Duplicate Troop numbers

[njdrt-rdr]

I gotta vent. I have to say that the decision by National to allow a girl troop and a boy troop have the same troop number in the same district is idiotic and then to preference with one is Troop 187 B and the other is Troop 187 G....How do you explain that to the general public...For instance we are working with multiple troop and packs for a food drive. THe flyer would usually says thanks from Troop 87, pack 87 and troop 99..So now Troop 99 has a boy troop and a girl troop. So do we modify it and says thanks from Troop 99 Boys and Troop 99 Girls?...Such an idiotic move to further draw a distinction beween boys and girls that did not need to be there. A troop is a troop, doesn't matter if it's a boy troop or a girl troop. Any new troop formed, even if it shares leadership or a charter org should have had to have a new troop number. But, in my opinion I guess it won't matter in a couple years when all troops are co-ed anyway.

[Double Eagle]

National doesn't choose numbers, that is on the unit.  May need the lowest level to ponder this question.  

[qwazse]

Yeah, @njdrt-rdr, it doesn't flow very well. But this was permitted in response to boots on the ground. Numbers usually track with the CO. So, each of the CO's units -- be it a Pack, Troop, Crew, Post, or Ship -- asks for the same number. And those numbers are held with a lot of pride. To give someone under the same roof a different number is tantamount to telling them they aren't one of us.  To ask someone to change numbers in the face of a merger is asking them to abandoning their heritage. (I've been in the middle of such shenanigans for as long as I've been a scouter.) With the addition of BSA4G, units demanded an option to be linked, by number, with their female counterparts.

In retrospect, maybe we should have thought of a parallel name for "troop": squadron? platoon? eyrie?

Regarding your immediate problem let's try thanks from :

• Troop 87, Pack 87, Troops 99b, & Troops 99g
• Troop 87, Pack 87, &Troops 99 (b&g)
• Troop 87, Pack 87, & Troops 99

When I acknowledge the youth who help me place flags at the cemetery, I include the GS Troops and their long numbers. If they all became BSA4G units, I'd save ink (well, pixels).

[Jameson76]

1 hour ago, njdrt-rdr said:

I gotta vent. I have to say that the decision by National to allow a girl troop and a boy troop have the same troop number in the same district is idiotic and then to preference with one is Troop 187 B and the other is Troop 187 G..... But, in my opinion I guess it won't matter in a couple years when all troops are co-ed anyway.

And that (the co-ed) factor is the reason.  The endgame plan is co-ed.  That will be denied by National folks, but that is the plan.  With CO's running Boy and Girl units with the same number, the same number makes that so much easier.

[Treflienne]

 (decided not to comment, after all)

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by Treflienne

[SSScout]

Yeah, I feel your angst.  It took me a while to figure this out.  Councils assign Unit numbers, and usually allow the unit to pick a number if it is not already chosen/assigned.   New York Council , Nat Cap Area Council, Long Horn, can all have the same number Troop 123 .

When my home Troop Charter Org said "yes" to sponsoring a new female Troop, the DE told me "choose a number similar to your boy Troop". That's what he said. I so counseled the organizers.  So Boy Troop 759 was soon joined by Girl Troop 7592 (!) which was dully registered and opened.   Now, with the new Irving declaration,  it is (on the charter papers, etc.)  7592G.  

[qwazse]

25 minutes ago, Jameson76 said:

And that (the co-ed) factor is the reason.  The endgame plan is co-ed.  That will be denied by National folks, but that is the plan.  With CO's running Boy and Girl units with the same number, the same number makes that so much easier.

 

16 minutes ago, Treflienne said:

... When answering the question of whether Scouts BSA would be going coed,  National Commissioner Ellie Morrison's reply was "Over my dead body."

Before going to World Jamboree, I thought that co-ed was inevitable. Not so much now. My troop of boys saw a variety of configurations -- in some cases a country's girl-scouts and boy-scouts camped together for just this event. In other cases events like this were nothing new. And, in other cases it was a little weird that opposite sexes could not share a tent at Jambo. There wasn't all that much excitement that we just opened the program to girls.

