seattlecyclone

I'm far from an expert on this, but I know different Muslim women have different standards they hold themselves to. For example a recent coworker of mine would show up to the office in a sweatshirt and pants all the time but she would always keep the traditional head scarf on. It's possible that the new mothers in your pack would find the long-sleeved version of the uniform shirt to meet their modesty standards, when paired with their typical head covering and a long skirt. The only way to find out is to ask them. Thanks for being kind and trying to work with them as they do their best.

I second this idea. Your numbers are low and you don't foresee recruiting anyone from Cub Scouts for two years. Those six Scouts aging out this year or next would still be eligible to participate in Venturing if they remain interested and living in the area. The funds and equipment and existing relationship with a chartered organization would all be great startup assets for a new crew. You could reach out to the other troop in town to form a nice feeder relationship between the two.

Our pack does a month-long fundraiser every fall and that covers most of the costs. Families pay national dues and buy uniforms/handbooks from their own pocket. Everything beyond that (campouts, awards, pack meeting activities) is covered from the fundraiser. Administration of the fundraiser is largely delegated to a couple of parents who are not uniformed leaders in the pack. Money has to be collected one way or another. I don't think there's one right way to do it. Find a balance that works for you and your unit. I'm sorry your experience with fundraising has been so negative, but I assure you this experience is not universal.

$110/$90 for our council here in Seattle. Our pack actually charges a bit less than this per Cub, and none per leader AFAIK, making up the difference through fundraising.

Interesting discussion. I would have perhaps thought that uniforming among adults would be helpful to set a good example for the youth. However the norm in my son's pack is that adults very rarely wear uniforms. The Cubmaster will usually be the only uniformed adult (if any) at most meetings. Assistant Cubmasters will wear a uniform a few times a year for the bigger award ceremonies, while most den leaders and other adults don't even have uniforms. And yet, the kids all have uniforms, with insignia mostly in the right place, and they wear them frequently. I'm sure it's different at the Scouts BSA level where such clothing is seen as very much uncool and they may need all the encouragement in the world to wear it.

Ah so we've entered the malicious compliance phase of things. I see. That's usually not a great sign.

Yes, you mentioned some parents serving without a uniform, as though limiting their participation due to their religious beliefs or sexuality is a perfectly normal and justifiable thing to do. Such limitation is soon to include a prohibition on attending Scouts BSA camping trips. Removing a leader for untreated substance abuse disorder is not equivalent to removing a leader for homosexuality. One is something that is a potential danger to youth. The other is not. I would hope the children of these people understand the difference. Exactly. One mark of a good leader is to examine whether the rules in place are facilitating the goals of your organization and its members: not just its current members, but the next generation of members you'll need to recruit to keep the organization alive going forward. That's something the organization seemed to be uniquely bad at during my own youth. Its continued insistence on excluding gay people gave the organization an extremely bad reputation outside of the most socially conservative circles, a reputation that it is still suffering from today. So yes, rules are rules. When you find such a large portion of your membership uninterested in strictly enforcing a given rule, and a large portion of your potential membership turned off because of that rule's existence, maybe it's time to evaluate whether it's still serving its purpose.

You speak as though they were wrong to ask for that privilege. One of my pack's assistant Cubmasters is himself an alumnus of the pack. He continued on to a local troop and earned his Eagle rank. He's everything anyone should want in a Scout leader. Also he's gay. He and his husband (who holds no uniformed leadership position) contribute a good deal of time and effort to helping the pack go. What kind of lesson would we be teaching their sons to say their dads aren't fit to be Scout leaders, based on nothing more than who is in their family? It's not a positive lesson, that's for sure. Maybe it's a lesson that is perfectly in line with the teachings of your church, but it's very much contrary to what I learned in mine.

Nah, those folks excluded themselves. They decided they didn't want to associate with an organization that would have openly gay people as members. They could have decided otherwise. This is not equivalent to the BSA telling people they can't join. LDS individuals who want to join are still welcome to do so.

Yep your pack's treatment of the "Duty to God" thing sounds very much like mine. We have members from a number of different faiths and the religious adventure is left entirely to each family to complete on their own time. It seems we're kind of in a "don't ask, don't tell" phase in regard to this issue. Atheists are officially forbidden, but unofficially tolerated so long as they can smile and nod when "God" comes up in the oath and don't make a big stink about it. That policy was unsustainable in the military and I suspect the same will prove true here.

