elitts

I think I'm technically registered with the crew associated with her unit. I'm not terribly concerned about most people in the unit having an issue. If anyone asks the leadership, the situation can be explained. But I'm always a little concerned about that parent/scouter who is too afraid of confrontation to ask someone if it's appropriate and just decides to report "A one-on-on contact violation" to council or the 1800 number.

Has anyone dealt with non parent family members who are accompanying youth? My son is out of scouts now but my niece is starting and I will likely be her ride regularly as I'm still involved with my troop. She and her mom have lived with me for the last 7 years (since she was 3). We are trying to decide if I just need verbal, informal written or a formal "Temp Guardianship" document to allow me to be YPT compliant while having one on one contact with her.

You need to read more carefully, Fred didn't say "charges may be overblown due to bias", he said that "charge stacking" can result in biasing the jury once a trial actually takes place; and it's not his idea it's a fairly well studied phenomenon. https://harvardcrcl.org/use-the-rules-of-criminal-procedure-to-limit-prosecutors-power/ And a civil discussion regarding a tragic situation at a Camp, including whether or not a particular response is overblown, seems entirely within the purview of a site like this; particularly since neither the site nor the BSA is "about protecting kids" they are both about serving a top-notch program to kids as safely as possible (given the inherent risks of the programming).

If separate people committed distinct crimes, I don't have any problem with multiple charges. However what commonly happens is you have DAs stacking up multiple charges for the same offense for (usually) sole purpose of essentially extorting the defendant into accepting a plea deal. (or sometimes so that they can advertise to the public their "tough on crime" stance for elections) In a hypothetical case like this, lets say the most serious possible charge is "Negligence with a firearm leading to death". The prosecutor then charges the defendant with: Conspiracy to commit a crime (for planning the events that lead to the accidental death) Negligent handling of a firearm; Negligent handling of a firearm leading to serious injury; Negligent handling of a firearm leading to death; Use of a computer in the commission of a felony (for sending an email to a fellow scouter to discuss the plans for the event that lead to the accidental death) Now, US law says basically that you can only be charged with multiple crimes if the alleged criminal actions are distinct and separate. So the DA will use a ridiculous argument like, the first charge covers the planning of the shooting event; the second charges covers the time the event began until that youth picked up the gun; the third charge covers from the picking up of the gun until the scout was injured and the fourth charge covers from when the scout was injured until he was actually dead. Of course, if this defendant goes to trial, the most likely result is their attorney will get at least 2 if not 3 or 4 of these thrown out after making arguments. But what the DA is going to argue is: I'll dismiss everything but the most serious charge if you plead guilty and waive a trial. But if you don't plead guilty, I'm going to pursue them all and even if the judge dismisses them in the end, it's going to cost you thousands of dollars for an attorney to argue the case." I don't have a problem with a fair punishment, though it's hard to know what's fair without knowing what kind of negligence we are talking about. I just object to warping the system.

It's still only going to apply to cases that can be brought in Federal court, which is generally going to mean it needs to have either involved crossing state lines or happened on Federal property. It's not impacting the individual SoL of States.

If the scout has really mastered the skills in the Swimming merit badge, it really shouldn't take longer than an hour. Definitely less time than you are likely to put into tracking down someone to sign off on previous work from a Summer Camp.

Yup. Sounds like a clear case of charge stacking to me; which I personally find to be a reprehensible abuse of our criminal justice system.

Our troop regularly does trips dedicated to Mountain Biking, Canoeing (there are some cheap canoes local), Shooting, and then just general camping. We try pretty hard to keep the number of weekend trips over $40ish to no more than 2-3 per year and that's with $17-$18 per scout allocated to food. ($15 per person budget, plus we don't charge adults). One of the things that has been helpful with keeping the standard "just camping" weekends entertaining is the purchase (or donation) of some in-camp entertainment equipment. We have a set of 12 tomahawks and 9 throwing knives that can keep most of the scouts busy all day long, plus a slackline and a collection of pioneering poles.

If you have traditional patrols with the freedom to move between patrols on at least a regular basis you'll end up a good cross section of ages at PLCs fairly naturally. What will typically happen is scouts will self select into something that resembles age based patrols just because they'll choose to move in small friend groups. A group of 5 twelve year olds might join the Fox Patrol because they like some aspect of it. Then the last 2 fifteen year olds will get through 6 months with the 12 year olds and get annoyed so they'll join the Eagle Patrol because there are 3 other fifteen year olds in it etc.. Traditional patrols don't typically end up with a full mix of 10-17 year old kids. Particularly if you add in at least one "Older scout patrol". As far as getting the younger kids experience as PL, the way that's accomplished is if a 13-14 year old wants to be PL but keeps losing to a scout 1 or two years younger, you suggest to them that they switch to a patrol with a higher number of 11-12 year olds that can't decide who to vote for. And when it comes to getting newer scouts experience with making duty rosters and menus, you just remind the Patrol Leaders that their job is to make sure stuff happens, NOT to do everything themselves; so a good Patrol Leader should be assigning the tasks of creating a duty roster to a patrol member and then reviewing and amending the result, not doing it themselves every month. As far as the tenting goes, I think you just tell kids they are allowed to tent solo and if they don't like that idea they can decide to change to a patrol with people the correct age to have a partner. While I know most kids like having a tent buddy, there always seems to be at least a few kids who'd rather be alone anyway.

