Snow Owl

Gulf Coast Council also emailed the increase out at noon today. The cat is well out of the bag.

BSA should have a ticker showing the number of bot cubs and girl cubs

I would love to see a survey of how the packs are actually implementing the girl/boy dens. My suspicion is many are doing separate dens on paper only.

How do we find out if a registered leader has been bared are kicked out of Scouting? Let's say for example an adult leader was arrested for several charges including drug and weapons charges, terrorizing and threatening a public official and is currently out on Bond. How do we see if they are still authorized to be a scout leader and a MB counselor? Would this person be at least temporarily bared from Scout events as a leader? There is no conviction just a host of charges. What if it is a Scout instead of the leader? And no it is not me!

I fear the eagle has already been lightened up significantly. I have seen many scouts come back from a merit badge colleges (a one day event) with 2 completed merit badges that should take, at minimum, several days if not longer. something simple like basket weaving maybe but no communications, Law, public health, personal management etc.. I'm not eve going to go into the eagle mills. We do our scouts a disservice when we given them credit where it has not been properly earned.

I am curious what councils are going to do with girl applications before the 2018 school year? I cannot imagine my council turning down money or anything that boosts their numbers.

most Scout campgrounds etc. are more than an hour out from the city but there are two we have used that are much closer but not ideal St. Bernard State Park - 45 min South east of NOLA GIANT Mesquites 501 Saint Bernard Pkwy Saint Bernard, LA 70085 Phone number (504) 682-2101 Woodlands Conservancy 449 F. Edward Hebert Blvd, Belle Chase, LA 504-433-4000 Allows Scouts to camp but no showers and very limited facility The Scout reservation for the Southeast Louisiana Council is actually in Mississippi http://www.bsa-selacouncil.org/ The neighboring council, Istrouma Area Council, has a nice camp to the west about the same distance as the Southeast Louisiana one https://www.iacbsa.org/ There may be others as well. And yes the WW2 museum is amazing!

Agee completely

You can respond, it would not be wise nor advised. I do not see a den leader being specifically named so for them to throw themselves into the fray would be very unwise. The Charter Organization also has a big say in this, As a leader you very well may have the survival of your unit in your hands. Also, as a leader you are covered by the BSA liability and E & O insurance, if you want to have that protection, you abide by their recommendations. As soon as something like this occurs the gentleman in expensive suits call you. disclaimer - I am not speaking about anything specifically related to this matter just general knowledge and observation.

Let say the scout was asked to leave for other behavior, the Council nor BSA would say anything it would violate privacy and disclosure laws related to minors. This is completely a hypothetical mind you but for sake of thought. The mother wanted a confrontation, feeds her son who shares her views very poignant statement thinly masked as questions. She films the entire exchange (releases portions of it but not he entire meeting). The Scouts had been given guidelines of proper behavior and the parents were also informed of the decorum and accepted behavior and if they did not agree to the guidelines set out they could choose not to attend. The mother's filming violated the guidelines and agreed upon decorum for the meeting. the Scouts questions also violated the set out rules. Then after the Senator's visit has concluded, the den leader, being upset and possible politically aligned with the senator, confronts the mother and Scout about the incident. Not kicking them out of the den but pointing out they had agreed by coming to the meeting to not do exactly whet they did. But the Scout & his mother basically say we don't like your rules and we do not need to follow them. Den leader says well if you do not like my rules and the way I am running the den, you can go to another den or sign up and be a leader yourself. So again, hypothetically, the den leader, the cubmaster nor council or BSA would say anything different than they already have. Again this is all hypothetical. But you can see an easily alternative situation but BSA, the CO and the leaders cannot say anything related to any of it. Just food for thought before we jump to conclusions based on only one side of the story when there are actually many sides.

I think we are not getting even close to the whole story. The two statements I saw he asked where: “I was astonished that you blamed black people for poor health and poverty because of all the chicken and barbecue they eat,†"I was shocked that you co-sponsored a bill to allow domestic violence offenders to continue to own a gun, Why on earth would you want someone who beats their wife to have access to a gun?" Given his mother's significant political activism I have a hard time believing the story on face value. BSA nor the unit can comment on what issues may or may not have existed with the Scout and his mother or is he was asked to change dens what was the reason. Again we do not know, but what if there was another issue or problem unrelated to the statements he made to the state senator? I have first hand knowledge of a number of situations when a Scout or their family have been separated from a unit. No details or any information is ever disseminated or released. There are major privacy restrictions so BSA at any level, as well as the unit, is bared from explaining or giving any details. In the story at hand, the mother and the Scout can say what they wish to the media, BSA, the unit and the chartered organization are greatly limited as to what they can say. I can't help but think this was orchestrated by the mother to get the exact media attention she is getting.

