Lisabob

Eamonn, I think having 2 courses a year in the same cluster is too much, as evidenced by the low enrollment. Our council is in a cluster with three other councils. We/they hold one course each year and even so, the 2006 course got canceled. I would rather see one course per year and be pretty sure it would fill, rather than hold my breath, cross my fingers, and hope that two separate courses would each squeak by.

Serious as this incident with the clays, name calling, and knife throwing is, I am more alarmed that this boy may have held his knife to someone's throat in an incident earlier in the day. If true, to me it suggests that this boy is a very serious safety risk to others in the troop and would make me begin thinking of removing him from the troop. At the very least, I'd expect this boy to have "minders" with him on future camp outs. As for the knife throwing and the surrounding issues, I agree with what pack & LongHaul have said.

Gonzo I don't know how far north you're willing to go and still consider yourself in the "south" - I see that camp Saffran at Broad Creek Scout Reservation in Baltimore Area Council offers patrol cooking. Camp Marriott and Camp Bowman in the Goshen Scout Reservation (National Capital Area Council in DC region) also offer patrol cooking as an option. I agree with your assessment of patrol cooking vs. dining halls.

Seems to me that part of the issue is that many of these so-called "scout skills" used to be daily "life skills" for a good many people, and they no longer are. I can't recall ever needing to tie a double half hitch in my daily life - at least, not my home life or work life. My "recreational life" is another issue, but that's purely voluntary, and that's my point. I'm not knocking these skills and before anyone starts publishing a list of all the conceivable situations where using that double half hitch might be important, back off a little and think about it - chances are your neighbors and non-scouting friends & family can't tie it either, and they've all survived so far. Same could be said of fire building & cooking (hey, just order a pizza if you can't cook), knife safety (what do you really even use a knife for, if you live indoors and never cook, let alone an axe or saw), hiking, wilderness survival, etc.. Once upon a time everyone knew how to do these because everyone needed to use these skills. Not so any more. And for most adults who were not boy scouts themselves, these are skills that must be learned as adults in order to become good scout leaders. So in some regards, it does not surprise me if, as Beavah says, we are seeing mostly older folks as leaders. They're the ones with the skills. Just as an aside - I'm in my 30s and I'm the youngest leader in my son's troop by at least 10 years. There IS a generational gap there, and it is reflected (among other things) in the skill sets we have. We grew up in different times, with different experiences. Most of them actually used many of these "scout skills" working on the family farm or elsewhere as kids. And those who didn't, have used the 10+ years they have on me to learn and practice those skills. So yeah, I'd rather see them as SM than me because they have the scout skills that I don't. Maybe in 10+ years I'll be there too.

Many camps are posting their 2008 dates now, though some don't take reservations for a while yet. It can't hurt to be thinking about it early on though. As for our troop, we've already chosen a camp and dates for next summer.

