Eagle1993

One of the moms, current GSUSA leader asked “what grade do you earn that coveted Eagle”. I explained that it has nothing to do with age or grade as there are some *shudder* 12 year olds that have earned the rank. I went through the requirements and we talked about all of the Eagle projects around town. I then explained EBOR and she said it sounded like defending a dissertation. I also agree explained (a bit) about the patrol method. The more the GSUSA members learned about the BSA program the more they saw the benefits.

Had first parents meeting last night and there was a lot of pushback regarding separate dens. The general consensus was that why is BSA adding girls to only keep them segregated. Why wouldn’t the girls just go to Girl Scouts. We got through the discussion but I have a feeling the separate den wall will fall in the future. We also have several current GSUSA scouts coming on board and it is clear that this decision will cause loss in the ranks of GSUSA. Not only are scouts but leaders are looking to transition. I dug in a bit and the two comments I heard were GSUSA program can be boring at times and BSA seems more grass roots. Im not sure if that is BSA’s intention or simply how we run our Pack. First Girl den meeting next week and I expect to see several applications in over the weekend.

To be honest, when I read this story and saw they person who created the Pack was a deputy DA I thought.... political move.

We had a meeting with parents of some of our new girl members last night. One of the biggest complaints and questions was regarding separate dens. The comments were all similar ... why should any girl join if this won’t be coed, why shouldn’t all girls then simply stay in Girl Scouts. We explained that the Pack would be coed and that seemed like to help a bit. I wonder what families and supporters of GSUSA will think of all Girl Packs. Clearly that doesn’t help families go to one organization in terms of planning their time. I don’t understand how creating a girl Pack is family scouting, and given some of the comments I got regarding separate dens I can only imagine what current GSUSA supporters would think about it.

The council must have kicked off this story as a recruiting message. Drum up some support in prep for launch. Most seem focused on the Cub Scout program when working with the media, not sure why this council led with 1,600 girls ready to join and then got all the media tied in with a fake BSA girl Troop. Seems like this can only cause confusion.

I’d recognized not reading comments at the end of articles. It’s not clear if they are trolls or simply disgusting human beings.

Great ideas, thanks. I agree, the $600 amount caused me to push back. We are planning on thanking him during our Blue and Gold and I’m trying to get several Boy Scouts who were Cubs under him to attend as well. I love the flag idea and several others. I’ll continue to push back on the gift card, and it will definitely not come out of the Pack budget.

Does this impact both hands? What if he just used his left hand instead?

Thanks for the suggestions. I should note that he was talking about a $600 gift card.

Our long term Cubmaster is stepping down this April when his son crosses over, so we are working on a send off. Our Pack financial status is in good shape so our new Cubmaster suggested using some of those funds for a gift card. I’m pushing back as I don’t think it is appropriate and it feels like it would be against policy. First... is there anyone who thinks this would be appropriate? I think he was just throwing out ideas (he is a good leader), but it didn’t strike me as right. Second... any good examples of gifts/sendoffs for Cub Masters? I definitely want to give him something, but from a dedicated collection from the Pack’s families.

The Germans I worked with were near France/Switzerland. They told me that after the war, the American and German leaders made peace and that all levels of American soldiers treated the Germans well. The French and German leaders also made peace but the Germans I talked to said that didn’t trickle down. Even German kids who had nothing to do with the war were mistreated by the French soldiers. I didn’t ask for specifics. To this day, they said that most Germans pick Spanish or Italian as their foreign language vs French. Many Germans will still not vacation in France either. I told them that I thought English was their number one foreign language... the guy laughed and said English is not considered a foreign language anymore (it is required for all German school children). That was about the end of the conversation... I didn’t point out that Germany invaded France twice in 30 years and perhaps that was why they were a little pissed.

Oh, and many of them still dislike the French... at least those 40 and older.

I had an engineering team that used to work for me out of Germany. One of them told me of the time he told his son about WWII. He got through telling his son the history and his son asked...”dad, we were on the good side, right”. “Well son, as a matter of fact....” it was a tough conversation to have.

I’m hoping they most if not all come through... so far a lot of verbal interest.

