Cub Scout Single Night Camping Only

[DuctTape]

What is missing is a rationale for the prohibition. Absent a clear concise reason, the prohibition of a 2-night campout appears arbitrary. Coupled with the volume of other clarifiers, the abitrary nature makes it difficult for folks to interpret how to implement. More "clarifiers" is NOT the answer. If us volunteers knew a good reason why a 2 night campout is prohibited for some, we could apply that rationale to help understand any appearance of conflict between different areas of the gtss. Because the rationale either does not exist, or at the very least has not been clearly communicated, us volunteers see the prohibition as arbitrary. 

How does a webelos den attending a 2- night campout put them at such an increased safety risk that only one night is allowed?

 

Show us the receipts.

[HashTagScouts]

What Is dislike is it just breads more opportunity to dumb down program. Consider that for many a weekend troop campout would mean arriving at camp at 7:00 PM on Friday. Pitch tents, get gear organized, and you are in for an hour or so before hitting your sleeping bag. Cubs could get up and strike camp at 7:00 AM and never have actually participated in any cooking or meaningful activity, but ✔️ they did an overnight.

[seattlecyclone]

7 minutes ago, HashTagScouts said:

What Is dislike is it just breads more opportunity to dumb down program. Consider that for many a weekend troop campout would mean arriving at camp at 7:00 PM on Friday. Pitch tents, get gear organized, and you are in for an hour or so before hitting your sleeping bag. Cubs could get up and strike camp at 7:00 AM and never have actually participated in any cooking or meaningful activity, but ✔️ they did an overnight.

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.

[KublaiKen]

Anyone else get a vague sense that we might have just hosed Webelos out of two-nighters?

[KublaiKen]

Oh, and more and more campgrounds around here are two-night only for much of the year, so this rule hurts Scouting.

Edited March 6, 2023 by KublaiKen

[Eagle94-A1]

The only rationale for this arbitrary rule is that the folks making it are under the impression that 'Cubs don't need to camp." Yep heard this from a member of the council camping committee a while back.

I know one pack will now start having two overnight experiences when they do pack camping. One overnight experience will be from 5PM Friday to 12:00 Saturday, and a second overnight experience from 12PM Saturday to 11AM Sunday. Families can choose which overnight experience they want to attend, or if they want to do two over night experiences in a month.

.

[RichardB]

6 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Thank you guys for having this discussion.  I hope @RichardB sees this and concludes we have another confusing policy in place that needs clarification, if National actually wishes thoughtful leaders to follow it.

Please help me understand what part of this is not clear?  

• Cub Scout pack unit coordinated camping is limited to single overnight experiences. 

I see lots of discussions on calls for justification not a lack of clarity.   

Interesting to see that when there were cry's of inconsistency and those are removed, it is Orwellian. Specifically, updated LOS inconsistency for additional clarity (there are likely others in the wild) does not equate to Orwellian practice or gaslighting.   

As to why, the limitation on Pack and Webelos / AOL Den camping of one night as an age appropriate guideline.    This has been in place for a long time - can query on this forum back to 2019, your own posting of the chart, BALOO training, Cub Scout page, etc.   Really similar to the limitation of shooting sports do not occur at Cub Scout unit level, only the council level.    Or @Eagle94-A1 favorite Dodge ball is prohibited.   

Couple of good broad why's:  https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/safety-moments/is-it-scouting/ and https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/safety-moments/unauthorized-restricted-activities/ 

  

 

[sierracharliescouter]

22 minutes ago, RichardB said:

 

As to why, the limitation on Pack and Webelos / AOL Den camping of one night as an age appropriate guideline.    This has been in place for a long time - can query on this forum back to 2019, your own posting of the chart, BALOO training, Cub Scout page, etc.

 

This is not a "why" explanation, in any meaningful way. "Because it's been this way" is not a rationale. Looking through the references you provided, none appear to provide a rationale for restricting Cub camping to single night.

 

Edited March 6, 2023 by sierracharliescouter

[seattlecyclone]

19 minutes ago, RichardB said:

Please help me understand what part of this is not clear?  

• Cub Scout pack unit coordinated camping is limited to single overnight experiences. 

I see lots of discussions on calls for justification not a lack of clarity.   

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.

19 minutes ago, RichardB said:

As to why, the limitation on Pack and Webelos / AOL Den camping of one night as an age appropriate guideline.    This has been in place for a long time - can query on this forum back to 2019, your own posting of the chart, BALOO training, Cub Scout page, etc.   Really similar to the limitation of shooting sports do not occur at Cub Scout unit level, only the council level.    Or @Eagle94-A1 favorite Dodge ball is prohibited.   

Couple of good broad why's:  https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/safety-moments/is-it-scouting/ and https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/safety-moments/unauthorized-restricted-activities/ 

  

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.

