AwakeEnergyScouter

Yes, this I agree with. I'm a cub scouter so haven't had to deal with this yet, but yes, it seems quite wasteful and/or muddling the leadership roles. I'm expecting that this will become obvious as this goes on and someone at National will say "this is dumb, let's just all scout together." It's also possible that what I see right around me will create on the ground pressure in the same direction. We have some tight-knit AOL, Webelos, and Bear dens in our pack that are talking about all picking the same troop to join. One AOL felt very strongly about a particular one, and so all of our AOLs are going to that one. There are intertwined sibling and friendship ties from the current AOLs that would, if they do what they're talking about, lead to a dump of both girls and boys into that troop, which currently doesn't have a girl's troop. I have already been approached to ask if I'd be willing to be Scoutmaster for the female half of the troop the CO has been trying to start, because finding leaders has been the hangup. So if this all plays out, the cubs that scouted together in Cub Scouts will continue to scout together in Scouts BSA, with a whole glob of adult leaders that believe in everyone scouting together following them to make it possible for them. Emotionally, they're one glob of scouts, no matter what the rules say. And with leaders that want to provide the experience of leading real-life groups - what's that going to look and feel like? Back to point one. Waste or a series of two-person committees with one man and one woman leading. You're also right about that if there are councils who aren't getting out there about not just letting people know but also being clear that girls are welcome they're just slacking on recruiting. It's clear from popcorn selling that there are still lots of people who aren't aware that girls and boys scout together in BSA now. We might be hyperaware here on this forum, but the public at large isn't. Now that I think about it, there is one organizational change I'd like to see - the name of the WOSM NSO in the US. It doesn't make sense, and it's super awkward to imagine the gear with "Boy Scouts of America" in giant font on it on girl scouts. It's awkward enough to stick girls in uniforms that say "Boy Scouts of America". That made my husband very mad actually. Just Scouts of America or Scouts USA, something like that, makes sense. I get that it would feel bittersweet at best. (Cue the people who are really angry about girls in BSA here.) But long-term... How long are we going to cling to naming ourselves after policies that no longer exist?

Honest question - what additional support did you have in mind? All scouting is local, of course, but looking around I don't really notice anything missing for girls. Our council (Alamo Area) went out with a social media campaign to announce that girls are welcome that included boys saying they thought including girls was good, the pack closest to our house was a participant in the family pack program and so we're all scouting together as normal, and we were explicitly told we were welcome by the leaders and the male scouts never did a thing to imply otherwise. The old Cubmaster has said several times that even though they didn't seek out a family pack per se, he's glad they're in one in retrospect. Just had a conversation with another leader about the importance of learning to lead mixed-gender groups because that's what the real world is like. So, no question that we're welcome. Now, from this forum I can see that it's likely that there is hostility left somewhere out there, but I personally only see it on the Internet. But that seems to be a people problem, not a program problem.

Perhaps authorized practicioners of similar traditions, or tribe members with the proper authorization, can offer ceremony/sadhana from the old ways, the nameless religion, the Way, Shinto, Bön, Siberian shamanism, Samí old ways, etc at Scouts' Own if those ways are of more general interest.

Something's not right in at least some councils, I see. What mechanism is supposed to create transparency on the progress of the paperwork? Who's accountable, the SE?

That first conversation is why I haven't made it to any in-person training. It's not that I don't see the value, it's that my non-scout partner doesn't, at least not compared to having to run the household all by themselves.

Plus, coordinating on checking practices makes it easier to incorporate learning from all youth-serving organisations. One got through somewhere? Let's plug that hole everywhere. While protecting scouts is our job here, all normal adults want all children everywhere protected and if we could get there with a little coordination of procedures then let's do it!

Saw this today, adding it here in case this scanner tip is helpful to someone out there keeping scouts safe. Sounds like looking for lenses is the best way. Also makes sense in that you can't get rid of the lens no matter how small the electronics are. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/22/how-to-find-a-hidden-camera-in-a-hotel-room-or-house-we-tested-5-ways-.html

I earned a sewing merit badge that included sewing on my badges on my own scout shirt, so after that pride wouldn't let any of us have our parents sew the badges on anymore. (You could definitely tell at that point if we'd done it ourselves or not.) Just a tip to offload parents and encourage independence 😉 I'm not buying any badge glue, environmentally unfriendly plastic badge holders, or paying someone at council to sew my scout's badges on. No, I will sew theirs on the old-fashioned way that prepares you for life, so that mastering the skill yourself instead of working around your lack of it is the bar set for my scout. They now have my old knife, they'll get my needles too when they're ready 😂

Re: parental permissions - mine is only a cub, but digital parental policies are a hot topic at birthday parties and there is definitely a whole contingent of parents who will refuse to give scouts phones until they're older teenagers and will balk at Discord and a lot of social media and messaging apps. What can work will depend a fair bit on the scouts' parents' digital policies in addition to scouts' preferences so it might make sense to ask about that to avoid wasting time and/or making some scouts feel like "everybody" is allowed in corners of the Internet that they're not. (If momentum builds around a tool that some scouts are explicitly forbidden from using.)

