twh1207

A big problem is that our council advancement committee has failed in its responsibilities as outlined in the procedure on the award form. They have definitely failed on these steps: 4. The council committee must investigate the case, interview the principals and witnesses, secure necessary signed statements, and make a recommendation based upon a full knowledge of the facts. It is recommended that this committee meet within 30 days of the receipt of the recommendation. 5. Only members of the committee present during the interviews and involved in the investigation should sign the application. The National Court of Honor reserves the right to contact individual principals or witnesses in the case or members of the investigation committee. 6. The council committee bears the responsibility to: a. Write a summary of the event b. Complete the application in detail c. Provide any attachments, newspaper clippings, etc., which pertain to the case There has been no attempt to (step 4) interview the rescuer and I suspect that the committee has failed to interview the eye witness. In step 5 it does say "should" but if it were me I would not sign the form if I had not been part of the investigation and interviews. The committee has done nothing towards completing the application form in its detail. It could not possibly have written a proper summary without having completed step 4. I believe that the rescuer statement confused the committee into believing the trainee was responsible to supervise and rescue swimmers. Without the interview they did not know this. The committee should have interviewed the rescuer and contact the other council where the rescue took place for confirmation about responsibilities. Doing this it would have learned that the responsibilities of a counselor in training do not include supervising swimmers or carry an expectation to rescue them. This has been extremely frustrating.

All the replies have been terriffic but no one has addressed the original reason for starting this thread. That is: What difficulties have others encountered in getting a scout recognized with a Heroism Medal for saving a life in a minimum risk situation and how did you overcome those difficulties?

Thanks for all the responses guys. It just really unfair to the rescuer that some councils have a much lower threshold for what constitutes heroism than some other councils. Any water rescue is dangerous to the rescuer. The lifesaving merit badge booklet discusses these dangers and how to mitigate them. The whole point of this is that there is too much room for interpretation and subjectivity in all five of these awards especially where a life has been saved. Not to mention that the instructions on the form contradicts itself. There is also too much room for overlap between the merit and the so called lifesaving awards. The lowest so called "lifesaving" award, heroism, can be had for averting serious harm and a certificate of merit could conceivably be awarded for making a rescue that involved extreme risk to the rescuer. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and for better or worse the level of award recommendation is in the hands of the advancement committee.

No conspiracy. Please know that the statement provided by the witness, who is considered very reliable because he is the Aquatics Director, is in agreement with the rescuer statement. Do you think the witness wants to put his job and reputation at rick by lying or do you think it more likely the victim scout was embarrassed by having to be rescued and did not report the situation as accurately as the rescuer and the witness. I think the victim's vanity got the better of him. It would not be too cool for his scoutmaster, parents and fellow scouts to know that he pushed himself too hard and needed to be rescued. As I said it's no conspiracy at all. It's simply the word of two persons against the one. The victim's parents and scoutmaster did not witness the action and can only support the victim's statement because they trust him. After all a scout is supposed to be trustworthy. Do you think the rescuer and the Aquatics Director less trustworthy?

National really needs to fix this and somehow eliminate much of the subjectivity. Honestly I'm not sure how they can do that because these qualities are certainly hard to measure. Perhaps the two awards below Heroism should not be allowed for life saving situations but rather significant contributions to Scouting other than saving a life. Then the minimum award for saving a life would be the Heroism award and go up from there based on the level of risk to the rescuer. Any person who saves a life is a hero. Or he most likely would be to the rescued person if not the awards committee. This would confine the awards committees subjectivity to the Heroism and above levels for lifesaving.

