Leaderboard

I see this idea often, not just from @HICO_Eagle “The BSA would have done something if only the abused kid would testify.” First, that’s pretty classic blame the victim. Second, in my case in the 90’s, an ASM did raise concerns and was told it was fine and the YP rules were being followed. After several years of abuse I did testify, on my own with the support of my family and zippo from BSA. So it’s always frustrating to read that because in the instance I know, the exact opposite happened. I doubt I’m one in a 100 thousand. On balance wouldn’t it have been much much bette

One of the reasons I was surprised to have them eliminate the filing of the Tour Permit. That was another check to try and make sure rules were followed, as the permit had them and also included verifications of insurance and so on.

Welcome to the forum, @Eloisefig. That's certainly no fun. It sounds like you've already made up your mind and I can't blame you. Good luck. But I'm not sure how much better luck you're going to have elsewhere. It seems to me that every troop I know of is struggling. Anyway, I few observations: In your meeting with the SPL and ASPL you dumped a whole lot of new ideas on them that they likely don't understand if they've never seen it before. Babies don't take smaller steps then older children, they stumble around and crash a lot. Sometimes they need to be caught before they crack the

Have been a den leader and a cubmaster. Woodbadge trained. My son joined a troop, and has been in it ~2yrs. It's supervised neglect in my opinion. There is no ILST, PLC meetings are few an far between, with no guidance, agenda, etc. It's like lord of the flies. I offered to help. Scoutmaster(new to the position last year), said sure, and we talked about ideas, baby steps, while still allowing the scout led process. Had a 1.5hr sit down with SPL and ASLP(2 deep leadership of course- myself and SPL dad/leader), to go over how to structure PLC, things they can do, how to structure meetings, h

I was just having a conversation with another scouter, who asked me why we were not traveling to camp in a convoy. I told him that even though our Troop normally does it that way, it actually specifically says in the GTSS that caravaning is not allowed, so on outtings where I am supervising, we won't do it. He said back to me back "ya right, show me where". To my shock, when I tried to looked it up, I couldn't find anything, even though I swear that it was there in older editions. Am I just imagining things or was it removed? Old posts like this one, even quote exact parts of the GTSS tha

I think it used to be policy to not convoy. Still it is best practice to avoid them. Even if you meet together and travel as a group, make sure each driver has directions and knows where the destination is. Drivers should be focused on the road, not trying to stay together in a convoy. Have a plan to communicate, whether it is by cell phone, walkie-talkie, whatever.

Should still be there. National added it when they found scout car accidents occur more often in convoys. Following drivers pay less attention when the aren't navigating and often break traffic laws trying to catch up to the lead car. A lot of motorcyclist have accidents in group rides for the same reason. We found that all the cars typically show up to the destination within 15 minutes even after a 600 mile day. Of course the the SM always showed up first. Barry

I did see in somewhere. I will look. It isn't a good idea, so don't do it. Copy for 1999 has it: Guide to Safe Scouting (scoutingbsa.org)

There are a number of helps for this sort of thing. Unfortunately, I can't point you to them! The site https://troopresources.scouting.org/ is undergoing an upgrade due out this month. However, it's not too hard to leaf through the handbook and ask the scouts to pick a chapter to work on for the next coming month. Usuallly after summer camp the scouts' advancement starts to diverge, then the PLC's are about asking what is the skill that most boys in their patrol need to master, and how would they like adults to help with that. DON'T focus on advancement per se. DO focus on skills to

I asked my dad, but it was the generation before him that experienced the change so his experience was pretty much like mine... at this point you really need a historian, the people who lived it are almost all dead now. I did find out that during his time, our troop was a sea scout ship. They spent a lot of spring meetings readying the boats. We still owned some of them when I came through, moored at the same dock. Even though we were a troop we did learn to rig and sail gigs, probably because the troop used to be a ship!

If you like, you can probably still send feedback to: commissionerserviceteam@scouting.org