[Eagle94-A1]

Here is the deal @RichardB. A rule that supposedly has been a round for a few years, yet NO ONE , including councils, knew anything about except for you is being placed up on us for no reason whatsoever. In fact we pointed out instances in BSA's own literature that showed the rule is brand new. And the were taken down. 

We, the unit serving volunteers want to know why it is acceptable for a pack to camp two nights at a council event, but not on their own at a council approved location? We want an explanation as to why something that has been allowed for over 20 years is no longer allowed.

As to the links you provide, they do not answer the question we all have: Why are packs limited to 1 night of camping on their own when this has never been a published rule, and was in no BSA literature previously? (emphasis added).

 

As for my Dodgeball fixation ,  when will you change the FAQ to remove the lie " Dodgeball has never been an authorized activity in Scouting"  A Scout is Trustworthy.  We both know it was indeed an approved activity since at least 1929 until the ban in 2018. Heck I even gave you the link on BSA's own website about Dodgeball being an approved game. Which you quickly removed. All you need to do is remove the sentence ," Dodgeball has never been an authorized activity in Scouting" from the FAQs and I would be fine.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Eagle94-A1

[KublaiKen]

It is gaslighting to change things and then pretend that they were always that way. It is Orwellian to whitewash history and pretend that what is falsely claimed to have been is what really was.

I don't believe that I just had to explain that to you, by the way. Pretending that isn't what is happening right here in real-time is insulting.

[InquisitiveScouter]

1 hour ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

The only rationale for this arbitrary rule is that the folks making it are under the impression that 'Cubs don't need to camp." Yep heard this from a member of the council camping committee a while back.

I know one pack will now start having two overnight experiences when they do pack camping. One overnight experience will be from 5PM Friday to 12:00 Saturday, and a second overnight experience from 12PM Saturday to 11AM Sunday. Families can choose which overnight experience they want to attend, or if they want to do two over night experiences in a month.

.

To facilitate the change over, they must physically step foot out of the established campground.  So, a trip to the local gas station, convenience store, or even just stepping into the easement of the road would do it (not into the road of course... that would be more dangerous than the two back-to-back over-(meaning one)-nighters.

Letter of the law!!

In fact, maybe we could coin a new term...   OVERMONIGHTER  = over-meaning-one-nighter

 

[DuctTape]

1 hour ago, RichardB said:

Please help me understand what part of this is not clear?  

• Cub Scout pack unit coordinated camping is limited to single overnight experiences. 

I see lots of discussions on calls for justification not a lack of clarity.   

Interesting to see that when there were cry's of inconsistency and those are removed, it is Orwellian. Specifically, updated LOS inconsistency for additional clarity (there are likely others in the wild) does not equate to Orwellian practice or gaslighting.   

As to why, the limitation on Pack and Webelos / AOL Den camping of one night as an age appropriate guideline.    This has been in place for a long time - can query on this forum back to 2019, your own posting of the chart, BALOO training, Cub Scout page, etc.   Really similar to the limitation of shooting sports do not occur at Cub Scout unit level, only the council level.    Or @Eagle94-A1 favorite Dodge ball is prohibited.   

Couple of good broad why's:  https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/safety-moments/is-it-scouting/ and https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/safety-moments/unauthorized-restricted-activities/ 

  

 

"cry's of inconsistency" -Using a straw man fallacy.

"age-appropriate guideline" -Is a claim. Lacks evidence. A circular argument.

"been in place for a long time" -An appeal to history.

"really similar to" -False equivalence. Incomplete comparison.

"broad why's" -begging the question

Still zero rationale for why a two-night campout is inherently more unsafe than a single night to the level which necessitates its prohibition.

Grading this essay for my 8th graders would get a failing mark.

Grading the GTSS as a whole would get at best a C-.

 

 

[seattlecyclone]

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.

Edited March 6, 2023 by seattlecyclone

[sierracharliescouter]

@RichardB

I hope you aren't taking what is written here as beating up on you personally. I don't think any of us intend it that way. We appreciate having a voice from National participating here.

What National needs understand, however, is that the participants in this forum represent a microcosm of what the overall volunteer experience is like in Scouting. Those of us in leadership positions face these same questions from other Scouters, parents, and some of the Scouts when we have to explain the "rules" (or are they guidelines? - yes, there absolutely is a legal difference...). When rules don't have a logically explained justification is when people start finding ways to go around the rules.

Now, if risk management has some actual analysis that says, "90% of Cub scout injuries on camping trips are occuring on the second night of a two-night outing", then there is a conversation to have about mitigating risk. If these are risk management decisions that are being driven by lawyers or people with no professional (outside of scouting) understanding of risk management and not by data, then you have a major problem with your risk management program. If you have a risk management team and upper management that doesn't understand data-driven risk management, you have a fundamental organizational problem.