The water on the lake was about 10 feet deep where the rescue took place. If you look at the Lifesaving MB book regarding reaching rescues it does tell you that these rescues, if not prepared for it, can result in the rescuer being pulled into the water. The reaching rescuer must keep his weight low even lying down when necessary to pull the victim up from the water. The victim in this case was at least as heavy, perhaps more so than, the rescuer. Once dragged into the lake the rescuer could be temporarily disoriented long enough that the victim could climb all over him and drown him. If you think about it any type of water rescue can be dangerous depending on the size of the victim even if the rescuer does not enter the water. Indeed entering the water is the last thing the rescuer is supposed to consider. ======================================================== Consider this statements from http://www.scoutingbsa.org/programs/awards/bsa_non_rank_awards/Medals.html: 1. None of the above awards will be considered for what would be normally expected acts of behavior. The ordinary use of first aid or other skills that would be normally expected of a person who has had training in those skills would not qualify a person for recognition. However, the people use of such skills under extraordinary circumstances could meet the criteria for recognition. 2. Has demonstrated heroism and skill in saving or attempting to save a life at minimum or no risk to self. What a bunch of mumbo jumbo. If you are trained and have a skill you do not qualify for the award yet at the same time the award is for demonstrated SKILL and heroism. Heroism is overcoming fear (showing courage) in a situation to effect the rescue. If there is little or no risk there can be no fear over which courage must be demonstrated. In other words how can there be any heroism? What this boils down to is that the heroism award should be discarded. It's only award-able to unskilled persons and they are typically cautioned not to attempt rescues. Basically every scout First class and above is disqualified because he has learned first aid and rescue skills. But then there is the last sentence of the first paragraph, "However, the people use of such skills under extraordinary circumstances could meet the criteria for recognition." What on earth does this mean? You're right it certainly is subjective. If your council's awards committee is a bunch of hard asses you are likely to only get recommended for a certificate of merit if that. But if they are a bunch of wishy-washeys you might be able to qualify for the medal of honor because that victim could present considerable risk to the rescuer. ======================================================= This was my reply to our awards committee when they felt that the scout had not demonstrated sufficient heroism: As xxxxxxx xxxxxxx points out "heroism" is defined on the application as "conduct exhibiting courage, daring, skill, and self-sacrifice." Courage: a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear Daring: a challenge to do something dangerous or foolhardy Skill: an ability that has been acquired by training Self-Sacrifice: selflessness: acting with less concern for yourself than for the success of the joint activity xxxxx did exhibit all of these qualities. xxxxx, without fear, faced the danger of rescuing a drowning person because the panicked swimmer had two opportunities to pull him into the lake and possibly drown him. The fist in reaching the rescue pole to the victim and the second when he had to put his hands on the victim to get him under control at dockside. This involved lifting the victim up from the water high enough to get his arms on the dock and pinned down a distance of about 18 inches above the water. In doing this, if done improperly, xxxxx could have been pulled into the water and drowned by the victim. It took daring to to expose himself to the above danger of rescuing a drowning person. xxxxx obviously has the skill. xxxxx selflessly acted with no thought but of the victim and the need to rescue him. Personally I feel that selflessness is the most important quality. It is what initiates the action. The rescuer is only thinking of the victim's well being. He does not even have time to consider fear or courage. A well learned skill comes back automatically in a time of need. He just automatically acts with all his skills to effect an outcome, in this case saving a life.

Kahuna, Rescuing an infant, toddler or small child is much less dangerous to the rescuer than rescuing someone that is bigger or heavier then the rescuer as the victim in our scout's case was. The victim could easily have accidentally pulled him into the water and drowned him. But our scout had the skills from his training and possessed other useful skills for breaking the hold of a desperate swimmer. The Heroism medal is more appropriate because of the significantly higher risk to the rescuer poised by the larger victim. "The Heroism Award is presented to Scouts and Scouters that have saved or attempted to save a life at little or no personal risk." It might also be argued that rescuing a swimmer that is as big or bigger or heavy or heavier than the rescuer presents more than "little or no personal risk." By the way, I'd say that your scout should have received the Heroism Medal too.

My sense of what's going on is that the victim scout didn't want his Scoutmaster and his parents to know what really happened at the waterfront. In effect he lied about it and now no one wants to admit to the truth of it. Mommy and daddy are supporting their son and now they've just dug in their heels. Personally if the truth were to come out I'd think that they'd be happy that a fellow scout saved their son's life.

I'm wondering what, if any, difficulties others have had in getting a scout recognized with a Heroism Medal for saving a life and how you overcame those difficulties. We had a scout rescue another scout at summer camp that could have drowned because the lifeguards did not happen to see him at the time he got into trouble. We submitted our scout's name and information about what took place along with statements from the rescuer and the Aquatics Director of the camp who witnessed the actions. Unfortunately the victim and his parents do not want to cooperate by providing a victim statement and have actually become hostile. Our advancement committee has taken that position that what our scout did was not heroic enough. They've refused to research the Heroism Medal and see what circumstances were for others who have received the award. Had they done this they'd find many have received the award for much less. I feel that our scout definitely meets the courage, daring, skill and selflessness criteria for heroism and he certainly meets the skills aspect for the award because he acted selflessly with the right skills and courage and daring in the face of the obvious dangers that attempting to rescue a drowning person can present. If the rescuer's technique is not correct he can become a victim too or even loose his own life. While our scout hero did not have to enter the water himself there were actually two separate opportunities where our scout was in danger of being pulled into the water and drowned by the victim had he not used the proper technique. Our council advancement committee wants to submit our scout for a National Certificate of Merit (a non-lifesaving award). I'm afraid that if the scout is not submitted for the Heroism Medal for lifesaving that National might just go along with the council advancement committee and this young hero may not receive the proper recognition that he deserves. I've found scouts who received the award for situations that were not life threatening and even where the rescuer was supervising the swimmers and should not have even qualified. I've seen cases where the medal was awarded for not much more than talking to the victim being rescued or simply calling 9-1-1. What's been your experience with the National Heroism Medal? Will/can National look beyond what the council submits to grant the higher award? Is this one of those things where a well crafted writeup got those scouts I mentioned above awarded though they likely did not deserve it? Is there an appeal process for these awards?