Eagle94-A1

We did our own program. We did an activity based program instead of MBs. Activities included Canoeing, Cycling, Emergency Preparedness and Wilderness Survival. We were super flexible. Our emergency preparedness drill and survival shelter building took a lot longer than planned. Cycling 22 miles wore them slammed out, and the afternoon was spend chilling out, advancement sign offs, and SM Conferences (5 total). #1 complaint was no showers, they had to use spigots in the campsite. The PVC shower they created fell apart while the first scout was in it. So far no problems.

Yes, the youth will complain loudly about inept adults. When enough youth started complaining about the interfering adults in the old troop, the matter got fixed.

Thanks for stating they ask for council. I have started the survey, but kept getting a 'minimum 2000 character" message for two questions. So I was really complaining about my council. Even though the council will be gone by 2022, they can still make my life miserable. I've seen SEs abuse their authority. 2 oustanding volunteers have had their membership revoked because they questioned the council to hard.

No, the Insta-palms poll was the last one they published the results of. 18% Against and 76% Strongly Against. But they did it anyway. The last poll they did was the membership changes one. They did not give enough time to conduct the prerequisite town hall meeting in order to take the poll ( which limited the numbers of members who could do the poll), the questions were biased as to what they wanted to do, a segment of the BSA's membership who took the poll were excluded from being included in the results (LDS members in the Western Region according to the foot note on something the BSA published about ht epoll) , and they never did publish the actual results of that poll.

I do it for both selfish and selfless reasons. 1) I am addicted to Scouting. I have been in continuously for over 35 years now in either volunteer or professional positions. 2) I want my three hoodlums to have some of the same experiences I had. Scouting made a major impact on my life, and I want it to make the same impact for them. 3) A lot of older Scouts and adults helped me as both a youth and young Scouter. There is no way I could ever repay them for giving up their time and treasure to help me out back in the day. Closets I could come is following their example.

As others stated, talk to the CC and COR or the Charter Org's legal rep ASAP! One troop I was in had that issue, and we could not remove the parent until we had a court order. Once we got the court order, parent was removed from all unit communications. When parent showed up, they were advised that they needed to leave, or they would be arrested for trespassing (ASM is law enforcement).

Here is how I see it regarding pros. Disclosure, I was a DE and worked for National Supply. There are a lot of good, honest professionals who wants what is best for the youth. I was one, some of my workers were as well. And I have had some good DEs I've worked with over the years. But there are also a lot of pros who do not live up to the Oath and Law. They will lie, steal, and do whatever it takes to get ahead. The good ones tend to not stick around long.They get burned out, frustrated, or harassed into leaving. Because they have to work twice and thrice as hard as the unscrupulous pros, they get burnt out much faster or get so frustrated with their situation that they leave. Why work so hard and not get truly recognized for the hard work. Worse is being harassed to leave. When I was a DE, my DFS and SE were both willing to do anything to not only meet goals, but be #1 in their division. When they realized I would not play their games, they harassed me into quitting. Cancelling training 4 days before leaving, rearranging my my week of summer camp until after I was married, causing me to cut short my honeymoon for a "mandatory meeting" in which only 1 other DE was at because he was at camp, having me drive 2 hours round trip for a "meeting" which lasted all of 1 minute because I was picking up a video for them to return, etc. They few good pros that advance tend to get sidelined to smaller councils. Their performance does not compare to those taking all the shortcuts.

The lead lawyer has stated at least twice that I have personally heard in public interviews (NPR's DIANE RHEEM SHOW is the one I remember of the top of my head, and it was around the end of the interview) that the dissolution of the BSA is his goal. Baden-Powell Service Association? Trails Life? I am willing to bet the volunteers will have no problems. But what will the pros do? Sadly they control BSA, and not the volunteers, despite how it is suppose to be done. Instead of getting the best people for the job, I was told to get the most agreeable when I was a DE.