Eagle-pete writes: "I disagree that taking your boys to a neighboring council is the answer. If there is a problem going on that makes you so frustrated that you or your boys no longer participate, then maybe it is time to take matters into your own hands and start to work on solutions. " Generally speaking, Pete, I would agree with you. There is a point, though, where you have to make decisions about the resources available to you (including your own time and frustration threshold). Sometimes the job requires someone else to do it. And sometimes too, you have to think short-term first (by sticking with this camp, am I losing more brand new cub scouts than I'm keeping? Are parents and boys so fed up and unhappy that they're assuming this is "par for the course" and just leaving scouts?). Because as a rule once we lose these boys, we never get them back again. So if the bleeding is severe, immediate action might be warranted. And that might include, in this case, NOT GOING BACK to a lousy program. Ideally, this would be coupled with a polite explanation of one's actions to the powers that be, so they at least know what the perceived problem is, and an open offer to assist in some way in the future, if such assistance is desired. That puts the ball in their court. You've identified a major problem - big enough to push you to a different program - and you've made an open door offer to help if they want it. If they're smart they'll pay attention to declining enrollements (this is known as "voting with your feet") and also invite you into the group to help turn things around. But if not? Then no amount of muscling your way in would be effective in the end anyway, and you'd have spent a lot of personal, finite resources (time, effort, patience), to little benefit. I know this is long, sorry (coffee hasn't kicked in yet I guess) but let me offer just a quick comparison to Boy Scout camp. Last summer our troop attended a camp that left a great deal to be desired. And the small clique of people who ran it were quite clear that they weren't open to ideas or help. Those same people are running the camp again this year (as they have for the last 20 years, and probably will continue for the foreseeable future). We made our concerns known but they fell on deaf ears. This summer we are going to a different camp. We could, conceivably, spend years at the camp we went to last year, slowly gaining access (maybe) to the inner sanctum, and then (perhaps) influencing camp practice around the edges. But in the meantime we believe our boys would be poorly served and quite probably, would stop wanting to attend summer camp at all with the troop. We would also certainly lose many of our adult leaders, who would not be willing to put up with such garbage year after year. That's not a sacrifice that makes sense. (and to be clear - this camp was out of council for us, but nearby enough that it easily could have been a repeat destination for us - our own council lacks a boy scout summer camp program)

All BSA-related comments aside for a moment, I find the mayor's explanation to be weak. He wants an iphone so that he can conduct some business away from the office? Don't we already have the capacity to do that with email, cell phones, PDAs, blackberries, etc.? He should have just said he wanted an iphone because they're the coolest, newest toy on the market (just like all the other techies out there who spent hours waiting in line). Now I think it is pretty interesting to note that the mayor was apparently not afraid to be standing on the street at 3:30am in a city with a murder rate as high as that. And Ed, there's nothing in that article that suggests the city is paying for it.

That brings to mind the "scat hike" we did with our guys - which is one of the den meetings they STILL talk about on occasion, several years later as boy scouts. Yeah, I don't think we'd have encouraged them to call it a CRAP walk though, LOL! Maybe this little typo (if it is one) can be serendipitous for you in terms of brainstorming future program ideas.

Sorry for posting twice in a row but I wanted to add one thing. If you have committee members who balk at wearing the uniform and this is something that is important in your troop, you may just need a better explanation of why they SHOULD wear it. Browbeating them won't work well and may cause some people to dig in their heels even further (ahem, that would be me...). On the other hand, how about explaining that the SPL and PLC set the policy for all participants in troop activities, and that it undermines the SPL when scouts see that he can't get some of the (active) adults to follow the policies set by the SPL and PLC. I think some adults who want to be supportive of the program but just don't care for uniforming and/or don't like being told what to do would be more sympathetic to such an explanation.

The troop my son is in has a long tradition of being very strong on the uniform method. All the scouts and SM/ASMs have and wear the uniform right down to the socks. The troop travels in uniform too. Committee members have some flexibility though, because not all are directly involved with youth. Those who are, own and wear the uniform. Those who aren't do not generally wear the uniform (unless they want to). However, when a committee member goes to summer camp with the troop or travels elsewhere with the troop, they are expected to follow the same uniforming rules as the youth. So that's the breakdown for us - if you are participating in an activity or trip you follow the same rules as everyone else - and I think it makes sense, at least most of the time.

