eisely

No

There are circumstances where non registered adults are appropriate. Our troop in Southern California always did a major rock climbing weekend in early November. A former scoutmaster for the troop would assemble a crew of young men, some married, to help with the technical aspects; e.g. anchoring lines, managing belays, coaching, etc. None of these guys were registered adult volunteers, but their willingness to help us always made it a hugely successful event. The difference here is that the former scoutmaster was doing the recruiting of the volunteers.

I just mention this as an illustration of a situation where non registered adults can and should be allowed to participate.

Good luck with your meeting. Unless this SM resigns, it is clearly time to move on. Avoid getting into mud slinging matches. You will also get dirty.

Bart,

Statutes of limitations exist for good reasons. Extending the statutes on these kinds of crimes indefinitely may well create more problems that such an action would solve. How about basing the statute on the age of the complainant? For example, if a complainant makes no complaint before his or her 25th birthday, then subsequent claims would be ignored. Just a thought.

I see much more potential for harm than for good coming out of releasing these files. I like the suggestion made elsewhere in this forum that, when BSA determines that a particular individual should be denied membership, that person's name goes onto a list and the supporting documentation is destroyed.

I agree with those who see a problem with the troop leadership rather than with the requirement or the boys. Holding that many boys back over this requirement for this long is a sign of failure at the top.

I had an amusing flashback to a different time and place in reading this thread for the first time. Going through jump school at Father Benning's School for Boys many many years ago, the large highly muscular and otherwise extremely fit trainees had a terrible time with pullups. The scrawny, but also fit, trainees could knock out the pull ups but then had a more serious problem. They were sometimes not heavy enough to actually cause the standard issue parachute to descend. I recall in our last jump observing a guy simply hanging in a modest updraft and floating off to Alabama.

Based on my understanding of the rules, I have to agree with the other posters that there is nothing in BSA national policies that would prevent this young man from showing up, with or without his lover. However, that does not restrict a unit from being more explicit in its limitations. Given the three generation involvement of the family involved, it is almost impossible to do anything without blowing up that family's situation.

There is another person in a position of authority here who is not mentioned. That is the committee chair. Let me guess; the committee chair is scoutmaster's spouse. Why isn't the committee chair acting on this situation?(This message has been edited by eisely)

I am not opining on this, but I want to note that G2SS states the following:

"■Each diver under 15 years of age must have an adult buddy certified as an open-water diver who is either the junior divers parent or an adult approved by the parent."

I just copied and pasted that, but I don't know if this policy was in effect at the time of the accident.

Our troop pays a fixed amount per eagle scout. The last time I looked this was $125. Since we normally have three or four eagles per COH, this usually covers everything. The parents of the new eagles organize themselves into a committee which is responsible for coordinating everything, so the actual composition of the expenditures varies over time. One thing we do which is not mentioned in earlier posts is publish a program for the event. Anything above the budget is covered by the parents involved since they were the ones making the decisions.

Ask yourself how a commercial car wash would handle such a claim made under these circumstances. I think the question answers itself.

All of the above points are well taken. Every unit committee in which I participated operated by consensus and nobody was doing a roll call at any time during the meeting.

Having said all that, I still think that it is useful to have by laws that define who is and who is not really a member of the committee. The by laws will also prescribe the circumstances under which a meeting may be called and who may call it, and quorum requirements.

These things matter most when really tough decisions come up, particularly things like imposing an involuntary change of adult leadership. When such controversies arise, and they will arise at some time, it is far better to have a process in place and not make it up on the fly. You do not want to create a situation where an angry group of parents who never contribute time to the unit suddenly are able to show up and swamp the committee with their issue.

BORs should be generally pro forma if the unit leadership is doing its job. If a scout is turned down by a board of review for any reason, I would look to the adult leadership more than the scout.

I can't really top some of the earlier stories in this thread, but this is a good yarn anyway.

I was a patrol leader at the 1957 jamboree in Valley Forge. Every day we rotated duties and picked up food at the nearest commissary tent. The food came with printed instructions. The evening meal included peas, some other items I forget, and butterscotch pudding mix for making dessert. The sequence of instructions ran something like this:

1. Pour peas into pot.

2. Pour butterscotch pudding into pot.

3. Etc Etc

As you may have surmised by now, our cook for the evening put the peas and pudding mix into the same pot. He added the right amount of water and heated the whole thing up.

At dinner everybody in the patrol except one scout passed on the peas and pudding combination. We were all teenagers and some of us had large appetites. This scout was still very hungry and took the pot with the peas pudding combination and ate the whole thing, commenting, "This ain't bad."

We just finished a course focused on moving water canoeing. This year it was done jointly by San Francisco Bay Area Council and Mount Diablo Silverado Council. The two councils are moving towards a merger anyway.

Here in the West it is difficult to even think of an extended "trek" on the water without having to consider dealing with moving water. Our course has two evenings of indoor classroom training and a weekend on the water.

Glad to see something moving ahead on this elsewhere.

I concur with the other posts. I have never seen a SM give gifts to eagles. You may if you wish, but it is not required or expected.

Parents often give gifts. If the troop wants to do something, I agree that I would not simply purchase something out of the catalog, but perhaps put together a photo montage or something more personal commemorating the new eagle's career in the troop.

This is also a fiscal setback for the State of California. Gov. Moonbeam was publicly counting on collecting a lot of capital gains tax to help solve his deficit problem.

I agree with those who say that once the council approver has signed, the two weeks waiting period is over. I think that language is incorporated into the form to deal with situations where the eagle candidate does not have good immediate access to the council. In our local situation, the council office is at most a 20 minute drive and direct face to face coordination is relatively simple. In the situation you describe where the council has signed off, I say the two week waiting period is over.

As a taxpayer residing in California, it annoys me greatly that our legislature would spend any time on this while the entire state is sinking financially. Gov. Moonbeam's suggestion that some "temporary tax increases" are necessary is laughable. There is no such thing as a temporary tax increase here. How about some permanent spending cuts?

Well today was the big day, and folks here in the San Francisco Bay Area are all atwitter, so to speak.

One of the better tweats, which could easily go under FAQs is:

Q. Why did Facebook go public?

A: They couldn't figure out the privacy settings either.

I agree that the swim tests should not be watered down. We are talking about a basic survival skill here. BSA makes it a point of pride that there have been no swiming fatalities in BSA as long as the standards were being followed. I do not want that first fatality on my watch because the standards were reduced.

Cambridgeskip:

Re the scout in the US: The BSA scout oath simply states "duty to God and my country." Most people would understand that to mean the USA. On the other hand, I would not challenge the legitimacy of scout oath recited by a youth whom I knew not to be a US citizen, since "my country" can be any country.

Being an American or something else is a state of mind that has little to do with one's racial or ethnic heritage. The people that I have met and befriended over the years who are immigrants are usually the most staunch in maintaining that they are American before anything else. All these acquaintances are proud of their backgrounds but they came to United States for a reason. They have transcended the questions of where one was born and why does or does not matter.

Somehow the name of the agency now seems an oxymoron.

The trailer rental business is also highly seasonal. I grew up in a college town and the local U Haul had a surfeit of trailers in early fall, and a shortage in the late spring. They would actually haul in truckloads of empty trailers in the spring. Maybe that has changed, but you need to get close the management of your local U Haul outlet to discuss these things.

The problem you describe is no different than putting together a Scout's Own.