eisely

smaster101, I don't know where you go to camp, but those are much stronger traditions than I have seen or experienced. I have to agree with le Voyageur and Bob White, that this could drive a wedge into your unit. My sense is that units are free to determine the extent to which they wish to create these kinds of traditions. Some troops consist of boys of one faith and adhere to the requirements of that faith, for example orthodox jewish practices. Scouts who do not want to do that join different troops. This should be discussed in committee and clarified. I don't think there is anything to prevent a unit from establishing these kinds of requirements, but they need to be thought through and then communicated ahead of time. I can't see the wisdom of forcing boys to attend services they don't want to attend.

ditto

What an enviable position to be in. My suggestion is to have a separate meeting with them and review the troop's plan for the coming year. Where there are gaps in adult support, have them fill in. Solicit their views as to how to strengthen and expand the program. Using them as direct advisors to patrols is an excellent idea.

Mike, You beat me to it.

I don't think scouts should be selling lottery tickets to the general public, but let me describe something to you that is fun and relatively innocuous. When we first became involved in cub scouts, the pack we joined had a cake raffle every pack meeting. For each meeting a particular den was tasked to bring in baked goods. Everybody bought raffle tickets at the start of the meeting, and later we drew the ticket stubs from a hat, and kept this up till all the cakes were gone. We routinely raised $50 - $75 per meeting this way. The kids loved it. When we learned of the BSA policy, we decided to keep up the tradition for the fun of it. Oops. Broke another rule.

I personally don't care for door to door sales, but have supported it when my sons wanted to try it. That was a long time ago. My impression is that younger kids do better with that kind of thing. Recently at work, one of my colleagues balked at buying a car wash ticket for our troop. He had no qualms about bringing his darling little girl through with the cookie sign up sheet. He had to agree that cute little girls have a huge sales advantage over teen age boys. Fund raising burnout happens everywhere. Sports, PTA, scouts, church groups, and other school fund raisers create a lot of static. Those who are successful with popcorn should keep at it. We do car washes. By the by, I think that there is a clear BSA policy against anything resembling a game of chance. Someone correct me if I am wrong on that.

Who is the manufacturer? Is this the BSA standard "trail chef" kit you are talking about?

There certainly is no reason why this sort of thing can't be done. These are the kinds of relationships scouting strives to encourage. We have a scout returning to go to summer camp with our unit. His father also still lives in this area. This same scout will do Philmont with the troop in 203. A few suggestions. I do not know what ranks these boys are. Make sure that the scoutmasters of the units involved buy into the arrangements. Make sure that the boys have their books with them, and get them signed off appropriately. Also, equip them with blue cards for merit badges before they go on their visits. It would help if the boys had a plan for what advancement they may work on before they go. Make sure that your own advancement chair is aware of what is going on and gets the proper information recorded, such as nights camping, etc. If funds are required find out what these needs are. (Silly me -- of course funds are required) I agree with Bob White on another aspect of the deal. If I were the unit leader, I would insist on properly signed parental permissions etc.

A nice gift to the new eagles, and a nice display for the COH, is a framed piece of fabric, usually felt, with all the patches, ranks, etc. the eagles have earned, covered with glass. If you really go for this it can be a chore to scrounge up patches. We were able to put one together for our son that included all the quality unit awards and duplicates of all his high adventure awards. It makes a great display to inspire younger scouts, and impress relatives, friends, and others who may not know much about scouting.

Grey Fox offers good advice. I have seen chartered partners changed at the behest of a unit and it was not a big deal. If done politely, the old CO might even let you continue to use their facility for committee meetings. I would sugggest you learn more about the sportsmen's club. Meet with them and find out more about their philosophies and goals. If their prior troop faded, there may be more to the situation than meets the eye.

