fred8033

Units give out unofficial awards all the time. Unit leaders just need to get creative and do something meaningful that the youth / "scout" can look back and take pride in as he should because he's achived something special. Yes, it's mucked up by the unit leaders and the mother. But he has still achived something special.

Yeah, I must disent though. While Krampus may have successfully wiped himself for 30+ years, it is cold hearted bad advice that adds more damage to an already bad situation. Of course the unit on it's own can't give the "scout" official advancement. The council/BSA needs to fix that. But that's only part of the problem. The problem is that the "scout" is many years down a scouting path and has effectively completed it. AND the problem is only partially the mom's fault. Even more at fault are the unit leaders who are supposed to know the program, know the rules and know what will happen when you have a youth participate for years without registering. It might be a fun fantasy to be the hard a##, but that is almost always bad advice. AND I fear someone would actually take that advice. Would you really tell the scout: "Your mom was an idiot .... ????" If you did that, the only thing you end up creating is a kid with a grudge against mom and against scouting. Not only that, but you take a kid who has achieved and slap him in the face and only focus on the negative. *** AND *** you might as well continue at that point and say that all the previous unit leaders were morons too as they were in the same boat and they were the captains of the ship and running the tiller. ... But it doesn't help anyone and as such it's not real practical advice. The original poster is now representing the unit that led the scout youth astray and has responsibility to participate in fixing the situation. I'll leave it to the SE, council, BSA to figure out if they want to go so far as to formally credit and recognize the scout. There is not enough info to judge that here and the poster doesn't have authority to decide that. The key is that we are supposed to be teaching leadership, character, citizenship, etc. To have led someone and treated them as a scout and taken them thru the advancement program FOR MANY YEARS and then only at the end draw a hard line is completely wrong. We are not the guy yelling: No Soup For You. Find a way to recognize the scout that is on par with what he achieved and don't dimminish his achievement because of adult screw ups. It is sad that it will probably be unofficial due to his mom and his unit leaders. That is already unfair enough. Don't damage the youth / scout any more.

Work with the parents to understand what is going on. If they don't want to work with you, fine. That ends the situation. Two keys though are that #1 scouting is a group activity and that #2 scouting is a volunteer activity (both youth and adults). You can only go so far "forcing" youth to include someone who doesn't want to function as a part of their group. It's one thing if they exclude someone who wants to be involved. It's another if the kid won't socialize with them. QUESTION - Have you lost other scouts because of him? Or, have others said they'd rather not go on events if they have to camp with him? Just curious. It happens. If you really really think you can help this youth, great! BUT, scouting is not for everyone and I'd really warn against naively taking the "If any kid needs scouting, it's this kid" attitude. It's true, but the damage to your troop and your troop's reputation can be pretty bad.

Yeah .... I tend to agree it's not the best idea, but it's in line with what has happened so far and it works to smoothly close the door. It's unofficial and everyone knows it. Perhaps instead of calling it "Eagle Scout", call it the "Spirit of the Eagle" award. Doesn't really matter what it is called as it's unofficial and such. The end all is that there is nothing that can be done to fix the situation. What can be done is to find a way to recognize the youth and make him proud and glad for the time he has been in scouts. It sounds like he has learned and benefitted from scouts. Hopefully, he will do the same for his own kids ... and also register them.

Eagle92 - No offense taken. I fully understand where you are coming from and I know the requirements very well. You are right. I'm just answering this from the drastically broken situation that it is. Both the unit leaders and the mom screwed up on this. I really think that many adults newly introduced to the BSA program don't realize how formal and detailed the requirements, process and record keeping can be. Heck, it can take many years to get up to speed on BSA requirements. So unit leaders focus on running and doing the best they can. So here is a case where we have a youth being damaged by an over-protective mother and unit leaders who tried to do a good deed. How do you make the situation whole? --- #1 Recognize that you can't make the situation whole. Ultimately, the boy is not a scout, never has been and thus can't become an Eale scout ever. Perhaps the council SE or BSA national might be more flexible. Let them decide that. --- #2 Work with the mother, scout AND THE UNIT LEADERS so they fully understand the situation. Essentially that all advancement recognition is from BSA national. Anything else is unofficial. Make sure that the scout knows that he won't ever be able to prove he was in scouts or that he earned any of the achievements that he might claim. --- #3 I'd finish the course started with this youth. He should be proud of his achievements. Give him "unofficial" recognition as an Eagle scout and move on. Just do something to recognize him. That's the path his mother and the unit leaders brought him down. Now finish the path. And never let a situation like this occur again. The sad part is there is no way this youth can claim to be an Eagle scout. The best you can do is help him understand so that he can explain the situation cleanly to others for the next seventy years.