I felt a response was warranted.

The number of Eagle mills out there is significant. Merit badges get handed out like candy at many camps and troops. We see it very often - Scouts earing a merit badge at camp that has requirements that clearly could not have been completed.

We have seen girls at summer camps both on staff and as attendees for the past few years.

I have been using a sears Kenmore basic sewing machine and it works great. Biggest thing it to use new needles. the patches and the backing on the patches dull the needles very quickly.

I don't see the getting sued into oblivion as being an issue. I think all of our packs will have growing pains, I think one way to approach it is to require a much higher level of adult leadership. As in if you want your son or daughter to be a cub we need you to get trained and register as a leader.

We have been going to district and council events for years with the Cubs that had significant numbers of sibling girls participating in all activities. The last two years of Summer camp and winter camp for the Scout had venture crew girls and female staff. I don't see that anything will need to change much. Except attitudes perhaps. I have not seen a cub scout event in the last 6 years that did not have sibling sisters participating and camping. There will be hiccups but I thing we will be stronger when this is all done.

The Necker is the universal symbol of scouting, we should encourage its use and Scouters should wear it whenever they are in uniform

Unfortunately so few know anything about venturing other than always being told " it was a way for girls to join Boy Scouts" I know our School has been hesitant to start a crew because of the age issue - members being over 18 and therefore by definition no longer students.

We had originally asked the Scouts from the various levels of the dens if they had an issue with the girls being Scouts. We did not ask it as direct as that but their response was confusion. They could not understand why they were not already in the Pack. They saw the difference between Cub Scouts and Brownies/girl Scouts as "Cub Scout go camping, girl Scouts sell cookie" Not my works, Scouts honor. We originally were going to have a girl den for all the girls called the Fox Den, we learn combining the ages did not work and we did not have enough girls or leaders to make separate girl dens at each level so we just put them in the mix. We treated them the same as the boys, they did all the den activities and pack activities just like the boys. We encourage all parents to become leaders and we really encouraged the girl cubs parents to become leaders; some did. We already had/have female leaders so it was not a gender issue. We were careful to not step on the toes of the girl scouts at our School so we never actively recruited, we just said we were open to youth 1st grade through 5th and no longer turned anyone away. We expect now to have many more We camp often and it is family camping so the families are responsible for their own children and scouts do not share tents so we did nothing different at campouts either. Even things like the buddy system were the same unless they were walking to the bathroom or showers then it either had to be two girls or an adult with a girl and boy. In our Pack of 100+ Scouts we have only had a few girls each year so far - we did not seek them we just did not turn them away. We would award them patches and rank patches etc. The only issue we had was uniforms. We had a tie dye shirt made, intending it to be for the girls only, well all the Scouts wanted them so everyone has a tie-dye class B and the girls still have no uniform. We were always very open about everything we were doing, both to the council and especially the parents. The parents knew their child was not full BSA members so there was some dissatisfaction from the parents - not toward us but council. That issue should be gone very soon too now. We stumbled into allowing girls a few years ago when a girl came up with one of our scouts and asked if she could join, we though she was his sister so we said yes you can come to everything your brother does. She said no, I'm his friend. We said yes and decided to see how it went. It was much easier than we ever thought it would be. There were no issues with the girls doing the program, there were no issues between the boys and girls. I think the younger scouts are easy the boy scout age will be much more difficult but I think still easier than people think.

We have had girls in our dens for a couple of years now, the only change for us will be we now turn an application in to council. We have had zero problems with "coed" dens. There are many units nationwide for a number of years that have either been part of the some pilot program or just doing it in full sight of their prospective councils and national. National nor council tracks anything related to dens or patrols for that matter.

That is how the Cubs were run when I was a kid but Our Pack meets as a Pack every other week then splits up into dens. Everyone meets at the same time. There is only one den per grade level. So there may be a 24 scout den, at the den level of the meeting it splits into smaller groups for the activities. I think many Packs use this model. It has several advantages. We thought that, or a version of that, would be in the new program when the Cub program was revised but it was tabled.

We do that for the boys now It is not difficult to get youth to sign up, it's getting the adults you need that is the real issue.

Has anyone seen any evidence of implementation? The rumor mill is churning but I have not seen anything recent.

Our Council puts GREAT pressure on our units as well. The SE went to our head of school and very nearly caused the school to drop all BSA units. I keep saying this: The volunteers in the trenches need to take back scouting.