For trailers? Haulmark is typically pretty good. The biggest problem with trailers is that the quality can vary widely even within a particular brand. Welder competence is typically a toughie industry wide and so if "Bob" did the frame welding on one trailer it could be great while the one "Mark" welded up may have ongoing issues. The best advice I've seen is to stick with one of the premium brands and try and buy one a few years old to save money, or go with a manufacturer that will let you inspect the trailer before taking delivery. And ideally, pick a manufacturer that's close enough you can bring the trailer back for repairs if something comes up.

If you've got a 3/4 ton truck with a class 3+ hitch and a tongue capacity of >1000lbs that can always pull the trailer, you are generally right; just keep all the weight between the axle and the truck and you are golden. But at least with my troop (and I have to assume others), that's not always the case. We regularly have people with mid/full size SUVs pulling that have 5000lb/500lb weight limits and you have to keep things fairly well balanced to make sure you keep the tongue weight over at least 10% of the total weight, without going over the 500lb tongue limit of the hitch. With our trailer, that means keeping the tongue weight between 300 and 500lbs. (preferably between 300 and 450) And while most of the time we've got a QM I've worked with or myself there to make sure things get loaded correctly, a $100 hitch that enables an idiot-proof quick eyeball check on the weight is some cheap insurance for those times when things happen without one of those QMs or myself present.

I strong believe that every troop with a trailer should have one of these. https://www.weigh-safe.com/product/universal-tow-ball/ There are WAY too many parents pulling trailers without any good way to judge if the weight distribution is appropriate within the trailer (and lacking the experience to eyeball it) Particularly with single axle trailers. I know I had one year where someone pulled our trailer to summer camp and when they arrived complained about how terrible our trailer was to pull. When I went over to it, I was able to easily lift the tongue off the hitch by myself. The QMs and everyone else loading it had put virutally everything heavy just inside the rear door because it was "too hard" to shift the heavy stuff around inside the trailer. I was honestly shocked person driving managed to make it down 65 miles of highway without the wobble taking them off the road.

I'm going to try and address a few of your points within following quote rather than trying to create a dozen separate quote bubbles. My responses are bolded. . To be honest, even though you say you are aware of the differences between Cubs and Scouts, some of what you've written (the underlined portion above) makes me think you haven't quite made the transition as well as you think you have. While many of your points have some validity, your overall viewpoint leads me to think you still want/desire to have a much more involved "advisory" role than is really ideal in the Scouts BSA program. While I'm all in favor of new parents getting involved in helping right away, in general, I've found the best approach is to separate parents and their own scouts for the first year at least. So if someone comes in and wants to be an ASM immediately, they might get assigned to mentor the Star/Life scouts, NOT to act as the ASM advising their own scout's NSP. This serves a number of purposes. First, it gets the new parent into a position where they aren't tempted to try and turn Scouts into Webelos III with the urge to make things efficient or make them run smoothly. Second, as long as the "Advisor ASM" for a patrol is a parent (or their former DL) it's REALLY tough for the scouts to become independent. They've had 4-5 years to become totally habituated to the idea that the "Adult" is in charge and they will constantly fall back on the advisor for help rather than stretching themselves to figure things out. A totally new adult has a better chance of just sitting off to the side as an emergency resource than an adult that has been invested in that group for the last few years.

I actually just upgraded our tool selection to a full set of hand tools, but I'm not going to go too much further than that. There are very few parents in my troop that are handy enough to be willing/able to do much more than loosen/tighten bolts, so having a more complete set of tools isn't of much use anyway.

One key difference between BSA and virtually any other youth program that heavily utilizes volunteers is that the BSA tries to keep theirs even once the volunteer's children are no longer involved. As a result, a uniform that serves as something of a badge of service has more value than it would if you were just using parents as volunteers for the length of their child's participation. It also helps newer Scouters gauge the value of input from more experienced Scouters. Not that it's foolproof by any means, but at least if someone has been around long enough to earn 4+ knots, you know they likely have at least 5 or more years of experience to draw upon. Plus, it helps me to know who to avoid when I don't want a long conversation. (The guy with 13 knots and 7 medals all on their shirt on a daily basis)