Political clout within BSA seems to count for something. In the San Francisco bay area there is a one town council in Montclair, a wealthy enclave surrounded by Oakland in the hills east of the bay. Consolidation of councils seems to be the order of the day. Our council, Mt. Diablo Silverado, was consolidated out of, Mt. Diablo and Silverado Councils respectively. This council includes portions of at least four counties. I have never seen a map of the actual boundaries. I think it includes all of Napa County. As noted in one of the posts about New Jersey, this has resulted in redundant camp capacity that, until recently, no one wanted to give up. However, with the consolidation at the council level, districts continue to proliferate to accommodate growth in population. We now have ten districts. The district decision is made at the council level.

Go to the police. Don't wait any longer.

Trying to contribute more questions that might mean more to the boys: What are the different Positions of Responsibility in a troop? What is the purpose of a board of review (based on recent threads, a lot of scouters have difficulty with this)? What is Philmont? Who made the initial donation of land for Philmont? What are the different high adventure bases operated by the boy scouts? What should you do when lost in the woods? What important piece of equipment is left out of the "ten essentials"? What is a map? What is true North? What is magnetic North? Identify two pressure points on the human body? What are symptoms of heat exhaustion? What are symptoms of heat stroke? What is first aid for heat stroke? What is hypothermia? What is first aid for hypothermia? What should you think about in selecting a camp site? What should you think about in selecting a site for your campfire?

I agree that adults setting the example of a full uniform is very important. I live in a fairly affluent community where the costs of the uniform are less of an issue. There are many families in other parts of the country where scouting is a major expense, with low to middle incomes, multiple sons in scouting at the same time, equipment costs, outing costs, dues, and uniforms for the boys. I would not judge such a person on the lack of a uniform. I have seen some CC and COR who have uniforms, but few leaders other than the SM and the ASM are expected to have uniforms most places. We are too short on good volunteers to make uniforms a sticking point for committee positions.

It smells like another troll has arrived.

Let's go back to the scenario about transportation. It is a common practice among scout units to drop scouts off at their homes upon returning from an outing. This has never been an issue for me since I cannot think of a single instance where I provided transportation for a scout not my own son, where my own son (or sons) were not also in the car. Presumably the presence of my own son meets the requirements. This is not a totally frivolous issue. There was an instance in Southern California in the town where we lived where a soccer coach was transporting girl players, not his daughters, somewhere. One of these girls later claimed he had acted improperly while driving the car. Upon investigation she subsequently admitted she made the whole thing up. Some kids are vicious and will make accusations very casually. Fortunately few scouts are like that, but it remains a concern.

The other posters have given you some ideas of where to go. I wouldn't touch a Coleman tent. Coleman should stick to stoves and lanterns.

Bob, You addressed your most recent post to Rooster, but I think you meant to address it to me. You are right that better planning and training could have avoided the entire situation. Since I was new to my responsibilities to scouting, as I mentioned, I began with the assumption that the more experienced leaders had every thing in hand. Be all that as it may, when I was faced with the situation I was faced with, I remain comfortable that I handled it in the most intelligent way possible. Future snow camping events in the that troop were done quite differently as a result of that experience. Bob, I respect you knowledge a great deal. You are a great resource to the forum and to scouting. However, I agree with others that I find you too rigid. Your suggestion that I would have been expelled from scouting based on that action, that was undertaken to provide safety to myself and the scout, is rather severe. While I appreciate your views, I am glad that you are not making those kinds of decisions in our council.

It is not necessary to have a troop meeting every week. In fact the more successful troops that I have observed do not have full troop meetings every week. This gives the patrols opportunities to meet as patrols. I think the standard process is pretty much as Bob White described, although his process is considerably more involved. Your annual planning meeting, or meetings, should be in May or June. You need the school calendars, that should be available by then, and the district and council calendars. We also avoid scheduling events on the following dates: Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Mother's Day, and Super Bowl Sunday. You need to have these dates in hand before you go into your planning meeting. We cannot accommodate sports leagues' calendars since these are not known. Sports participation does affect turnout at events, but so be it.