I don't know. I guess the belief is that if the exec committee failed once, it will fail again? What I do know there are a multitude of factors affecting my council and the ability to retain quality volunteers. We are in a very conservative part of the country, and membership changes over the past 10 years have affected volunteer retention. Those that remained have been burned by the professional staff. We have had professionals overrule volunteers in charge of events. We have dedicated and knowledgeable volunteers being ignored and removed from council level positions, to be replaced with 'yes men." We have had some volunteer positions deliberately left vacant (my district had no chairman, thus no representation, for over 3 years, and before that the DC got so frustrated, he stepped down). We have had volunteers yelled at and cursed out by professionals when the volunteers disagreed with professionals' decisions or where the professional is at. Volunteers have not been kept informed, i.e. conditional charter for the past 4 years, or lied to, i.e. being told one thing only to find out later it was a completely different reason. It has gotten to the point that some volunteers cannot wait for the council to be dissolved and disseminated amongst neighboring councils. They do not believe things could be worse. But I know otherwise.I have been through a district merger, and know how things can cause problems. I also know that this council does not enforce a lot of rules and policies that other councils do enforce. In fact when one ranger tried to enforce some standard rules regarding the camp, he was told to let it be to be "camper friendly." I think a lot of folks will be in for a rude awakening when the mergers hits.

This brings up a question I have : what happens to a council's endowment when it is dissolved and absorbed by multiple councils? I ask because my council is doomed, see my post in Council Relations on the latest info, and I know at one time my council was #1 for it's council size in the Southern Region for it's endowment. One individual's bequest gave every Eagle Scout and all council support staff a West Fellowship the year he died. I don't know how large it is now, but i personally know that several of the donors, including the one who left the large bequest, wanted the money to support local Scouting, with the hopes it benefited the Scouts of their district.

With all do respect, the pros WILL ignore the desires of the youth and volunteers and do whatever they want. They ignored the published results on instapalms, and they still have not published the results of the poll regarding membership changes.

The Brownsea Strip in your post is supposed worn between council patch and unit number. If I can find my syllabus, i will post the image. And i do know adult staffers wearing it during the course. Need to check if it is a permanent award, or youth only. If you took it in the 1990s, it have been the JLTC course, but your council called it BROWNSEA II. And the patch may have been a local creation. I know when i did BROWNSEA 22 back in the day, the strips were available. But the patch you earned for completing the course was no longer available. My council ordered a bunch of Canadian BP patches to compensate

I found out that my council has been on a conditional charter for 4 years now. We don't make goals this year, merger process begins next year. With COVID-19, and increases in fees ($99 for existing youth including $33 in council fees) i see us losing existing members. Add in the incoming lawsuit commercials, i see no chance of meeting membership goals. As for financial goals, we have been running in the red for a few years. Council cut 3 professional positions and increased facility fees. Now there is talk of harvesting and selling properties. Hopefully they will not sell the local camp, the neighboring council has a lot of units use it, and i bet they would love to have it. And i told you how the pros have been running off volunteers, we are about to lose our district commissioner. DE has been MIA for some time, and the commissioner emailed his boss and the SE to see what was up. DE sent a very rude text cursing out the commissioner over the matter. So we are losing our commissioner, and more than likely our DE. So this situation explains my negative attitude towards BSA at the moment. The only positives, the things keeping my sanity, is the troop is surviving and my boys are advancing. Troop is meeting again, and we just did summer camp locally on our own. Overall a good time by all. Oldest got his credentials from, national, so he can plan his Eagle COH. Middle son just passed Life this week, and has a goal of earning Eagle at an earlier age than his brother. I keep reminding him it's not a race, but what does dad know. And youngest is now Second Class. Additionally 3 other Scouts have passed BORs at camp. The other 3 at camp are on their way.

Baltimore was experimenting with an alternate uniform that was a colored UA performance tshirt with the rank on it. So everytime you advanced, you needed a new tshirt. I think the tshirts were $25 to $35 a pop. That's $175 to $245 just on uniform shirts!

I think the missing word is in the letter is "CURRENTLY." Over the past 35+ years in Scouting, i have seen so many changes, including changes that we were previously told would never happen, that I have no faith in anything coming out of National. To make matters worse, i would believe the national volunteers because there is a history of them being lied to by national's pros. The Philmont committee is the most recent example. The letter that came out recommending Sea Scouts become part of Exploring again took the National Commodore completely by surprise. So just because OA says no changes will happen, does not make it so.