It most certainly is not and does not. "The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God." This is inherently unwelcoming to anyone who is less than certain about the existence of God or any obligations to Him. "The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome precepts in the education of the growing members." There are a growing number of people who disagree with this premise. This Declaration of Religious Principles is unwelcoming to them, and intentionally so. "Its policy is that the home and the organization or group with which the member is connected shall give definite attention to religious life." Again, if a youth comes from a home where the parents have no interest in giving attention to religious life (which is increasingly common these days), these principles explicitly and intentionally exclude those youth. Whether these principles are in the best interest of the organization's long-term survival is certainly debatable. Whether they try to include everyone is not.

The LDS church was never "excluded" from Scouting. They chose to leave on their own. Regardless, the BSA continues to welcome any LDS-member individual who wishes to join a unit chartered by an organization outside of their church. But you're right, any change is likely to push away some number of people while it also brings in some other number of people, and it's certainly possible that distancing from the "Duty to God" concept could result in a long-term reduction in membership.

@DannyG Seems to me like "duty to fellow humans" would be a much more appropriate phrase for this family you mentioned and the way they interpret the "duty to God" requirements. For them it has nothing to do with forming a relationship with any divine being, and everything to do with teaching their kid about the importance of helping other people. There's a certain amount of mental gymnastics that needs to happen for an atheist to convince themselves that they can fulfill the spirit of the requirements despite a lack of any belief in a higher power. This family you mentioned is perfectly willing to do that, others are not. I just think we need to recognize that a lot of families are uninterested in joining a club that officially doesn't want them as a member. The number of these people we're excluding is growing rather than shrinking over time. At the same time we're seeing organized religions such as the LDS church distance themselves from BSA. Where does that leave us?

I have no polling data. I do have a bunch of friends my age, who are parents, who don't belong to churches and aren't including any notion of God in their kid's upbringing. Many of these folks would love to bring their kids into an organization that instills values of independence, leadership, respect for the outdoors, service to the community, and all the other good things Scouting teaches. But if you tell them that membership in this particular organization also requires their kid to regularly swear on their honor that they will do their duty to God (what God? what duty? their family believes in no such thing!), that's something that will make them look elsewhere. That is false. The topic comes up from the very beginning. For my kid to earn his Tiger rank this year he is required to "discuss what it means to do your duty to God" and two of (attend a church service, earn a religious emblem, do a community service project that is part of one's duty to God, or carry out an act of kindness that shows duty to God). For that 64% of Millennial families who don't belong to a church, the religious service attendance and religious emblem requirements aren't likely to happen, and the others just seem contrived. If your parents are teaching you that there's probably no such thing as a God and you probably don't owe any particular duty to a non-existent entity, what are you actually supposed to do to meet this requirement?

How do you figure? Gallup polling says that only 36% of Millennials (i.e. most of today's parents of Cub Scouts) belonged to any church (or synagogue, mosque, other religious organization) in 2020. Compare that to when I was a Scout in the 1990s, and 67% of our Baby Boomer parents belonged to a congregation at that time. That's half as many families to draw from, at least easily. For the now-majority who don't belong to an organized religion, a "duty to God" requirement is something that is a non-starter for a lot of families. It's something that many of the rest of us might put up with, and do some mental gymnastics around, in order to get all the other good stuff out of the program. It's not something that most of us parents actively embrace anymore.

To be honest I don't think most of us give it much thought. As residents of such a very large country, international cooperation doesn't have the same immediate relevance to our daily lives as it might in a place such as Europe. As a youth in the BSA I was told the world crest on our uniforms meant we were part of a worldwide movement of Scouts, but we never traveled internationally as a troop or met with Scouts from a different country to compare notes on our experiences. When we did a Philmont trek we had to drive a distance about the same as Stockholm to Paris, but it was all in the same country, with Scouts in between all under the same BSA organization. To us the BSA way of doing Scouting was just the way Scouting was done. If other countries did things differently that wasn't something we would have encountered in the normal course of our youth.

Others addressed this already, but the basic tip that I would provide to a beginner is to just sit silently during the prayer and continue with the meeting as though nothing happened. For a one-off situation I'd recommend just leaving it at that. Choose your battles. If it's a regular meeting that you'll be exposed to often, you can have a conversation with the leaders involved where you express your concern about the inclusivity of a Christian prayer being delivered to a group of mixed faith. This conversation could go one of two ways: the person might say "gosh you're right I didn't realize there were non-Christians in the room, we'll keep it secular so that everyone feels welcome," or they might say "my Lord Jesus Christ commands me to spread the Gospel wherever I can, the US Constitution grants me freedom of speech and religion, and I intend to keep using those freedoms to spread the Word." As a foreigner you might have trouble predicting in advance which way the conversation is likely to go, but with practice you might gain more foresight there. Again, tactfulness and picking your battles are important here. As much as you or I might believe it's inappropriate to use Scouting as a vehicle to advance one religion in particular (single-religion units excepted, perhaps), others don't see it that way. Do you let the public prayers continue, or do you file a complaint and risk your relationships with your fellow Scouters? Neither option is without its downsides.