Duplicate. Whoops.

You are asking a huge question and you will NOT get a consistent answer. People have different opinions. And, the details of each situation greatly affect the comments. http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/GuideToAdvancement/BoardsofReview.aspx Does a BOR have discretion? Yes. Can a BOR prevent (deny or delay) advancement? Definitely. But if this were taken up the chain to district or council through a protest, it would be overturned. The vague part is that BSA doesn't clearly enumerate the boundaries of the discretion. The BOR is supposed to be more a celebration of the journey and a friendly discussion and not really a test or pass/fail situation. The quote (from the above link) that might apply is "A positive attitude is most important..." But even then, I'm not sure that applies here. QUESTION #1 - Is it possible there is one or more adults on the BOR that the scout has had trouble in the past? In that either they have an issue from outside the BOR ... OR ... the scout does not feel comfortable talking with them because of some past issue or incident? I know that some scouters can alienate all but the most confident youth. QUESTION #2 - What is the Life rank requirement that the board thinks the scout did not complete? While a specific style of leadership or attitude is commendable, the lack is not a show stopper. If the SM signed off on the POR, then I find it hard to say NO in situations like this. IMHO, either this BOR/scout combinbation did not click or the scout doesn't really care. You as SM can probably guess which happened. STRONG SUGGESTION - Don't let this BOR sit with this scout again. The BOR should have all new members. Less strong suggestion but still... - Consider holding the next BOR as soon as possible.

I can have sympathy for the leaders with this one. The family wanted their son involved in scouting but did want to be registered. They tried to be flexible to help the scout. Now though, their supportive attitude is coming back to haunt everyone. I could easily see this happen ... depending on how helpful the leaders want to be. BUT ... every step in advancement require being registered in the troop. Heck, this case-in-point is the very reason that the "active" definition starts with "registered in his unit". Heck, I know several home schooling groups that use some of the BSA merit badge books. But the home schoolers don't earn the merit badge because they are not registered scouters. I'd recommend finishing the path that his mother started him on and finding an eagle patch to purchase thru ebay and then awarding him that. Just remind him and his mother that since they did not want to be officially registered in BSA and as such BSA has no record of him earning Eagle. He can consider it a personal achievement, but not something people can later verify as he earned Eagle. Sometimes when we try to help the most, that's when it comes back to bite us. Sad to say it.

Having a darn hard time using the site. Doesn't work in IE. In firefox, click on a topic and page number is not right (sometimes 1, sometimes 2 and then sometimes you can get the real number of pages). Some articles are not visible. The hardest part is that I really miss the page that was the last 24 hours of activity. Before it was a short summary. Now I need to page thru everyone's origianl message which I just don't want to see again. The new improvements have alot of promise, but the site is no where near as easy to use and read as it was before. The "efficiency" aspect was lost. Alot of the features are just darn flaky too. Needs time to mature and stabalize.

While I don't necessarily see it as a big thing between equals, it really is not a good character trait with anyone. Keeping a relationship / conversation / interaction / friendship going based on boorish, uncultured negative comments is not worthy of leaders who's ultimate goal is to teach character. Again, I don't think it's a big big deal. It's just not a good example to set and it doesn't help anyone. So why do it ???

I like the new interface ... generally. While I'll miss the t-shirt lady that was selling things, etc., the new look is very promising. I like the authoring window. What I really really miss that was a huge feature for me was ... the ability to reverse list recently activity and just show the forum, thread name, original thread author, last poster and date of the last post. In the "brief" list there was no need to post any of the discussion because if you are interested in the topic, you will open it and read. I used to scan that list to find interesting discussions. That's how I'd like to see the " Click Here to view active topics since your last visit (last 24 hours and before)" function. Just do a brief list of reverse sorted thread names, forums and last posting date. The current detailed multi-screen list makes it too hard to quickly find interesting discussions.