What I am starting to see is several dads who only had daughters volunteer to be leaders. One was a former ASM, Eagle Scout and OA member. He only had girls so stopped his involvement if BSA and is now interested in volunteering as his girls are getting involved. We are also seeing other parents volunteer as they are talking of having their daughters join. Right now we have the possibility of adding 26 scouts to our pack of 71 over the next 2 weeks. 4 are boys and 22 girls (2 boys joined along with their sisters). 7 of the girls are from a separate school who’s Pack is not adding girls at this time. So far, there are 5 new parents volunteering to be leaders in our Pack along with these 22 potential scouts. I don’t expect all to join right now, but it does seem that there are parents out there willing to volunteer along with having their daughters join. I will say adding this program midstream has been a lot of work, but I think it is helping us understand how we should add girls to our Pack Early on I was one concerned that we couldn’t do separate girl only dens due to volunteers. What I am seeing is that we should be able to maintain separate dens (with the additional volunteers I am seeing) and there are benefits. So, going into the fall we will be enforcing separate Girl/boy dens.

I’m in the med device industry and I’ve seen this with PMP (project management professional) and various nursing certifications (CNA, RN, etc.). However, I do agree some can go overboard. Generally it’s a red flag if the characters in your degree and certification list exceed your name length. 😀 As far as eagle candidate on your resume I’d keep it to Life Scout for now. At 15 that is a great accomplishment.

Our settings have been updated and we have been able to register our first girl. I believe we are the only Pack in our council doing this at this time, but there are other early Packs showing some interest. Next up parents meeting and more homework on condensing a program down into 5 months.

Good recommendation and thanks for the additional DE insight. Our DE has been very supportive so I’ll lean to the side of him thinking down the road on ensuring a quality program vs padding the numbers. I definitely appreciate the ideas and will focus our leaders on planning for a large Pack vs breaking it apart.

Today, there is no requirement for male YPT adults to be present at Cub Scout outings. You can simply have two female den leaders and your fine. When adding girls, I believe BSA worked with both legal and other authorities and realized that having two males leading would be an issue, so they added in the YPT female requirement. The question is why they didn’t go back and put in a new requirement for all Boy dens. My guess is that he BSA didn’t want to negatively impact existing Packs and Dens for something that is not needed for safety or legal reasons. That said, I do think they should have consistent policies with othe coed groups within the BSA. Perhaps providing existing Packs transition timing to allow them to find additional male YPT adults may help.

That is interesting, as in our case the council is the one initiating the idea of splitting the Pack up... no one inside our Pack has even thought of this. I’ll focus on adding adult leaders in various roles to improve our program instead of breaking the pack up. Thanks for the insights.

@Pselb We would have 1 Pack for K5-3rd grade and the other Pack for 4th & 5th graders. I don’t see splitting friends as much of a risk. Most of the scouts in our Pack hang out with their own grade level. We do have other Packs in town but all are heavily segregated by school... there are no scouts in any of the Packs from other schools. When we lose scouts, we lose them to sports not other youth organizations. Even with all of that, I am definitely leaning to keeping 1 Pack and look for other solutions for our primary issue (Webelos and AOL linkage to Troops) and secondary issue (entire Pack outings/meetings/event) exceeding capacity.

My primary issue that I have is the lack of involvement with Troops for Webelos and AOL. The AOL does the Klondike with one Troop but I would like to see more activities with multiple Troops. That would allow the scouts to get a feel of the various Troop options in our area. As the CC (same with the CM), it is difficult to have the time to help make that happen when supporting a Pack that is this large and ranges from K5-5th grade (and now girls). I may just lean on my den leaders and give them contacts. Another option is den chiefs... perhaps I can reach out and see if any Troops would be interested in that role as well. Otherwise I agree that splitting the pack could just result in two weak packs. I’ll see if there are other ways to skin this cat.

My Pack has grown a lot over the last few years. A few summers ago we were down to 26 after a crossing over. At time of recharter this January we hit 71. I now have 11 girls joining with 5 additional girls possible pending a parent meeting next week. At he same time, 5 more boys are joining. So, if all some thru we will be at 92 Scouts with 16 of them girls. Looking at the trend I think our Pack will settle out at 100 Scouts with 25 girls. Given those numbers my DE is starting discussions of possible different Pack configurations. One idea is separate Boy/Girl Packs. The other, which I find more interesting, is a Webelos/Arrow of light Pack. So, one pack for K5-3rd and the other as 4th and 5th graders. Other than the additional overhead this sounds like a great idea. Has anyone setup separate packs like this? Any thoughts of this subdivision? This is very early and I haven’t discussed with anyone in the Pack... just feeling out the idea.

Agreed. To me this should be the policy going forward for Cub Scouts. I understand there may Be impacts to some dens, but we should encourage dads to volunteer. I honestly have no problem with requiring an adult female present with girls... but the requirement of having an adult male present with boys should also apply.

We are the only Pack in our district running the early adopter program. There are others in the council, not sure how many.