Just to continue the story I started... There may have been alternatives. By the time I was considering bedding down for the night, I was so disgusted, exhausted, and angry that it did not occur to me to find out what the accomodations of the two other adults, who were already asleep, were. I had spent the evening trudging from patrol camp site to patrol camp site checking on the boys, and doing what I could, to pay much attention to the other adults. Since training so often comes up in these threads, I should point out that that council had no winter camping (Okpik) training available. I was still relatively new to scouting as an adult and deferred to other adults who had been with the troop much longer than I. One of the other ASMs who did not go on the outing heard all about it from his son and called me up quite angrily. When I told him the full story he calmed down a bit. He also commented on the tent rule, but agreed that, under the circumstances I had done the smart thing. Our next committee meeting was the best attended committee meetine we ever had. The whole thing was discussed thoroughly. The fact that I took a scout into my tent never came up.

The distinction between policies and suggestions is sound, but it is not always obvious. Let me give an example where I deliberately broke a major rule, and I feel totally justified. The first time I ever did "snow camping" was in Sam't army many years ago in Germany. By the time I was an adult scouter and did my first true snow camp with youth, I took equipment issues largely for granted. I was not the adult in charge of this outing several years ago, and we all learned a lot. Fortunately everybody survived. We had gotten to our camp site late in the day. The snow was covered with a layer of ice and it was difficult to get our tents up. The two other adults were so focused on getting the adult food ready they were oblivious to what was going on. Many boys did not get their tents up at all and had no dinner. The boys were sleeping five or six to a tent, with tents designed for two to three people. It was well below freezing with gusts up to 20 mph. I had made my own tent available to scouts and was using a borrowed two man tent that I managed to get up and planned to use by myself. By the time all the scouts were down and as comfortable as they could get and I returned to my own tent, there was one boy, not my own son, who had no place to sleep. I allowed this boy to share my tent. A major no no. If at that time either he or I had slept with no tent there would have been major frost bite or possibly worse. Was I wrong in breaking this rule? I don't think so. This is why I say that judgment is still always necessary.

As I commented in another thread elsewhere, patrol activities are to be encouraged. There are often practical difficulties that arise, mostly in the area of adequate adult support and supervision, but that is not a reason to not try. Many people swear by the "new boy patrol" concept. I consider it a mixed blessing. It is a partial answer the wide range of ages one can encounter in a scout troop. However, in my experience, it is more difficult to integrate the new boys into regular mixed age patrols after their new boy patrol experience. Anybody have any thoughts on this?

The thing that I have come to admire about W in this current situation is that, while he is unafraid to take chances and do what needs to be done, he will never send our armed forces in harm's way on fools errands, unlike our former president. You know that he does not treat soldiers' lives as cheap commodities to be used and disposed of carelessly. I got out of the army in 1968 after returning from a tour of duty in Viet Nam. Talk about a costly fool's errand. It was many years before I regained confidence in either our presidents as C in C or the top brass of the military. We certainly have the right man in the right place at the right time. God does indeed look after America.

This has been an interesting thread. The "what if" about the R rated video actually raises the idea that there are always situations that the book does not prepare you for. Ultimately in many situations judgment has to be applied. In another thread Bob White gave me the impression that he believed the rules, policies, procedures, guidelines and whatever were always clear and not subject to interpretation. While I always want to know what the policies and ideals are, I do not expect them to always give me a clear answer. There are often multiple solutions to any problem that will yield a desirable result. Does there always have to be only one solution? Is that the message I am getting here?

It is my sense that recruitng or selecting adult leadership is more of an issue for packs than for scout units because of the built in turnover. Active parents graduate with their sons. When the sons graduate from high school and scouts, many parents stay with the program at that level in some capacity. I like Bob White's process for selecting leaders. I have never seen anything like that done in practice. Our troop has adopted a "parent promise" that is a piece of paper that lists various positions that parents sign. It has increased parental participation. I agree with the posters who point out the issue with single parent households. I would never exclude a boy from such a situation just because the single parent, usually a custodial mom with few financial resources and need to work for a living, simply cannot do much. These boys need scouts and I have always found such single parents willing to try to do something, if only work the phones when needed.