Re: Women on Campouts!?!?

At the risk of starting an arguement with my esteemed assistant, I'd like to
redundantly reply to this message (sorry, I'm feeling a bit humorous today,
not to mention wordy).

First of all, there is nothing wrong with someone's mother going camping
with the troop. To say that a group of boys will have to change JUST BECAUSE
THERE'S A WOMAN around tell me that they aren't conducting themselves like
Scouts. While experience tells me that boys tend to act differently in the
wild than they do in the civilized world, it also tells me that boys won't
always change their conduct just because someone's mother is around.

A couple years ago I went on a campout with a new Scout patrol. I was the
only ASM from the troop on the campout. When I mentioned this to a member of
the troop committee (whose son happened to be in the patrol), she rearranged
her entire weekend schedule (and her husbands) so that there would almost
always be at least two adults in camp. The campground was about twenty miles
from where she lived and about thirty miles from the Navy base where her
husband worked. Without making much of a fuss she made at least six trips
back and forth during the weekend. Friday night she returned home to pick up
her husband and brought him with her back to camp. Her husband spent the
night (rising at about 4 o'clock in the morning to go home and get ready for
work). After picking her husband up at O-dark-thirty and getting him to
work, she returned to camp after completing several errands. During the
afternoon she left camp for about an hour to take care of her other
children, returning for about an hour before heading back to the base to
pick her husband up. She and her husband came out to camp for the evening.
He stayed the night and she went home. Once again, she returned to camp at a
very early hour to pick up her husband and take him to work. After that she
returned to camp to help us get back home.

I'm sure that wasn't what she had planned for the weekend, and the conduct
of her son and his patrol-mates certainly didn't change whenever she was
around (a fact she pointed out to them on several occasions). He husband
certainly hadn't planned on rushing back and forth from camp to home to base
all weekend. I thanked them as best I could, but I simply wasn't authorized
to award them a Congressional Medal of Honor.

My point is this: There is nothing wrong with having women as Scoutmasters
or ASMs. I have met several who make fine troop leaders. On the whole,
though, most of the women I have met in Scouting have preferred being troop
committee members (etc.). For those of us who have worked with troop in
urban areas, having women willing to be there every week is a Godsend.

I suspect that the problem causing the original post really doesn't have
anything to do with the MC being a woman. I have met several leaders who
have different ideas about how a troop should be run than the BSA. Most of
them have been men. Regardless of gender their modus operandi remains the
same: gain control of the troop by hook or by crook, then start implementing
their own idea of how things should be. Most of these folks seem to think
that letting boys decide what to do (or other adults for that matter) is a
really bad idea that will never work. Some of them actually change their
minds once they receive proper training in Scoutmaster Fundementals...

YIS
Anthony J. Mako [ajmako@apk.net], Scoutmaster Troop 381
http://members.aol.com/Scouts381/ Home of the Unofficial Boy Scout Desktop
Theme
Old Portage District, Great Trail Council, Ohio

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