Lisabob

Nah, he isn't interested in staffing. Too many other things going on with his summer. (I spent many years on camp staffs though, and I had a blast, so I understand where you are coming from - but for the moment I'm just happy he wants to go to scout camp again)

Only thing about fingerprinting - make sure it is done well. Since it is a relatively easy one, it seems to suffer from a distinct lack of care. (How I've seen it done in some settings: Everybody stick fingers on ink pad, smash onto paper, done! 15 minutes, tops, start to finish.) Even the easy ones deserve to be done well.

bokris - why are there no families in your pack who are church members? I don't mean that in a condemnatory way, but more as a curiosity. You say the church youth program folded, so it seems like there should be some room for scout recruiting? Even if there aren't boys of the right age, what about asking a few friendly church members (hand pick these with care) to serve on the pack committee, etc. Having some church members active in the pack could help you make a stronger personal connection to the church. Good luck to you and the pack. I hope you will post an occasional update here. (PS - jhankins - my understanding is that when a unit changes COs and the old CO chooses not to relinquish the gear and contents of a bank account, then the unit's equipment and any cash would go back to the CO, not to council. Some CO's might voluntarily turn over some/all of the equipment to council, but they aren't obligated to do that, either.)

Metal work is a good one - something many of them couldn't do at home One camp my son attended did a big Rail Roading program, linked to a nearby historic RR and a train enthusiasts club in the area. The boys seemed to enjoy that. Are there any resources of that nature near your camp? I like the idea of the auto mechanics, if you can provide vehicles for them to tinker around with, especially. Actually have them help change the fluids, etc. How about Geocaching?

I had to share this because I know you guys will get it. My son is an older scout (junior in HS) who went to summer camp with his troop for 4 years. Because of repeated experiences with a few boys behaving (very) badly and a distaste for a week of adult-led nonsense for several years running, he kind of burned out on camp and wanted nothing to do with it for the last couple of years. I gave up pushing the issue. Fast forward - over the weekend he told me all about how he wants to go to camp!!! What changed - new troop, new patrol (real patrol). All the guys in his patrol are going and he said it sounded like too much fun to miss. I'm so happy that he's excited about camp again.

The answer might depend a lot on what you intend the bylaws to do. If it is a way for people to try to tie things in knots, probably not. If it is a way to take leadership opportunities away from the boys ("because the bylaws say so!" can be used to do this by some adults) then no way. If you are using bylaws to achieve some other end, possibly. Personally, having seen a troop do the former with bylaws, I'm not real fond of them.

I'm leery about this notion of you providing financial support to the church. First off, even if you do, your $600 probably won't be enough to save an organization that is truly in trouble enough to milk cub scouts for cash. Second, I'm unsure that it is cool to use scouting to fundraise for outside organizations (at least, I was under the strong understanding that this was prohibited). Some years back my son was in a unit sponsored by a local Lions club. This club had about 4 members, all in their 70s & 80s, and as far as I could ever tell, the only thing the club did was a couple of fundraisers (then they sent the money off to some other group). They were bound and determined that the kids in the troop should fund raise for them, in uniform, in front of local stores. We declined. Eventually, the club folded and the troop found a new CO. Would have happened anyway, even if we did raise $ for them though, I'm certain. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of ways that I think it could be appropriate to provide service to one's CO. I just don't think acting as an ATM is, or should be, one of those. I much prefer the notion that if the church is going to hold its own fund raiser, that your scout unit might assist them with set-up, tear-down, busing tables, etc. rather than you just forking over cash or you fundraising directly on their behalf.

nld there are very good reasons why someone would choose not to share their full identity on the web, as I'm sure you know, since you are a judge in NYS in the real world. The ad hominem attacks ("not man enough"? please) really don't help your argument.