I don't really want to get into a semantics debate. I will speak from what I have seen and what I would probably have done, as a committee member. If a boy came to a BOR seeking advancement and there was no record of any sort of his having completed the requirements, I'd start by asking questions of the advancement chair and the SM before proceeding further. Now the 6 requirements for Life rank (other than a BOR) are all things that the SM should be able to verify easily - not like the minutia of skill requirements for T-2-1 ranks - and so the SM should be able to sign off more or less on the spot. If the lack of sign offs in the book is simply a formality, great, then ask the SM to sign the book RIGHT THERE. Then the BOR can proceed with no problem. If the problem is that the boy may not have completed a requirement then that's another matter. Ideally, the SM and the advancement chair would catch this before the BOR occurred. However, I have seen cases where that did not happen - in lower ranks with specific skills, in a Life BOR with service hours or MBs. Your committee member probably has too, and this may be the source of his reticence to proceed without some written record. CNY I feel like I may be missing something. Why does it make any sort of difference what policy his old troop followed? (You yourself have indicated numerous times that the former troop doesn't exactly do things in ways that are up to snuff. So why would you even want to rely on their standard? Maybe the committee member's troop has their act together on this matter in ways that your son's former troops did not.) But the big thing is, this scout is seeking advancement through the ship. This scout has done the work - you are the Skipper, right? Are you not authorized to sign off that the boy did meet the requirements? Couldn't you have fixed this problem (pragmatically) by just signing the book? Or, if the scout did not have the book with him, by signing a statement indicating that you (as Skipper) would vouch that the scout had completed the requirements? You could then have dealt with the underlying issue - conflicting or unclear expectations - later on. And I do think that's important to address as well, in order to keep from having these problems in the future. But from the sound of it, your committee member wasn't way off in left field and this is a minor misunderstanding rather than a major problem.

I can see how it might work, though I think there are times when someone has to be able to say "this is how it will be." But if you have 4 adults who are that involved, that's wonderful. The only real question I have is this: by putting all four of those people in the position of den leader, are you robbing the pack of some dedicated, talented, energetic folks who might really shine in some other positions instead? For example, maybe one of these people would make a great Assistant Cubmaster or Committee Chair? Just something to consider.

I didn't go, but our troop hired a bus when they went to Yellowstone (2 1/2 days of driving) a couple of years ago. For us it was cheaper than driving or flying. We did have a couple of leaders who drove separately though. Unless there are some personality issues and he can't stand the other SM or he's afraid of being shown up by the other troop's leaders or something, it sounds to me like your SM's real problem is being trapped. He wants to have his car "in case." And by the way, on long trips, it may not be a bad thing for leaders to have a little bit of a break. Going into town one afternoon and not being in charge of a whole troop of boys for a few hours might be the thing he needs to maintain his sanity for the rest of the week at camp. I know that I'd feel that way. So acknowledge this, give the SM room to feel ok (not guilty) about it, and see if you can bring him around by offering that he would drive separately while the rest of the troop takes the bus. He can be your advance man.

Happy trails Gern!

Yup, I've seen this too, both as a "walker" with a herd of boys and as a range master watching the eager hordes descend upon me. Personally, I took a "controlled chaos" approach when I was a walker. We set some limits with the boys at the beginning of the day (stay w/ the group, buddy system, stop before entering a station, good manners, etc.) but beyond that, we tended to allow them to move as a herd as long as they weren't causing a problem for others. A boy who was really causing a problem would find himself walking with the adults for a little while, which tended to solve things. My take is that whatever style you use, it will work best when you know the boys and they know you. Some parent that they've never met before that morning who tries to make them march in formation is likely to get a bad reception, at least by the end of the day when everyone is tired. Likewise, with some boys, an unknown adult who doesn't set some boundaries is an invitation to total chaos. I will say this though - I don't believe militaristic marching is part of cub scouting tradition. Sometimes boys LIKE to march (and pretend) and there's nothing wrong with that. I've noted an up-tick in this i our current environment where we have a lot of kids with parents or other family members on active duty, and a lot of young, ex-military folks coming back to be cub scout leaders too. But it is neither required nor expected as part of the formal program. Anyone who tells you otherwise needs a refresher on their training.