I didn't get the impression that our boys were considered backward. I did get the impression that other country's boy scout and girl scout programs play a lot nicer together. So, assuming that the 10K other BSA members at WSJ got the same impression, there's not a lot of push for change. There will always be rogue troops who will thumb their nose at Ellie Morrison and live co-ed under the linked banner. But, it will take a generation of girls who work the program to decide if that needs to be pushed nationally.

Edited February 7, 2020 by qwazse

[njdrt-rdr]

52 minutes ago, qwazse said:

Yeah, @njdrt-rdr, it doesn't flow very well. But this was permitted in response to boots on the ground. Numbers usually track with the CO. So, each of the CO's units -- be it a Pack, Troop, Crew, Post, or Ship -- asks for the same number. And those numbers are held with a lot of pride. To give someone under the same roof a different number is tantamount to telling them they aren't one of us.  To ask someone to change numbers in the face of a merger is asking them to abandoning their heritage. (I've been in the middle of such shenanigans for as long as I've been a scouter.) With the addition of BSA4G, units demanded an option to be linked, by number, with their female counterparts.

In retrospect, maybe we should have thought of a parallel name for "troop": squadron? platoon? eyrie?

Regarding your immediate problem let's try thanks from :

• Troop 87, Pack 87, Troops 99b, & Troops 99g
• Troop 87, Pack 87, &Troops 99 (b&g)
• Troop 87, Pack 87, & Troops 99

When I acknowledge the youth who help me place flags at the cemetery, I include the GS Troops and their long numbers. If they all became BSA4G units, I'd save ink (well, pixels).

I just think it brings about too much confusion and boots on the ground weren't required to think about the big picture. This wasn't a merger or asking a troop to change it's number. These are new troops forming, cut and dry. New troops should have new numbers. Whether they have the same leadership and charter as another troop really should have nothing to do with it. When it all boils down, no matter what anyone wants to say, they are a separate troop (at this point in time). The boys are their own troop and the girls are their own troop. As far as not being part of "us" if we had a different number, It would be like having a pack and every den having the same den number. Or a district saying every troop has to have the same number to feel they are a part of the district.

and don't get me started on B and G...Those darn letters sound so similar, maybe it should be M and F. I will be at roundtable will the person in front will say if you want info talk to troop 64 b...And I'll be like did he say 64b or 64g?

 

It's stupid..

[MikeS72]

3 hours ago, njdrt-rdr said:

I have to say that the decision by National to allow a girl troop and a boy troop have the same troop number in the same district is idiotic and then to preference with one is Troop 187 B and the other is Troop 187 G....How do you explain that to the general public.

My guess would be that while many units are not aware of it, your council is probably just the same as mine, in that all of those girl troops have a numerical prefix that identifies them as a female unit.  Here in Central Florida Council a CO that sponsors both a boy troop and girl troop can request they use the same base number, but the girl unit number begins with 4.  My CO has chosen not to sponsor a girl troop right now, but be do have several in our district.  As Roundtable Commissioner I see those girls units numbered 4XXX to distinguish them from the corresponding boy troop.

[ParkMan]

1 hour ago, qwazse said:

There will always be rogue troops who will thumb their nose at Ellie Morrison and live co-ed under the linked banner. But, it will take a generation of girls who work the program to decide if that needs to be pushed nationally.

Ok - just curious.  Did our National Commissioner say something about this?  I looked online, but didn't see anything

[qwazse]

4 hours ago, ParkMan said:

Ok - just curious.  Did our National Commissioner say something about this?  I looked online, but didn't see anything

Sorry, @ParkMan, I cited where a previous poster quoted her. But that post has been subsequently revised. Many at national leadership are on record as being very much opposed to a co-ed program. Mike Surbaugh was one of them.

6 hours ago, njdrt-rdr said:

I just think it brings about too much confusion and boots on the ground weren't required to think about the big picture. This wasn't a merger or asking a troop to change it's number. These are new troops forming, cut and dry. ...

I understand how @njdrt-rdr would like to see it as new-troops, cut-and-dry. BSA does ... but I've felt that that's for marketing purposes so they can blather on about starting all these new units. But many are in effect an additional patrol to an existing troop. And pitching that it's a parallel to asking dens or districts to have the same number is a trip into non sequitorville.

