Horizon

I think the Board did a great job in a difficult situation. They boy has hopefully learned a lesson, and knows that he will have to work 3 times as hard to make up for lost time AND has now been through an inquisition BOR. That SHOULD stay with him for years, and might be one of the most important lessons of his life. He learned that you can get caught, but he also learned that there are second chances for redemption (a key message in the faith of many Scouters). If he had instead been denied in such a way that he would never have a shot at Eagle, the lying would have been forgotten an

There are some great thoughts and ideas here. I wanted to responde to the issue of having Scouts be gatekeepers to the Scoutmaster's conference, however. I hold three different types of SMs. First - the ambush. This is when I ambush a boy at a meeting or campout. He grabs his Scout essentials backpack (that they are required to have with them at ALL times, unless specifically told NOT to), and we sit down. I will check his book, talk about his POR (if he holds one), discuss his current merit badge work, etc. It is a way for me to ID any issues without waiting for a formal meeting.

Acid: I don't consider this thread to be crap (your words) - it is an important debate. Privacy concerns are legitimate, as is the issue of indentity theft. Of course, your SSN and all financial data is already held by the big 3 reporting agencies. Your criminal record is public information. If you donate to political causes in excess of $200 that is public information. Your voting registration is public information. What I am NOT seeing, however, is a guarantee that a non-SSN based criminal background check will be sufficiently in-depth to protect our kids. I have posted repea

Consumer Check using SSN: Reveals all of the permutations of your name, all addresses, and any significant debt issues that might mean that you should not be the troop treasurer. The name and address variants help in running the subsequent criminal check. Fingerprint scans are nice, but far from the 5 minute check that they show on TV. You can get a lot more information on people if you have a unique indentifier, and that is what the SSN has become. We might not like it, but we are now better identified by our SSN than by our actual name. I will also state again that the BSA is f

From what I can glean from a few background check services, the SSN helps you clean up the name and address list. It will pull every known address and name combination of the person associated with that particular number, including nicknames and maiden names. You then have a more complete list of names and addresses to use in the criminal portion of the background check.

AYSO = American Youth Soccer Organization (to answer a prior question). I posted their policy as a reference point, since we can all learn from the successes and failures of other youth groups. They publicly claim that the SSN allows for a more thorough background check. Others here are discussing that the FBI can do a complete check without SSN. While the FBI can, perhaps other groups can not. I do not honestly know. It may be that a check can be done without an SSN, but that it costs more. Perhaps SSN allows for an automatic check, while no SSN requires a manual check. Criminal r

Interesting debate. I think it can be summed up this way: Cost of requiring a SSN vs. Cost of letting someone slip through into the system. Here is the response from AYSO regarding their requirement for SSN for all volunteers: ----------------------- Why does AYSO need the SSN in the first place? AYSO is a national organization. We secure criminal background reports by searching court documents in county jurisdictions all across the country. These jurisdictions use a variety of personal information to identify those convicted of crimes. Unfortunately, there is no consistency a

I was happy to see that there were few classroom badges on our list, and instead the boys are hitting the outdoors ones. The only issue that while we are situated on a lake, few signed up for water sports related badges! I will admit that I encourage my Scouts to take the Eagle Required outdoors badges at Summer Camp (encouraged several to switch over to Camping MB, for example). My own son will take Camping and Lifesaving this year, getting him another step further along on the Trail to Eagle. As for Monty Python, we have a Patrol named: The Knights who say Ni!

I ran into this with one of my Scouts who had held two different PORs while Life. I had personally only observed him for 2 months when I took over as SM. Everything about his Eagle work looked good, except I had a lot of adults telling me that he accomplished nothing in his POR. I sat down for his SMC and we started talking about his POR. He was having trouble telling me what he did in the position. I asked him to come back next week with a sheet detailing his work and accomplishments. I then talked about how he would do this again and again once he entered the working world, and he

We keep a supply of the big poles they use for holding up trees when landscaping. They are 2-3" in diameter, round poles of very splinterry wood. They look a little more real than the 2x4s, IMHO. Check your gardening department and see what they have, you can also check with the local nursery as well.

Everyone hates the lawyers until they need one. Our troop treasurer is an attorney who handles business contracts. Great guy, and we could not survive without him. I will echo the prior post about how a few bad apples make for a bad reputation for the field. There are plenty of poor attorneys - Assistant DAs who are lucking to make $40k in major metro areas, for example. Those guys are making real enemies while working to put away the bad guys. There are also those attorneys who take cases for nothing to help people (on my wall at home is some Native American art that was the sum tot

Hold it - the MBAs like simple, bulleted lists (see most of my posts) where we can have enough wiggle room to do whatever we please if it makes us money (or helps the Boys in Scouting). It is the JDs that make things so confusing! [duck and cover]