Well I must say, Gunny, that this is the first time I have seen the BSA compared (in any manner) to the Nation of Islam. If that's the one example you have of an organization that formally limits membership on the basis of race then I think you'll agree that it isn't the most apt comparison point for the BSA. And by the way I venture to say that the NoI gets less desirable mainstream media coverage than the BSA, by and large. As for an example tossed out there by Eric - Whites *are* welcome to join the NAACP and always have been; don't let the name throw you. I notice that there is no question about race on the NAACP's membership application on their web site. Just as men can support women's rights and heterosexuals can support gay rights, whites can support minority rights. Part of the problem for the BSA is that the organization teaches brotherhood, respect for others, and a host of other desirable values on one hand, while excluding people on the other hand, sometimes in ways that seem to be exactly the opposite of what the organization teaches. Such contradictions are noteworthy.

DancinFox, I was hoping you would chime in. Can you offer some detail on LHAC camps? I'm just not familiar with them myself. kbandit, Note that Camps Munhacke, Teetonkah, and Muscootah in Great Sauk Trail Council do not offer boy scout summer camp programs (but they're great places to spend a weekend!)

There are several of us from MI on this board so hopefully you'll get a range of responses. Feel free to PM me too if you want me to put you in touch with some folks who are NOT on the board, but who have a wealth of info about scout camps in the area. The council I'm from doesn't run its own summer camp so SMs in our area tend to be very familiar with several Michigan BSA camps. Personally the only BSA camp in Michigan that I have been to is Cole Canoe Base, so I'll stick mainly to that (below). But let me mention that I have heard some excellent things about other camps in MI, including: Camp Hiawatha in the Upper Peninsula http://upscouting.org/boyscoutresidentcamp.htm Camp Tapico in North/Central MI (between Kalkaska and Grayling) http://www.gfn.org/tpc/General/Camps/Tapico/ Lost Lake Scout Reservation in Southeastern Michigan (Lower Peninsula) http://www.cvc-bsa.org/camping/bsSummerCamp.html Lost Lake is "home" for many troops from our council since it isn't far away. So if you want details on Lost Lake I can definitely put you in touch with some folks who have personal experience there. Last summer our troop went to Cole Canoe Base (Detroit Area Council). Cole is located on the Rifle River in Alger MI, about 100 miles from Detroit. It is a beautiful property, very quiet. The river runs through camp and several campsites are right along the banks, which is quite scenic (but bring your bug spray!). They do not have a dining hall or a swimming pool. Cooking is by troop or patrol back at your site. We liked that and the food provided was always sufficient in terms of quality and quantity. Most of the water activities actually take place in a man-made lake rather than on the river, but you can also arrange day trips or longer trips down river with some of your boys during the week. Oh, and they had nice shower houses (individual stalls with locking doors and plenty of hot water). There were some things we didn't like, and for us these outweighed the positives. The quality of the MB program was suspect at best. Part of the problem seemed to be that there were no limits on class sizes. But also in quite a few cases, MBCs would "demonstrate" something and then sign off for all the boys present, instead of having each boy actually do the skill for himself. (For example, my son worked on Fishing MB. The MBC caught, cleaned, and cooked a fish. All the boys watched and tasted a bite of the fish and then got requirement #9 signed off.) In many other cases, boys received sign offs for things they could not possibly have done while at camp, and pre-requisites were never checked (although we'd been told they would be!). This happened too many times to count, including with Eagle-required MBs, and we felt it made the whole MB process a joke. It was so bad that some of our boys actually declined to accept MBs they had "earned" until they could finish the requirements properly on their own. There were also many errors in terms of blue card completion and since we didn't get the blue cards back until Saturday morning just before check-out (after many MBCs had left camp), no time to correct the problems. While some of these were minor errors, some weren't. We actually had one boy scam his way into receiving a completed/signed blue card for a MB he never took. The other big negative for us was the camp director. He has undoubtedly put in many years of work into the camp and that's to be commended. However, he's difficult to deal with, doesn't share information easily, doesn't see the utility in making info easily available on the web in a timely manner. He held a leader's meeting one night where he asked for ideas about improving attendance and loyalty to the camp, but he shot down each and every suggestion no matter how positive in tone. Basically his attitude was that Cole is his show and people should just do it his way or not come back (but then he complained that they don't come back!). Overall, our boys had fun at Cole. The property is nice. The lack of a central dining hall gives troops more flexibility to do their own thing. The river trips might be a good idea for troops with some older boys who want to do something different while the younger scouts are at a traditional camp. The camp director's attitude, lousy record keeping, and exceptionally poor MB program were reasons why we probably would not return to Cole in the future though.