I agree that the alphabet is hard. That's why some councils opted for appending 4 to the number. On your numeric pad 2=B, 4=G and I guess we could also add 3=F and 6=M without any loss of ambiguity. The question then becomes, do you foist it on everyone, so you now have to thank Pack 872, Troop 872, Troop 992, and Troop 994?

Indeed, I would have far rather the program name remained unchanged, and declare that we are starting a new program. BSA4G was my choice. Heck, we could have repurposed "Team" to designate the units.

Edited February 7, 2020 by qwazse

[scoutldr]

Years ago, before the earth cooled, there was Pack and Troop 66 which were in existence when I was a Bobcat.  When I went to sign up my 8 year old son (before Tigers were a thing), I was told the Pack had become too large and was going to split.  Sooooo, I became a DL in the newly cleaved Pack 99.  Made it easy to just turn the numbers around. A year later, I became CM for 5 years.  Within a few years we had 130 boys, 15 dens and 4 Webelos dens.  Time to split again.  A group moved to a neighboring school and became Pack 991.  Then troop 991.  Then we split again and begat Pack 996, then Troop 996.  I am now 65 and my Scouts are  41 and 38 with prospective Cubs of their own...that's how we did it.  

[Liz]

12 hours ago, MikeS72 said:

My guess would be that while many units are not aware of it, your council is probably just the same as mine, in that all of those girl troops have a numerical prefix that identifies them as a female unit.  Here in Central Florida Council a CO that sponsors both a boy troop and girl troop can request they use the same base number, but the girl unit number begins with 4.  My CO has chosen not to sponsor a girl troop right now, but be do have several in our district.  As Roundtable Commissioner I see those girls units numbered 4XXX to distinguish them from the corresponding boy troop.

That's how ours is, and we are required to have 4 digits, starting with 4. 

The District rep wasn't very happy when our committee chose troop number 422 (4/22, Earth Day) and chose not to put the leading 4 on our uniforms or public facing materials. As committee secretary I've started marking the minutes and other internal documents as Troop (4)442. None of the boy troops have to put 4-number numerals on their uniforms (they all start with the number 1 I think; packs start with 0, crews start with 2, and I think Explorer posts are 3)so I don't see why we have to  do it. Only the crews actually use all 4 numbers on their uniforms. No idea why they do that. 

It's annoying and creates confusion, but we honestly couldn't think of any good 4 digit numbers starting with 4 that would have any meaning to our unit. 

[Treflienne]

Late 2018:  The DE told us we could pick any troop number we wanted, so long as the CO approved.  It could even duplicate a number elsewhere in the council or district. 

We let the girls pick.  They picked a two-digit number different from any troop in our town or adjacent towns.  (We did advise against picking "1" as there are already a half-dozen or so Troop 1's in our district, which is confusing.)

Then we went to turn in the charter paperwork.  Registrar told us that all girls' troops would have the same leading digit in the thousands place.  This was very annoying.  However, they said, we could call ourselves by the short version if we want.

We have managed to get scoutbook and beascout to hide the leading digit.  The girls wear the 2-digit number on their uniforms.  We turned in our summer camp paperwork using the two-digit number, and no one complained.   Basically we have managed to hide the leading digit fairly well.  

The Scouts BSA girls from other troops we saw at summer camp were also wearing 2-digit numbers, not four-digit numbers.

The leading digit did show up on a troop-listing I saw at roundtable.   It made it easy to pick the girls troops out of the list.  

Don't use the long version if you can help it.   My daughter had 5-digit numbers in GSUSA.  Expensive to buy all the patches for the uniform.  Hard to sew on straight.  The kids and the adults had trouble remembering the number so they referred to the troops by alternate designations (eg "Smith School Brownie Troop") The number was meaningless to them.

 

[T2Eagle]

10 hours ago, Treflienne said:

Then we went to turn in the charter paperwork.  Registrar told us that all girls' troops would have the same leading digit in the thousands place.  This was very annoying.  However, they said, we could call ourselves by the short version if we want.

 

Just FYI, Cub Packs have all had "3" in the thousands place for decades.  Nobody uses it, nobody thinks they should use it.  I don't think any Cub pack has found it to be annoying.   Every single digit, double digit, and triple digit unit number you see is actually a short version of a four digit number.  Troops of boys have "0" as their first digit; I forget what the number is for Crews.