Leaderboard

I would be fine if he said he prefered campouts but would be happy to schedule them with a scout if that isn't feasible. By requiring it at a campout, it is an artificial barrier of an adult making more rules.

My first reaction is talk to the parents. Barry

Ask him if he identifies as a scout - if so tell him to go back to his patrol meeting and tell the other scouts he wants to be called by a new name.

I don't see the need to "lighten up" on something that arbitrarily adds time time to advancement. It's not about any disrecpect of the SM's time. That's why the clause is there for ASMs to take conferences, when the SM can't do it. If an SM wants to hold conferences outside of meetings, make more of a thing of it, fine. But tying it to a specific event, one that could be at least a month (or in some units a few months) away, that's not right.

Exactly. But, typically the fix is not so easy. I've said here several times on this forum that the older scout program is the troops primary indicator of the health of the whole program. If the older scouts aren't coming, the whole program needs some adjusting. Barry

Since our SPL runs the Troop meetings, I always have time to meet with Scouts before, during or after every meeting. I am also more than happy to go to their home or have them come to mine whenever is mutually convenient. My job is to make sure that Scouts who want to advance, have every opportunity to do so, without adding a single roadblock to the process. In my opinion, this Scoutmaster is adding hoops to jump through. Is attendance at camping trips an issue Troop-wide? If so, the answer is to figure out why, not force attendance by tying advancement to it.

Doing this would also result in assigning a monetary value to the SM conferences if the troop works like ours. Every campout has a fee that's paid by any scouts attending. Of course we all want scouts camping but a scout would have to pay the fee and attend the campout to have the conference. Maybe the scout doesn't want to go on a specific campout or cannot afford the extra expense ($25 minimum for us) so a conference would be delayed one or more months until the scout attended? It seems like this rule has been made for no reason other than to force older scouts to attend campouts that th

I have never heard of this rule either. I will conduct a SM Conference anytime as long as the Scout has his Class A and Handbook. I have done them on campouts, Troop Meetings, Hikes. I have even in a pinch called the Committee together to come to my house to complete the SM Conference and BOR on the same night. In this day and age, if a Scout takes the time to complete the requirements, then by god, I will do whatever needs to be done to get the SM Conference done. The fastest way to lose a scout is to drag your feet getting them ranked up. Seems like an SM needs a reminder of the G2A an

My thoughts are that someone along the way made a knee-jerk reply to a Scout to get them to go do more outings, and on second thought believed it was a very good idea after all. Idea became policy, policy becomes tradition, tradition becomes law. Now the current SM may or may not know where and when it started but believes it's how to meet his responsibilities. Armchair psychology says if you press the SM on it he will definitely go on the defensive because, as happens with many of us, he's locked in to a single way of doing things because it has worked so far. If thinking differently about i

Tell his parents that if he does not ""identify" as a boy, he is not eligible for membership. If he chooses to "identify" as a girl, he will have to wait until girls are admitted. Those are the only two choices available to them at the present time. Sheesh.

So hypothetically, what happens when a Scout misses their Eagle deadline by a couple of weeks or months and then in looking back through the records it is noted that a SM conference was delayed for some time because of this unusual unit policy? Seems like a position I wouldn't want to put myself in as a leader to possibly have had a hand in that. Scouts are responsible for their own timeline and keeping track of the calendar for advancement, making sure they give themselves adequate time to advance. Arbitrarily throwing in an unofficial policy that will delay advancement is not something

This sounds like someone way back had a cute idea that got formalized for no good reason.

Personally I prefer talking about scouting and life while sitting round a campfire rather than in the corner of a noisy room while a troop meeting is going on. That said, I have never seen or heard of such a rule. I do like to take longer with the older scouts, as their problems and decisions are more complex than an eleven year old. Sometimes a meeting at Dunkin' Doughnuts on Saturday morning is a good solution. But campouts only? Unless the scout in question never goes on them anymore, and the SM is using this ploy to force him to attend at least one, I just don't get it.

So one of the fun things about being a scouter is watching young men follow in your footsteps, or maybe not ... I've told you all about how some times we wanted to grab the "Eagle Project of Troop ###" banner that often hang by some of our more public works, grab some spray paint, and add a footnote: "we take bad kids." Just like can happen in land navigation, a scout can choose to take "the long cut" into adulthood and all you can do is watch. Especially thanks to social media, there are a few moments you wish you could unsee, but there they are. And there you (or your wife, or your

This seems to be a natural next step for the Troop Webmaster position of responsibility. Any very good website requires a team effort. I've offered such leadership opportunities to venturers, and they passed because they knew what it entailed. I know of one from our troop that involved collecting children's books for World Vision Relief and Development. However, the shipping warehouse is just down the road, so all of the work effort was local. I've read of other projects where with a global scope. The fact is, some of our fellow citizens are involved in relief work in far-flung parts. The

Once, me and my Mormon friends were driving down the street in my Suburban and I said "Hey Mormon, pass the Jell-O salad," And he said "Not 'til we get to the ward activity, Mormon." And I say "Mormon please." and he's like "Mormon whaaaaaaat?" One time, this black guy comes up to me and he's like "My Mormon." and I was like "Actually, you can't call me a Mormon. Only we can call each other Mormons. You can say LDS, but not Mormon."