Things are always coming together, and things are always falling apart. It sounds like you've done more than your part to serve scouts. Thank you, and scout salute! 🫡

If it helps, here is a historian to point him to to back up what SSScout said. https://www.jstor.org/stable/572005 https://www.jstor.org/stable/572003 These are publicly available previews of an argument among historians about us and BP. As a scout yourself, you'll know who's right. Thank you for protecting your scouts and the movement as a whole.

Please don't throw any stones, but what was so dangerous about making the raft and sailing it? Is that a heavily trafficked shipping lane with oceangoing ships or something? I did the same thing at summer camp as an ordinary landlubber scout with the difference that we sailed a lake. Patrol competition. It was super fun. Still seems safe to me. We all had horseshoe collar life vests, and of course we were about to be missed and immediately spotted if the raft were to fall apart out on the lake.

Oh, wow. I thought @Eagle94-A1 meant MBO without proper regard to scouting culture but you don't need to have been a scout to know embezzlement and fraud is wrong 🤦🏼‍♀️

You could totally have homemade scout cookies as an upsell. All the folks who are disappointed we don't have cookies would buy.

Stupid question... Why does council care what item is sold for fundraising?

Thanks for sharing this! I didn't know about Totor. And that tent sketch looks awfully familiar. How touching!

YMMV, of course, but if I were in your shoes I would take the tack of what you said earlier about not crushing their enthusiasm for scouting and just focus on getting the right number of the right people in the kitchen. Then again it's really hard for me to see the problem with everyone scouting together since that's my status quo. The lack of patrol method, however, is most certainly a real problem for their scouting experience.

Makes sense. Why go to lots of trouble to segregate yourselves from your fellow scouts?

This doesn't seem to be an everyone together problem, this seems to be a too many cooks of the wrong kind in the kitchen problem.

Welcome! What is happening instead of the patrol method?

I'm only here because of the good, strong moderation. Unmoderated sites turn into nasty cesspools good for nothing real quick. Doing something constructive, therefore, requires moderation. Thank you, @RememberSchiff.

The leader is question wasn't a US citizen at all, which is what the question was about, but since I've had to look at this myself I happen to know that this isn't accurate. The US government does recognize dual citizenships. https://www.usa.gov/dual-citizenship

I wouldn't be too upset about the lack of pledge, oath, and law unless the leader really should have seen with their own eyes that this is actually expected by your unit for some time. You didn't say where the leader is from, but I personally have... unfortunate, shall we say? associations to groups of people standing in front of a flag pledging allegiance to it with some kind of hand salute, or even groups of children all reciting some promise all together with a hand salute. That style of expressing national loyalty became taboo in some countries after 1945. It can be hard to mentally retool. It's like the squirrely nude or (!) clothed North Americans in saunas, they just can't consciously decide to relax nude in the sauna without practice. I... struggle with the format. I can manage, because intellectually I know US Americans don't associate to the same things, but want to say things like "but democracy is very important! Speak your mind! Think for yourself! Question authority! Don't just go along with leaders who ask you to do immoral things! You'd tell me to get bent if I asked you do do something you think is dodgy, right?? Patriotism is to protect the principles your country stands for, not the individuals in leadership!" and so on, and soon, should I say what comes into my mind, I will have undermined all of my own authority that I'm trying to use for good, so I don't say it. But I think it every time.

My scout and I did the same thing last year when the pack did a MOP project. Makes sense 😄 These awards are great. I hope they've done a good job with translating them into adventures for next year. Waiting for that bit of the new program clarification to drop.

I assume the International Spirit Award? Fantastic! We're doing it as a pack too. Since it's so easy for me to help scouts with it, I'm helping not just my pack but another pack in town with it. I taught them not any two games but two campfire games, and it turns out that the scout promise and motto is exactly ten words in Swedish 😄 At the next campout, they will get the opportunity to cook reindeer chafing. (Vegetarian, solves both the reindeer meat supply problem this far south and everyone needs to eat problem.) We're also going to spend more time on BP himself and the worldwide scouting movement at Blue & Gold. If you're starting in January you already have a plan, no doubt, but I'm happy to help if I can. The other pack wanted to make it more real with a visit from someone who was a scout in a different country, and while I imagine I can't visit your pack maybe I can help make it more real for them in some other way if we put our heads together.