Thanks all for the input for when I return to Cubs (I have two sons with a big spread in age). Somewhere I picked up the "false rule" that Cub Scouts could not sleep in tents without an adult. It did not make sense to me, but once I built that (apparently wrong) rule, you can see where the confusion set in. Please note that this ASSumption was backed up by many others. So, the allowable solution under BSA for my children of single moms who work: 1) Cub needs a designated adult who is NOT the Scout Leader - but this can be shared with another parent. 2) Cub needs to sleep in a

I am still confused about Cub Scout Pack Camping. OK, so G2SS says that MOST times the Cub brings a parent or Guardian, but that other times they can get away with having an assigned adult. For being in the tent, however, the Cub can not be in the tent with only one adult who is not their parent, right? Can one adult be responsible for more than one Cub? Can the adult have their own tent and put two cubs in a tent together? (Please note - I assume this is covered in BALOO - I am actually ASKING for someone to quote ALL of the relevant rules on this).

I took it to mean legal guardian I admit, and that was supported by the people I talked to. I am hoping Bob White or one of our other BSA rules experts to clarify.

I will triple ditto that more problems come from misunderstood rules, rather than actual ones. However, the actual rules hurt us at the margins. Example: Scouts of single parents who work weekends. I hated having to tell Cub Scouts that they could not go camping since mom was working and no other family was in the area. And no, mom could not sign a legal document to allow me to take her son either. Maybe there was a way around it, but I had a lot of single parents who did not get to go camping with the Pack. Now, this was less than 5% of the Pack - hence my term regarding "at the m

You are correct about the NSP issue, which is also why I personally think that the NSP model is not always a good one UNLESS you have truly committed Troop Guides and Instructors assigned to the Patrol. Out of 3 Patrols of young boys, ONE had the fortune of the good Guide and the other two were sitting with boys still at the Rank of Scout 13 months later. The aforementioned Guide started a patrol and drafted the majority of the boys that he had been working with over the last 2 campouts. What choice were the boys given when they were put into their NSP after all?

After the draft, when I gave them time for trades, the boys handled that themselves with zero input from me (I was actually staying away from the table). In the end they did their own shuffling to ensure that some obvious friendships, etc. were kept in the same patrol. It was pretty impressive how well the boys handled that as well.

The draft was last night. I ended up with 6 patrols of mixed ages. Not a single Scout chose to go the "venture only" route, they ALL wanted to in a mixed age patrol. We started with our standard opening ceremonies. All Scouts First Class and below went outside to decorate the church for an upcoming fundraiser, while I met with the older Scouts. The older Scouts then separated into either their existing Patrols or created new ones. Each patrol then took a table and set-up the room like a job fair. The rest of the Troop then returned to the room and walked around the room meeting

We have two issues going on here. First: Troop fundraising events, and what uniform is allowed for those events. Based on Bob White's post, you have to ask your Council for permission for the uniform. Second: The use of BSA logos for money making events. You are right, you can wear your team jersey - I will be wearing my Angels shirt tonight when I go to the game. However, if I put on that Jersey and film a commercial - the Angels can sue me for the earnings. That is why television shows have to get permission to use certain logos, and why you do NOT see random logos on TV.

No offense taken, and I have no issue with the critique. The message was for both boys and parents, and 85% of the boys were at the meeting. Much of this had already been discussed with the senior scouts, and was actually triggered by me being approached by the older scouts, including the SPL (some content is earlier in the thread in regards to that). My vision is that of Scouting - functional patrols with boys leading - something that is missing from the troop in its current form. Several of the boys have asked for help fixing it, and had asked to start recruiting. Deeper discuss

The letter is OK, but a bit long for youth in my opinion. It is also full of partial research quotes, which would drive the 25% of my parents who are actual research scientists crazy. Since one of the those scientists is also a gamer (he and I play Halo III together online sometimes), he would be one of the first to ask for the journal article that supports this. Here is the problem - there does not appear to be much in the way of peer-reviewed research on video game addiction. There IS research on dopamine type addiction that CAN be applied to gambling, athletics, gaming, and other ac

Restate my comment from the other thread: Glowsticks attached to blunt arrows fired from the sides of the stage area to cross / land near where you light up your light. I promise - flying, glowing arrows are FUN! You just need to practice, and ensure safe angles for the shots.

For tapout: Set up a crepe paper / blower fake fire - but do NOT turn it on. Get your two best archers and put a glow stick on a pair of blunt arrows. When tapout starts, have them at the Right and Left of the area, and have them unmask the "burning" arrows and shoot them at a soft target behind your crepe paper fire. When the glow arrows cross the fire area, throw the power switch. Any loss of "cool" factor by the lack of flames will be made up by the glowing arrows flying across the campsite.

I went to Tom Hale and Bob Garland in the late 70s / early 80s. They were merit badge oriented then as well - you could take 3 in the morning, have lunch and free swim, and then 2 more. After that you were free to still run around the pond at Garland on the canoes, or try to dam up the stream that went by the camp with rocks while watching for water mocks. I remember having fun and taking outdoor merit badges. Then again, it would nice to see the badges only held in the mornings, with the afternoons free for more activities.