The real problem is the belief that "Eagle Scouts" are "better than thou". Eagle Scout is no guarantee. People are people. Some are angels and some are hell raisers. And today's angels can be next month's hell raisers. ANd today's hell raisers might be tomorrow's leaders, ministers and life savers. My favorite story is from two local scout leaders than have been in scouts their whole life. If you get to know them, you will hear stories of the 1960s when they were Eagle Scouts driving to OA events. They'd arrive at conclaves with the back of their car covered in mud after spinning donuts in local farmer's fields. They were Eagle Scouts, but no angels. It's not about making perfect people. It's about giving youth tools to deal with life and to hopefully make good choices. ... How common? Eagle Scouts are 5% better than the average kid. I don't know.

Actually, moving the decision to the COR is the right decision. Each COR (mostly churches) have their own twist on morality / sin / etc. That is their specialty and what they bring to the table. BSA brings the program and program materials and resources to the table. Each should do what they do well and not step on the other. BSA national was wrong to push their morality onto the CORs when the CORs don't have a consistent consensus on the topic. If BSA wants to push morality, they need to drop CORs that are not in the same camp. If they don't want to drop CORs, then they should adopt local COR choice.

eagle90 said what I was going to say. Leaders like this give scouting a bad name. I was going to easily cut the SM slack if the scout was often sloppy in uniform and attribute it to the SM using creativity to solve a recurring problem ... BUT ONLY IF it was the scout rank patch or unit numbers or maybe the patrol patch or similar ... AND ALSO ONLY IF the SM had rarely seen the scout uniformed to the best of the scout's ability ... AND ONLY IF the scout knew this was expected and it had been requested. I'm okay giving the SM a little flexibility thru his helping create healthy scout spirit. But it's petty and anal to delay advancement because of an out-of-date centennial patch on an otherwise well uniformed scout. That's just petty. I'd worry if I want my son to learn from their example and I'd advise him on handling those adults WITHOUT BECOMING LIKE THEM. Also council him on how he would handle it if he were the adult. Perhaps, a short verbal roll play. .... Untimately, I think Beavah had the right comments. And to some degree, your son (and you) have been in the troop for awhile and this should not be a surprise. BUT ... I'd be looking for another troop as I would not want my own son in it. As for the guide to advancement and uniforming, I can see "some" flexibility in it, but I can't say I agree at all with your troop's interpretation. .... "Gotcha" attitude ... My son had several such adults on his 2010 Jamboree troop. It was supposed to be the highlight of his scouting years and instead turned into an exercise in frustration. As BSA is blessed with many wonderful and caring leaders, BSA is also plagued with too many pinheads. As a result, I'll never send my sons on a scouting event again without first knowing the adults and having a choice in choosing them. .... A few comments about our troop - SMCs and BORs are on-demand. Our goal is the same night. Not guaranteed if we are busy, but we try. Ultimately, it's the scout's responsibility to plan ahead, but we try to support them. - Scouts are not "required" to be uniformed for SMC or BOR ... but strongly encouraged and reminded before and during. - Scouts are REQUIRED to have their scout handbook with them for the BOR ... because that's where we confirm the requirements are complete. Can't review what is not provided for review. Troopmaster reports, trip records, etc are the adult responsibility. The scout is only responsible for his own handbook. And if the scoutmaster hasn't signed off on the SMC, then we walk the scout and book to the SM and ask if it was done. Then, the SM signs off and we resume the BOR. Even if we did go forward, we can't finish the BOR without signing the handbook. So, we require the handbook.

Sharing a tent? The situation would be VERY DIFFERENT than body odor. It's entirely 100% reasonable that if a girl can justifiably feel uncomfortable sharing a tent with a straight boy, a straight boy is entirely justified feeling uncomfortable sharing a tent with a non-straight boy. Why would you think otherwise? And it's not a matter of being a bigot any more than girls are bigoted against boys. Similarly, if we don't let non-married male/female adults share tents, why would we let two non-straight adult men share tents? It's the same thing.