Tuoc, I didn't say you were pushing your beliefs on anyone. I do think you expect that you can get people to change their minds and see things your way if you just apply enough logic. Regardless of whether I personally agree or disagree (with you, or with the current BSA membership policy), I do not think very many people are going to change their minds based on what you have written. Nor do I think your initial post was effective. People tend to respond to posts like that as they would to a poke with a sharp stick - hence the initial "he's a troll" reactions. I am going to say this once, and I don't mean it as harshly as it will likely come across, but here it is: you sound like a teenager who is convinced that his parents just don't understand as much as he does about the world, and if they just have their eyes opened then they'll acquiesce to the teen's desires. And now, I'm done.

I see no reason to close the thread. Discussion so far has been remarkably courteous with just an exception or two. If people determine that the poster is a "troll" then people will likely just stop responding. In the meantime, this is a topic that gets discussed from time to time here in the issues & politics forum and I see no reason to shy away from it. As for me: I don't think he's a troll. He sounds to me like a lot of late teen/early 20 folks who fervently believe something to be true, and who are sure they can convince the world of it through sheer force of will. And to that, all I can say is that such a strategy rarely works.

Joe- we will see about El Baradei. A lot of Egyptians aren't excited about him since he has spent the last 30 years outside of Egypt. Keep an eye on the Muslim Brotherhood, also the military.

OGE - yes, though not with perfect access. Even just a couple of months prior to the war. The weapons inspection thing was a pretext. Here's a BBC timeline for UN weapons inspections in Iraq (1991-2002). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2167933.stm Note that UN weapons inspections resumed in November 2002. And here's a report, delivered by UN weapons inspector Hans Blix to the UN, on January 27, 2003. http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/Bx27.htm Weapons inspectors were pulled from Iraq in early March 2003. Note that the weapons inspectors had only a couple of months to try to get up and running (after a 4 year absence from Iraq), before the US said "enough!" and went to war, instead. Had the weapons inspectors been given a more reasonable time frame to do their job in Iraq in late 2002-early 2003, who knows how things might have turned out.

seems there's a consensus! Seattle, what's your take?

We made arrows and a plaque for each boy who earned AoL. This was a labor-intensive process because the decorations on each arrow differed, depending on what each boy had done in his time as a cub scout. Some boys had arrows that were highly decorated, while others were much simpler. The boys knew what all the decorations meant (better than the parents!). But yes, we only presented them to boys who earned the award. Personally, I would have liked to see us present them as the boy completed the award and not at a B&G/cross over event, after which time the boy was never seen nor heard from (in the pack) again. Would've been nice to do as an individual recognition through the year, rather than all the hoopla surrounding a whole den at once.

Have a lower cost product that people can afford. People might pay $7 for over-priced popcorn but many won't drop $20-$50 at a show & sell event. Get agreement from all councils in one area on a common start date. We're bounded by several nearby councils and sometimes it seems like they compete to see who can start a week earlier than everybody else, making sales at mom & dad's work places more than a little crazy. (Mr. Smith whose kid is in the "early" council gets all the sales before Mr Jones's kid is allowed to sell by his council)

What's your personal relationship with the minister like? Maybe you should have a meeting with her, where you lay out where the pack has been, where you want it to go, and how you need her help figuring out how to get it there without frying yourself in the process. Ministers are often pretty good at the people-skills side of things. Tell her to help you find good volunteers, maybe people involved with the church community who don't have any boys in the pack right now. And tell her to help you lean on parents of boys in the pack to get things done. About those volunteer apps and background checks - there are often things that need doing, that don't need a registered volunteer to do them (like those arrows, or the pwd cars). Obviously you need to use your judgment here, but if a person is an asset then find them something to do that would help you, even in small ways. They might not be the next webelos DL, ACM, or CM, but they can still carry some of the load. Some of us are good at seeing the big picture and mapping out plans to get there, but poor at getting buy-in from the folks on the ground who we need to help us get things going. (That would be me, from time to time). Find the person (your minister?) who can get the buy-in for your big picture vision, and work together.

OK so if you are doing this mainly for the troop, and you've mentioned the troop has a BUNCH of adults who are too old to camp, then you might also want to go to the troop and tell THEM you need help and pronto.

