Court of Honor presentations--missed attendance

How do your troops handle a scout who missed his presentations at the Court of Honor? We do all badge presentations right away, but reserve the CoH for the cards (Rank and MB) and recognition in front of family. If you have a scout who missed the CoH, should we hold off on presenting cards until the next CoH; or should we present cards at the next troop meeting and recognize the scout at the next CoH, or just present the cards at the next troop meeting and drop the CoH recognition? Or prehaps something else?

Just wanted to hear your thougths.

If they are absent at the COH, we call their name and recognize their accomplishment. We present their badges and cards to them at the next Troop meeting.

We do the same as "Jeffrey H".

We give the rank badges at the meeting after their BOR. We present the merit badges, advancement cards and temporary patches at the COH. If they don't come to the COH the scout is still recognized but everything gets packed away until the next one. We also expect the scout to be in their field uniform.

I'm not sure why we wait on the merit badges. I don't see doing it every week, but I could see doing it once a month with the rank badges.

Temporary patches, especially with rockers, are a pain. No matter when we give them they get left. At least at the COH mom has a chance to snag them.

It is important to be at the COH. Not just to recieve your award but, just as important, to honor the others as well. Unless there was a very good reason to have missed (neither band nor football practice count as good reasons), they can wait until the next COH. If the award was not important enough for them to come to the COH to recieve then it is not important enough to lug the award around to give to them when they feel like showing up.

What Jeff said.

Same as Jeffrey here too

Thank you Jeffrey H for sharing what your troop does. I do like that. And thank you everyone else for agreeing with Jeffrey. Once in a while, consensus is nice.

Need a negative example? :-)

(this drives me up the wall, by the way) -- our troop leadership is descended from Cub Scout pack leadership, in a pack that used the Blue and Gold as their end of year banquet. Therefore, all awards were held until the end of the year...

Fast forward to the troop of today -- awards, badges included, are held until a Court of Honor (October, sometimes March if there is an Eagle, and June), where Scouts are presented with a Ziplock sandwich bag that contains their advancement booty. If a Scout misses the CoH, he can get the stuff if he asks for it, and if the advancement guy remembers to bring it. Otherwise he can pick it up at the next CoH. We still have guys in the upper ranks that have Tenderfoot badges on their shirts.

Like I said, a negative example. Please don't do this with your troops. :-)

(side note: the advancement guy is on-board with the idea of presenting badges as soon as possible after they've been earned, and then presenting recognition and cards at the CoH, but so far it hasn't happened yet -- not sure how the ol' pack leadership is going to feel about that one!)

Guy

Oh -- we did have a positive change in the last year. A few years ago, the "ol' pack leadership" didn't want to be bogged down with Boards of Review on-demand, so they decided that the last meeting of the month would be Board of Review night.

But with the new advancement guy, we're back to doing Boards of Review on demand. A scout notifies him in advance, and then he makes sure there are enough committee members there to take care of the BoR. Since we usually have enough adults at the back of the room at meetings, Scouts have even begun to ask at the start of a meeting. I can think of only one case in the last year where we couldn't accommodate a Scout, so he had to wait until the next meeting.

That's the way it should be! Glad to hear that your troop's BoRs are on track.

One small step at a time :-).

"Unless there was a very good reason to have missed (neither band nor football practice count as good reasons), they can wait until the next COH."

Why aren't those good reasons? Sorry, I don't follow your logic at all.

I have the same quandary as Bando?

>>>> If they are absent at the COH, we call their name and recognize their accomplishment. We present their badges and cards to them at the next Troop meeting.

Penalizing a scout for not showing because of school sports is just as offensive as the coach benching the boy for going to a camporee.

Sounds like a couple of adults in divorce court. Let's punish the children because the parents can't get along.

Makes sense to me. NOT!

In my troop: Family, Church, School all take priority over Scouting.

It used to be a tradition in my troop that the week that the Packers played on Monday night there was to be no scout meeting. I said I would be at the meeting whether the Packers played or not. Without a whimper, that tradition ceased to exist.

Life is choices. I want my boys in Scouts because they choose to be. Because of this, they do "work it out" with many family, church and school calendars to attend scouting functions.

Stosh