Eamonn, I'm curious. Are you suggesting that the District Membership team ought to be doing the annual CO visits around recharter time, rather than the DE? I know in our area the DE rarely does these due to time constraints and other job pressures. (In some cases it could be for less noble reasons I guess, but our DE works very hard and I don't fault him here - he just has too much to do to make these visits, I think.) I suppose this is something we could discuss in the future. I'm curious though. What is supposed to be covered in these annual meetings? And is this one of those situations where it is better to let sleeping dogs lie? After all, while most COs are oblivious, at least they are steady and not causing problems. Just curious to know your thoughts on this.

Interesting point Eamonn. That's more or less what our district membership committee (ie, me and about three other people) have started doing this year. We looked at the longer term trends and saw that it didn't make sense to push recruiting every year when there was almost no focus on retention. In one door and out the other isn't what we want to see. Nor do any of us want to play slippery numbers games. Membership should be about helping units provide such a great experience that boys (or girls for crews and ships) can't wait to join and don't want to leave. Or anyway, that's our take on it. Of course, one problem with focusing on retention is that we may identify a problem that is causing scouts/families to leave a given unit - say, a pack with very weak or shallow leadership - but we can't necessarily fix it. We can make sure they know when training is coming up. We can make sure they know what resources are offered by the district. We can even offer an occasional, unsolicited suggestion. But we can't make them do anything and in the guise of "membership committee" we can only offer so many "friendly suggestions" before we might be considered to be intruding. By the way, right now every person on the membership committee also helps with either cub or boy scout leader training too. Actually it is a good match up - we know their units better than they do when they come to training sometimes, and we can be sure to focus on the things their units need to do more of strengthen their program and to retain scouts. The other issue is size. In our district there are between 35-40 packs, about 20 troops, and 3 or 4 crews (depending on who is counting!). As a membership person I have probably gotten to know more about most of these units than most folks in the district. However, I can't possibly know them all. That's the whole point of having UCs, if only the UC system actually worked. But I think the two big pluses I see to having a very active district membership committee - which we do right now, and which is unusual for us - are that 1) It helps the units to know that SOMEONE is looking out for them, and 2) If we do spot a problem we can make sure the UC staff is at least aware of it long before it gets to the crisis point. Then, MAYBE, a good UC will be assigned to the unit to do a little rehab and a crisis can be avoided.

We do more of these than I might really like to see. But there are only so many things one can challenge at a given time and my plate is full for now. Let me offer one additional one: Adults run the SPL election, so that the person who gets the most votes is SPL and the runner up is ASPL. Justification offered for this (not mine) is two-fold: 1) Being ASPL is also an extremely demanding job, and anyone who is unwilling or unqualified to be SPL probably shouldn't be ASPL either. 2) At one point apparently there were a lot of boys willing to be ASPL but few or none willing to run for SPL - this put an end to that particular problem. Disadvantages that I see for doing this: 1) The SPL could end up with an ASPL with whom he does not work well. 2) The SPL is deprived of making his own decisions about support staff - not just in terms of who he gets along with, but also in terms of making wise choices and thinking about balancing skill, style, etc.. One can learn a lot from having to choose a second in command and then living with that choice. 3) If there are only two candidates and the boys as a group really don't want one of the two in a position of authority, they're out of luck since the runner up becomes ASPL even if the results are a landslide in favor of the other guy.

