Unit Commissioner

[aeroford]

Does anyone know how to find and/or get the National Rules and Policies of the BSA?

 

I have heard of such a book(title might be slightly different) yet have not found out how to locate it yet. Any information would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[Bob White]

Follow this link to a previous thread on this topic.

http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=23976#id_23977

 

As a commissioner you will not find any really useful info in the By-laws. Fo the most part it establishes the existence of Councils and districts, their responsibilities and operational structure.

 

The rules that you will need to be familiar with are those that a unit need to know. These rules and policies concern, Uniforming, advancement and safety. This info is not found in the by-laws but in specific resources dealing with those topics.

 

Bob White

[KA6BSA]

There is no single complete reference to find out all about what you need to know in BSA. I think it would be very useful for you to go find the monthly district Roundtable and get an informal forum going there to answer some of your questions. It will save you lots of time in the long run to go to that hour long meeting and have real people tell you what it took them years to figure out. Those answers will only create more questions... so keep going to Roundtable each month to keep up!

[dsteele]

Both replies this thread has received so far are right. There is little in the "Rules and Regulations of the Boy Scouts of America" and "Charter and Bylaws of the Boy Scouts of America" that is of interest or application to unit operation. What little there is can be found in the Insignia Guide and the Guide to Safe Scouting. The rest of the stuff is very, very dry and deals with corporate rules and policies for the national organization.

 

Confusion comes up occasionally when someone sees a reference to "Rules and Regulations" and thinks there must be a be-all-end-all publication out there that says what you can and can not do and how you're supposed to do it.

 

I can see how a volunteer, believing that the Rules and Regulations would cover every grey area in Scouting and must be highly important gets angry when he or she goes to the DE and asks to see them. The DE, who has probably never seen them asks his supervisor, who also may have never had need to refer to the documents and can't find a copy. Eventually, after numerous attempts to find this document, the volunteer gets very frustrated and thinks he/she is being stonewalled.

 

The truth is that nobody needs to use these documents very often because the things that directly effect them are found in other, easily available documents.

 

In 15 years of professional Scouting, I have read the documents twice looking to the answer to an obscure question -- and one of those two times was to answer a thread in these forums, for which I am volunteering my time.

 

However, the question was asked "Does anyone know how to find and/or get the National Rules and Policies of the BSA?"

 

The answer to the question as asked is -- yes, I do. But I suppose you're looking for the answer to your real question -- how you can see and or get them.

 

You have to go through your local council office -- probably the Scout Executive. Your Scout Executive may have a copy in his desk, but probably not. Our council's copy is somewhere in my house, but I'm not sure where. The council can request copies on your behalf from the national office for a charge of $1.50 each. The reason they have to be requested through and by the local council is that the council is in a much better position to know whether they're dealing with a BSA person or someone who wants to bring harm to the BSA and thinks a copy of these documents will help them do it.

 

You can then read them and fall asleep at your leisure.

 

DS

 

DS