This year our pack did something more like https://www.instructables.com/Pump-Rocket/. No vinegar/baking soda. Instead the pressure comes from air delivered through a bike pump, and a bit of water in the bottle becomes propellant once the pressure ejects the cork.

The type of "talk" you're referring to can be unavoidable as part of raising a non-Christian kid in American society. There will be occasions in America where you may find yourself one of a very small number of non-Christians in a group, and the leaders of the group therefore feel empowered to begin a meeting or a meal with a short Christian (or at least Abrahamic/monotheistic) prayer. Phrases such as "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on our currency are well-established pieces of our "secular" society, as much as many of us may find such things non-inclusive or offensive. It's rude in the moment to interrupt such prayers. Talking to the person in charge afterward about your discomfort with their public prayer can be a delicate conversation. Navigating these situations with grace is absolutely something you'll need to teach your kid at some point, whether they remain in BSA or no. I have found a Cub Scout pack for my son that doesn't do that sort of thing, and it sounds like you have as well, but when you go to events organized at a higher level you may unfortunately find yourself exposed to this aspect of American culture.

I won't lie, participating in BSA events as a non-Christian can be uncomfortable at times. I remember as a youth being taken with the rest of my unit to Sunday-morning "non-denominational" (but still Christian / Protestant) services at camporees and also at Philmont. Though that was more than 20 years ago now, I imagine there are still districts and councils that put on similar programming today. I didn't get the impression from my unit leaders at the time that attending such things was optional. You would do well as a leader to make sure the non-Christian youth in your unit feel empowered to skip the Christian services to reflect in their own way.

One more thing on the topic of clarity. If the chart titled "Age Appropriate Guidelines for Scouting Activities" is intended to be a list of strict age limits for any particular activity within the Scouting program, the title needs to be changed ASAP. The common understanding of the word "guideline" is that it is a suggestion. Most of the guidelines in there look like very reasonable suggestions indeed! As strict rules they're perhaps a bit less reasonable. Introducing some of these skills in small doses and with careful supervision, a bit earlier than mentioned on the chart, seems like a fine thing to do in many cases.

The rule is now clearly stated: packs may not organize campouts longer than one night. The idea that this rule has always been clearly stated is laughable. Other unclear aspects surrounding this rule have been pointed out above. Is "den coordinated camping" for Webelos subject to this rule, or does it only apply to camping organized as an entire pack? Exactly how much involvement does the council need to have in planning an event for it to be subject to a longer time limit? Is the Circle Ten Council's approach of saying "hey we cleared this weekend in the camp calendar for packs to do two-night campouts on council property" sufficient, or does the council need to plan some sort of program activities that all the packs can participate in? More important though is the why of it. Why is a maximum campout length in a list of safety rules to begin with? Why does this safety concern disappear when someone at the council office does a certain amount of planning for the event? Why is it considered impossible to adequately train unit leadership to do whatever the council does when they plan a two-night event, that flips the two-night camping activity from being "not safe enough" to being "safe enough"? As stated earlier in this thread, people naturally tend to bend safety rules unless the reasoning behind them is made abundantly clear. In this the BSA is currently failing. Both of those links in turn point to the 2021 revision of the age-appropriate activity guidelines (https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/HealthSafety/pdf/680-685.pdf). These guidelines do not indicate that Cub Scout camping is age-inappropriate if longer than one night; they merely state that the camping must occur at council-designated locations and follow the Guide to Safe Scouting...which again, until recently did not clearly state a one-night limitation.

Exactly. I think in reality most folks would choose to stay over Saturday night instead of Friday so they can arrive before the evening and have some actual time for programming at the campground. But still, being able to get the travel and setup out of the way on Friday gives you all day Saturday for actual program activities. Apparently that's dangerous though.

Okay, but...the part where you're interacting with the thousand unknown people is the daytime part, the part that the Webelos are allowed to attend! For the actual sleeping part everyone retreats to their troop campsites. I fail to see how sleeping in a tent with a troop in a campsite near other troops is any riskier than sleeping in a tent with a troop in a public campground near non-BSA campers.

One question that pops out to me about that: is a Webelos/AoL den-coordinated campout considered a "pack unit coordinated campout" (and therefore subject to the one-night limit) or is it a separate thing entirely since it's just the den and not the whole pack involved? Regarding the ability to go along with Scouts BSA activities, it seems to be saying that the Webelos/AoL dens can stay overnight at troop-coordinated campouts, but can only be day visitors at camporees. Putting these rules together it seems they're saying pack-organized campouts are more risky than council-organized campouts, which are in turn more risky than troop-organized campouts. Make sense to everyone?