I like doing the citizenship ones but that's probably because I teach political science for a living. Done well though, they can be pretty interesting (done poorly, anything is boring and awful). I've had several guys recently who really wanted to talk about global politics, and they wanted more depth than you get from watching CNN or Fox or whatever - or, for that matter, in their high school social studies classes where it is all about gearing up for the state exams. Mollie, I'll agree that most 11-12 year olds aren't ready for the "World" one in particular (nation and community might be a little bit easier to grasp) - but a few are, particularly if they've ever had international experience of their own or if their parents happen to live, eat, and breath global politics due to their day jobs. That's the problem with a hard and fast rule from national. And as I understand it, this is where the SM really should be acting as a gate keeper, guiding scouts who are eager, but not mature enough, to badges that are a better fit for them at that point in time. I'm not so sure I like the communications MB that much either and I sympathize with Mark's point. In the future this is one I may drop. I really like the American Cultures one but I have yet to have a boy want to do it. I keep it listed because there's no one else in our district who is a counselor for it. I'm working on my water skills because I want to be competent enough to counsel canoeing! (Actually I can do all the basic things listed but I wouldn't want to counsel a badge where I'm just barely over the threshold myself - so, more practice and training for me, hurrah! You can see I'm really broken up about the need to get out on the water some more...) Here's the funny thing about that one - it doesn't require any actual canoe trips, just demonstration of proper technique. Seems to me it would be better to take the canoe trip requirement out of the camping MB and add it to the canoeing MB instead.

This is definitely a problem I have seen as well. The pack that used to be the giant in our town has been suffering lately. They went from 90 boys (which I always thought was way too big anyway - that's a circus, not a cub scout pack) down to the teens last I checked. What happened? They lost their CM, his successor, and a couple of den leaders to boy scouting. There are many sides to this problem but here are a couple of things I wish could be different. 1) Recruiting leaders: Our strongest leaders do seem to "get it" when it comes to the need for replacements; it is often their successors and/or the ones who just scraping by who don't. Consequently you end up on a downward spiral for a while, until either serendipity occurs and someone with the right skills just emerges from nowhere, or until the pack is on life support. With the pack I mentioned above this is part of their current problem. The very dynamic CM recruited and cultivated a replacement, but that person didn't stick around for a very long time and didn't have a successor in line. The person who is the CM now is a nice fellow but he has attended so few pack activities (due to work schedule) that his den leaders don't even know his name. 2) Lack of cross-over between programs among adult Scouters. I know that this is not always possible. But rather than having yet another committee member with nothing to do, or yet another ASM in a troop with 15 active ASMs already (I'm not exaggerating, I know troops in that position), wouldn't it be nice to see a few experienced adults going back to be cub leaders again? I know there are a few people on this board who are doing that - but they're rare I think. If more people did this, then that "peaks and valleys" cycle could be evened out at least a bit and this would benefit everyone in the long run. In particular - the pack I mentioned at the top of this post is desperate for a competent CM and a strong Tiger den this coming year. Their CC, who has been run ragged by doing practically everything, just like DenZero describes, probably would love some help too. More than half the older boys in my son's troop (and almost all who have recently aged out of the troop) are from that pack and we have several former DLs and CMs from that pack. Trying to get just one of them to go back and lend a hand though...almost impossible.

Wingnut, if you're asking me - not at this point I haven't. Most troops in our area don't do a lot of camping in the summer, other than a week at summer camp. But I have talked it over with a couple of people and I will do it (if they ask me to) in the fall when things get back into gear.

In response to your third question, I personally do not think anyone is in physical danger at this point. However, one of the boys in question has emotional issues and in the past (elem. school) has been known to strike out at others. My perception - and I suppose I could be wrong - is that this is much more under control these days than might previously have been the case, to the point where it is no longer a concern. But I also understand why a boy (and a boy's parents) who has had serious run-ins in the past with this scout might be unwilling to wait and see.