My thoughts 1. Get rid of the green on tan numbers and trained patches. Everyone wears white on red numbers and red on tan trained strips.. better yet, mate the trained strips white on red. That way it could be worn on Scout, Sea Scout, and Venturing uniforms. 2. Get rid of the white on navy and navy on white numbers that Sea Scouts wear. We can wear red too. Last time I ordered numbers and other Sea Scout stuff from national, the labeling still said Sea Explorer, and Sea Scouts split from Exploring about 15 years prior to that purchase. 3. Get rid of all the high dollar extras like jewelry, cufflinks, collector books, etc.. 4.Get rid of the dated stuff, i.e. Scout Sunday 2020, 2020 collector's hat, etc. 5. Do not have our own brand of camping gear, instead stick with established gear. 6. instead of selling gimicky stuff, listen to what the customers need. Anyone remember the AOL belt buckle for leather belts?

Are you getting into the schools to do Round Ups? We are not, and I put that squarely on the DE and pros. Because share a DE with another district, the bulk of his time is there. And when Volunteers do try to get things going, it's negativity, or outright overruling. We had lots of contacts with the schools system, and we lost them because of the pros. We now have a new superintendent, and we have not been allowed in the schools since. And our DE is not helkping.

You just described my district and council. Council is on a conditional charter, not having met membership and/or financial goals for several years. Because the pros are overruling event volunteers, and verbally abusing other volunteers when they don't meet goals, longtime vounteers are backing off or quitting outright. As a result, volunteers have no ownership of the district and council. Its gotten to the point that some volunteers cannot wait to merge with neighboring councils because they believe it could not be any worse. You do have some who are trying to do damage control on the district level. But I compare it to sinking ship. An Ensign out of the academy is in charge (DC), a master chief is acting XO (Dis. Commissioner), 1 chief on damage control(former district committee whose back),1 disillusioned petty officer assisting in damage control but not being effective because of the fires (me not doing my job due to COVID), 1/2 the crew dead, wounded, or missing (we have lost that much membership and units over the past 10 years) and 1/2 the crew is every man for themselves (9 remaing units doing their own thing). There is no support from the fleet. And we got an enemy wolfpack out there trying to sink us (lawsuit and sex abuse ads.) I am not optimistic. So why keep struggling to keep the program alive? First and foremost my 3 sons. I want them to have the same good experience I had, if not better ones. Second the Scouts. We have youth who need Scouting. Third, I think the influx if adults with little to no experience as youth is a major problem, and online training is not helping. Don't believe me, look at the influx of virtual MB classes, camp outs, and summer camps. Look at the number of adults who will just give away MBs. Look at the number of adults who have no problem signing off on requirements, Second Class and First Class swimming requirements come to mind, even if the Scout never did them. I hope and pray that live training will help stem some of this. Fourth, there is no way I could ever repay all the adults who sacrificed their time and treasure. Closest I can do is pay it forward.

Soon it will be BSA footing the bill. We have to pay for several months of advertising and mail outs as part of the lawsuit.

Not only NO, but HECK NO! I've heard stories of over 100 Scouts in a "class." I took two online classes for one of my masters. One class had over 80 students, and I know the teacher did not read all the work turned in. Thank goodness the class was something I had experience in.In addition to the large class numbers, I am hearing about paperwork not being given to the Scouts once they complete the requirements. We had zoom meetings while we were not able to meet, and we did some MB work. Even in a small group like my troop, I have caught Scouts goofing off playing video games, walking away from meetings and doing other things, etc. And here is the part I hate: you have qualified MBCs locally for the bulk of the MBs, and all you need to do is make a phone call to get in touch with them. One of my Scouts is pushing to get Eagle before he turns 18. He needs 6 Eagle required MBs, including 2 with 90 day requirements. His parents wanted him to do all 6 at an online summer camp paying over $150 to do them. We have at least 2 MBCs in the troop for each MB he needs.

Agree. 22 years after the terms officially went away, I still hear "Venture Scout" and "venture crew" to incorrectly id Venturers and Venturing Crew.

At least you aren't the nuns who used psychological warfare on us when we misbehaved.Still remember Sr. Patricia making me tutor the guy I got in a fight with. A smack on the knuckles would have been much welcomed.

Well if they want to get rid of Scoutmaster, let's use the term "Skip" which is what they call SMs over in the UK instead of Mr. ________.

Law Enforcement Exploring is a specific program name like Sea Scouts, Cub Scouts, Venturing, and Scouts BSA. Hence the capitalization.

Sorry I couldn't resist.