Re: merit badge counselors
Thomas W. Strong Jr. (strong@DEMENTIA.ORG)
Wed, 20 May 1998 16:58:57 -0400
On Wed, 20 May 1998, Steven G. Tyler wrote:
> > The council that I'm most involved in (Greater Pittsburgh) accepts that,
> > but the advancement committee has placed a constraint on the counselors -
> > while a boy may earn any number of badges from a given counselor, no
> > counselor is permitted to counsel any given boy on more than 5 merit
> > badges.
> Let me see if I got this right: your counsel will not limit the number
> of badges a Scout can earn from a given counselor, but you *do* limit
> the number of badges a counselor can award to a given Scout. Query: how
> to you enforce the limit? Smack the counselor's hand, or deny
> advancement to the Scout?
You've got me there, but I would presume that they would remove their
approval of that counselor for not following the council policies. (if
they even noticed - the only person likely to see all of the blue cards
together at any given time is the scout, unless the advancement records
have to be reconstructed, and since the council doesn't seem to record
the counselor in their copies of the advancement records, most likely
nobody would ever know if it happened)
> > Likewise, while national states that there is no limit to the number of
> > badges a counselor may be approved for, this council has decided that it
> > will not approve any counselor for more than 10.
> Cute. And people think *lawyers* have the monopoly on weasel-wording!
> ;-)
THis one seems more solid than the previous one - here, the council is
taking action (or declining to take action, as the case may be), while in
the previous case they are legislating what willbe done by the individual
counselor. At least in this case they're regulating themselves.
> > It seems like a lot of hair-splitting, but that's how the advancement
> > committee interprets the rules (or at least that's how it was explained
> > to me). I would be interested in how the interpretation would stand in
> > an appeal to national...
> I don't think it would pass the "wiggle test." That's the point at which
> an overly-cute interpretation causes the listener to start squirming in
> his/her seat.
Again, I would tend to agree. Limiting the counselor to 10 badges didn't
really attract my attention, but "we're regulating the counselor, not the
scout, so it's legal" got me to notice it rather fast. I don't tend to
get directly involved with the advancement side of things (I'm kind of
busy being a Commissioner) other than to sit on an occasional BOR, but I
do manage to hear a lot about what goes on there...
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas W. Strong Jr. strong@dementia.org
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