Scouter99

Anyone else find it hilarious that blw2's adults think their schedules are any more harried than the boys'?

He meant NBC. NBC's Miranda Leitsinger has been on the warpath with BSA for the past year+ covering "the Scout beat" which of course only means gay scandals, not anything like, oh, the Chicago Scout who saved lives by shielding friends from gunfire with his own body. She ends every "report" with a paragraph asking people to email her with more fuel for the fire.

Sorry, Richard, scouting.org is such a jungle as to be utterly useless for transmitting any information of any import. What you need is 3 million postage stamps. Given the wide range of yokels I've encountered in Scouting, I think it's a perfectly sensible rule. How many troop computers are sitting connected 24/7 with an install of Norton that hasn't been updated in 5 years? How many Scouters are out there still running Windows XP with 200 medical forms sitting on their HD? How many lose their thumb drive every 4 months? How many cloudnuts are letting Google read the medical history of every boy who goes through their unit because paper is, like, so 20th century? If we've learned anything in the past 6 months it's that there's no such thing as encrypted, just encrypted til someone decides to crack it and/or until you click "I agree." The valid reason doesn't rev my engine: How far could the paper copies possibly have been from the thumb drive?

If the only reason they couldn't get new scouts was because the one pack died, sorry, it sounds to me like they decided to just give up. Cub Scouts aren't the only source of new recruits.

Same, but $20? Yikes. I'll buy it for $5 in 15 years

Fortunately for the scout, the requirement is position of responsibility not "leadership." He will demonstrate leadership in his Eagle project, and that's the only advancement reference to leadership. Unfortunately for the scout, this ASM knows neither the requirements for Eagle nor the responsibilities of the ASPL, but wants to stop scouts from advancing anyway. BSAHandbook.org has good descriptions of the responsibilities of each position of responsibility, ASPL reads: "The assistant senior patrol leader works closely with the senior patrol leader to help the troop move forward and serves as acting senior patrol leader when the senior patrol leader is absent. Among his specific duties, the assistant senior patrol leader trains and provides direction to the troop quartermaster, scribe, historian, librarian, instructors, and Order of the Arrow representative. During his tenure as assistant senior patrol leader he is not a member of a patrol, but he may participate in the high-adventure activities of a Venture patrol. Large troops may have more than one assistant senior patrol leader, each appointed by the senior patrol leader." http://www.bsahandbook.org/PDFs/troop.pdf The GtA has provisions for scouts who are not meeting the requirements of their position of responsibility. They are to be counseled early, given specific goals, and checked regularly. If they are failing in their responsibilities, they are to be made aware of the problem early and given correction. If they continue to fail, then they may be denied credit for the position. If you feel the scout has been whisked through the advancement program, that's your troop's problem, not his problem. If he can't tie a bowline he didn't magically sign himself off, someone in your troop did it. If he poo-pooed his previous PoRs, he didn't give himself credit, someone in your troop did. The time to address any issues he may or may not have was before you all signed him off, not now that he's about to get Eagle before you think he should even though he has met virtually the same requirements that you did in the 80s. Welcome to the forum, hope you find it a valuable resource.

If the GTA doesn't specify "primary" then it's not a thing.

The guy has every right to pursue a normal life, but as a person looking to get beyond his past he ought to do himself and Scouting a favor by staying away. If it was a troop member/parent that called the local news, they're an idiot and thanks a lot for the attention.

This is not a "Program" topic and I wish people would put this stuff in Issues/Politics where it belongs.

You can't talk about their sons that way!

Uhhh, no they can't. There's no edit option on email you've received or sent. You can clear Facebook PMs, but not edit them (and they're still on FB's server after you clear them), ditto on any other service. The simple fact that nothing is ever actually deleted is independent verification. We already have adults that complain about too much troop email, so I don't copy a parent unless it's something I want to make sure the kid sees ASAP or that the parent holds them accountable to. As for distinction between phone calls and digital contact, it would make more sense for BSA to mandate a third party in phone calls than it does to mandate a 3rd party in emails/IMs/PMs. There's no record with the phone except that it was made, when, and how long it lasted. With digital, the entire text is there forever.

World Brotherhood of Scouting. Several years ago, in a camp that was already packed to double capacity, there was some kind of high-school-aged boy/girl group in camp I don't believe they were Venturers, but they appeared to be some kind of ROTC group. Their adult leader was a constant annoyance during flags every morning and evening, barking his own commands to his group out of sync with the other 920 people, loudly. Their PT all over camp required a lot of dodging or getting steamrolled. etc Place was already packed over capacity, food ran short all week, and here's Himmler II and the young Marines taking up space.

UofS? Couldn't you just earn your Firem'n Chits?

As ScoutNut pointed out, the red loops were not a matter of troop history or tradition; you were wearing red loops because those are the loops Boy Scouts wore. No one in your troop ever sat down and made the decision to wear red. Now Boy Scouts wear green loops. Hats or neckerchiefs are a good way to have a troop flare to your uniform.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest calling Trail's End.

I picked up a 1968 history of Scouting aimed toward kids, Story of the Boy Scouts by Wyatt Blassingame, the other day, and one of the stories in the book is that of scout Augusto Flores and 4 friends who decided to hike from Buenos Aires to New York in 1926, ~18,000 miles. Along the way, 1 was snakebitten and died, and the other 3 were stopped by hospitalization. They were lost a couple times in deserts and jungles, taken captive by revolutionaries, and robbed by bandits. Augusto carried on and arrived in New York in 1928. He published a book in 1929 and 1931, but I can't find anything on him more recent than that. He's certainly dead, he'd be 104 today. Any scouting history buffs know more?

No, I don't. I expect 18-yr-old Eagles to piss off to college and not come back because there's a toxic mindset around what earning Eagle means. A guy like you is the exception in my long tenure. I expect adult/dad Eagles to be as useless as anyone else.

If either of you two think the answer to older youth retention is access to classroom training I dare say neither of you knows anything about retaining youth of any age.

Did you go to get training, or did you go to get a patch? You can get the patch on eBay. Since all of the degrees say "Scouters" rather than "participants;" from your wording "...UoS offers many adult trainings, and in the MTC they have classes for Venturing youth members...;" from the website description "supplemental training for all volunteers." it sounds like maybe the classes for youth are not part of the university; rather, they're simply offered at the same time for convenience (the space is rented, the people are there). If you were taking the actual College of Venturing classes, the council is doing you a favor and courtesy by opening up an adult resource to youth. Hold onto your transcript and apply the courses once you're a Scouter/volunteer.

Webelos is not plural, Webelo is not a word.

This already happens a lot. Indoor climbing places offer Boy Scout and Girl Scout programs all the time.

2002 is the last one I recall. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/660201228/Boy-Scouts-settle-Utah-suit-over-2002-fire.html?pg=all