings. My crew meets twice a month. When the troop is meeting that day, we schedule the crew meeting for the 1/2 hour after the troop adjourns. The youth are what we call a "general interest crew". I.e., pretty much into the same things as the troop. We leave it up to the troop SPL and Crew president to determine which weekends will be shared activities and which will be separate. That keeps most of the naysayers at bay.

My troop is similar. You'll find lots of discussion about this on the previous version of this site (http://old.scouter.com/). Here a couple of the items that I've gleaned from it all ... When you go camping, how far apart are the patrols from each other and the adult leaders? In an open field, they should be a football fields distance apart. Now, sometimes in the tortuous hills where you and I live, that's not that practical. But the idea is that as patrols get used to living with each other at a distance apart (only coming together for assemblies or emergencies), they'll get it into their heads that scheduling stuff on their own isn't that far fetched. The part about not assigning boys to a patrol, but rather having friends choose to be together -- well that's like Fred said. If your patrol-mate is already your friend it's that much easier to pull together with him and do an activity. In fact I'd wager that there's a group of you boys who are already doing something together this weekend, they just aren't doing it with their patrol. Going directly to the SPL is a sign that the PL is not the boy's buddy. It happens. The SPL should tactfully bring it up to the PL. For example, "Joey came to me with an idea that he seemed really enthused about. Did he tell you about it?" If not, say "You or your APL should talk to him and see if it's something ya'll would like to make happen." Finally, patrol leaders should report at the meetings and "talk a little smack" to one another. "Since our last meeting, we Owls accomplished ...", "Well since our last meeting we Crows have decided to propose this troop activity ..." "Well we Ballistic Bluegills are proud to announce that two more boys made tenderfoot ..." The SPL should allow a little time at each troop meeting for a couple of patrol reports. Those are the little things that an SPL and his assistant can do to move toward your objective. Of course he needs the support of his SM for that (and sometimes the SM needs to be really thick skinned and able to back adults away so the boys have that latitude), but it sounds like your SPL would have that in your troop.

Looks like that's an individualized link, which probably is a simple security against non-participants taking the survey.

Carving/weaving: #1 wood block, #2 wicker chairs, #3 sculpture, #4 totem poles, #5 cargo nets.

Don't forget your slick promotional videos! Seriously, there are a number of camps out there with th HA competent. Ours isn't quite he tiered system that JoeBob has going. But it definitely gets the boys out from under merit badge burn-out.

You mean like this http://heritagereservation.org/eaglebase/programd.php ? For reasons that I still find a little odd, BSA has limited handgun training to Venturing.

Well, patrol cooking is definitely the glue of our summer camp. The trade-off is they have so much fun at it that they often skip camp-wide activities. It's also hard to tell who's ready for what at which age. Son #1 earned Archery at 11. I think if the camp had a wall with totems representing patrol challenges it would make it fun. They choose a totem, report to the camp director, get goals and objectives, report back, get some recognition.

Primitive arms #5: Atlatl Structures: #1 shelter, #2 tower, #3 bridge, #4 crane, #5 trebuchet.

Why not? Simply put, SMs want their boys all to themselves! They don't see it as a new program to bring youth who missed out on scouting one last chance, they see it as a big time drain on their oldest boys' time.

Well, in these days of photoshop, there is plausible deniability. But, if your SM gets a phone call let us know. I just wish you'd had the chance to work on the 30' towers I did in 1980.