Venividi ... I don't think that tide has changed. Just alot of us have taken this discussion to the parents and units instead of wasting time discussing a topic with people that don't want to learn and then be accused of being the once-and-done crowd or the anti-proficiency advocates. That's just offensive and the sign of scouters that should not be scouters. When people talk of "proficiency", they are just manipulating the words to fulfill their own purpose. The written requirements speak for themselves. Trying to make them more than they are is just a dis-service to the boys and to scouting as a whole. The climbing merit badge is not a certification to belay scouts a year later. The first aid badge is just a starting point. The BSA advancement program is just a starting point and one of multiple methods scouting uses to teach character, citizenship and fitness (physical, mental and emotional). Ya can make the words as rosey and elequent as you want, but I'm sad that I can walk away from the hot air, but real live scouts in their units are misled and damaged by this bull hockey and that scouting as a whole takes hits all the time from real scouts damaged by this B.S. ... It astounds me when the requirements are specific and scouters refuse to give credit. Even worse, when scouters later demean the scouts as not being worthy or not having earned it. At that point, scouters either need to get off their high horse and join the program or just ride off into the sunset. Now if you want a different program? Fine. Find or create that program. But if you want to be a BSA scouter, get a spine and stand up for the program you represent. I'm amazed when our goal is to teach character and citizenship and fitness, yet scouters won't follow the words as written. "Oh, but that's not what BSA really meant..." "Oh, national doesn't really have leaders that like the outdoors..." "Oh, national doesn't know how to run a program..." ... Give me a break. Back to people that will listen and remember the program run by and for the scouts.

Merlyn ... you're are just an ugly hate monger.

twocubdad wrote: "If approved, prepare for a flood of media stories everytime some local CO exercises it's local option to exclude gays" What story? Catholic church refuses to recharter Boy Scout troop led by the The Village People? Readers can be reasonable. It's the same reasonableness that allows people to comprehend that it's okay to not require churches to marry homosexual couples. If you don't like the policies of the charter org, join a unit chartered by city hall.

I think it's the right hing to do. Let the charter organizations choose. BSA provides the program structure. The charter orgs vouch for the character of the unit leaders. At the same time though, if I learned that my son's scoutmaster practiced an alternative life style, I'd move my son to another troop. No hate. Not worried about abuse. Just the example it sets and I have to look out for my own sons.

Yes. But the unit executive officer / institutional head is not really a "scouting" position. You are more "listed" as the EO/IH and "registered" as the COR. You can be "registered" concurrently as the COR and CC. I've been in this position when the pastor last left our charter org church. At that time, I was on the charter as EO/IH, COR and CC.

Zip lock. But if a few are destroyed, fine. We can work with the scout to fix that.

John-in-KC wrote: "WHO CARES about the MB application beyond the Troop? " The scouts should if they knew enough. Commonly, troops screw up, fall apart or volunteers just make mistakes. If a troop collapses or someone forgets to submit the advancement form, the blue card is proof that it is complete. As some troops have a mass of extra MB and then re-fill the stash with those just earned, I can understand why some people might be missing advancement credit in ScoutNET. It's common for a scout to go to a new troop after the other collapsed and his scout records are a mess. Having a stack of valid blue card pieces is very useful.

John-in-KC ... Good catch. Those "exact" words don't exist, but it is still effectively correct. I even found it documented in BSA advancement news November 2011 on page five. http://www.scouting.org/filestore/advancement_news/512-075_Nov_WB.pdf Now, I'm going to need to keep searching because I really thought I read those exact words (or close to it) in a BSA published document like the GTA or ACPP. BUT the statement is still correct. The only "BSA" (read as national) MB card is the blue card. Other forms of MB evidence don't have to be accepted by other troops, other councils or other groups. The only "official" is the blue card.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

OGE hit it on the head. Our emphasis should NOT be on correcting or controlling the scout. We should focus on correcting the people providing the program. The scoutmaster is still in the loop and part of the process. If scouts don't want to follow the BSA process, then a heart to heart about being in the troop is in order. But it's NOT an approval. We've seen it even in this discussion thread about SM's still having approval authority (which he never really had) or others indicating their troop would just keep going as they have been and ignore the clarification. The key is that the Merit Badge program is NOT a unit administered part of the program. It's a district/council administered program. If you disagree with the approval of MBCs, take it up with the district committee chair or the district advancement coordinator. Or the council SE or council advancement director. And if they don't care, I'm not sure why you should. You can still counsel the scout and you can provide other counselor names. But it's not the SM place to approve a scout for doing a badge or to dictate the counselor to be used and it never has been.

Using a parent as a MB counselor generally defeats the purpose of the MB program unless the parent really has special expertise in the topic. I'm not against using a parent as a MB counselor any more or any less than using the same MB counselor for more than one or two merit badges. IMHO, the benefit of the MB program is only partially in each topic. The bigger benefit is learning to reach out and work with people. Followed by learning to complete requirements and chase/close-out obstacles to completing something worthwhile.