Beavah's climbing example is a classic one where adult-led might, indeed, be more dangerous (canoeing is another that comes to mind for me). I have personally seen and experienced attending a camp out where climbing was the order of the day. I know for a fact that my own knot skills are (ahem) woefully lacking. I trust my son's knots a lot more than my own. But on that camp out, the boys were expected to turn to, and be checked by, adults at hand to be sure they had the knots right and belaying set up properly. Truth is, half the boys there had more climbing experience than many of the adults for whom it was their first/second time. No way should some of those adults have been verifying anything after receiving 30 minutes of instruction. So, why did this occur? Because they were adults! Some people believe that makes them infallible in comparison to any kids. Adult-led doesn't = safer. Bad youth leadership also doesn't = safer, but as Beavah said, a **properly functioning** patrol method troop should have very little bad youth leadership that rises to the level of serious safety concerns (and that's where watchful adults might be on the perimeter keeping an eye out for truly dangerous stuff). But I also think a lot of folks have never seen or experienced a troop that really utilizes the patrol method and so they have no basis upon which to build up their own faith and trust that it could actually work, if done well.

Talk to your COR and IH. Tell it like it is. I have to say, I couldn't understand why many of your posts come across as kind of angry, but now I do. You are way over-committed, clearly feeling burned, and apparently without seeing a way out for yourself. That would make me angry, too. It can be easy, when volunteering, to get caught up in a sense of obligation that becomes overwhelming. The weight of the world - or this pack - is not yours to bear alone, no matter what some folks might tell you. Take some steps back and evaluate where you really want to feel committed, and start shifting your focus over to those areas, instead. While in the short run you are keeping this pack going, in the longer term if you resent the role you are in, it will show through to the program and you'll be miserable, to boot (which is what a lot of your posts are sounding like, to me). I'm glad to hear that you enjoy time spent in other aspects of scouting though.

I do not buy the idea that adult-led programs are necessarily safer (or necessarily less safe, either). I have seen in scouting plenty of examples of adults who do not know what they're doing, or who know only enough to be truly dangerous, trade on their authority as adults to push for certain behaviors, activities, or plans that were unsafe. As clem points out, it is inherently difficult for youth to challenge adults about stuff like this, and even other adults will often hang back or behave too tentatively, rather than putting a fellow adult on the spot. On the other hand, not all boys have three working brain cells to rub together to make good decisions, particularly about others' safety. Some boys appear to be blissfully ignorant of the ramifications of their actions and just don't understand how quickly, or how badly, things can spiral. So not all boys are ready for the responsibility of safety. One of our jobs as leaders - and when the patrol method works, we tend to see this in action - is to help the boys learn what is safe and what isn't, and to help them see the consequences of their action in ways that will cause them to develop bigger-picture thinking about safety, without having seriously traumatic "lessons" along the way. We might help the boys learn this by allowing for constructive failure in lower-risk situations. We might advise, counsel, model and (very occasionally) intervene, but we shouldn't fear small failures as learning tools. And those "teachable moments" are most likely to happen when a troop embraces the patrol method because boys get a chance to DO things and experience the results on a personal level - but within acceptable boundaries. A troop that doesn't really use the patrol method will probably have more boys who haven't learned this, and who have no real opportunity to learn this, either. Those boys (and those adults) would then be ill-equipped to make good safety decisions in real situations where judgment based on experience may be needed. But note that the patrol method also isn't actually in play in these units! This is hard concept to convey. I hope I haven't muddied the waters further.

"Fear is easy to fix because the adults want the scouts to grow" Barry, I would amend that to read: "Fear is easy to fix IF the adults want the scouts to grow." In general, I agree about the fear thing. But I think there are many adults who - though they may not fully realize it, themselves - really are not interested in seeing scouts grow. And some people will simply not let go because they don't believe that boys CAN be responsible and effective leaders, no matter how much training you provide. In that case, adult fear can be just about insurmountable.

I second UCEagle's advice. If that does not work, and depending on the personalities of those other adults in question, you might also try having a meeting with the skipper and them, where you (very politely) outline the problem to them. They may not fully realize what they are doing or the negative impact it is having. If these are people you can work with, this could be worth a try. Another option might be for their kid in the ship to sit his/her parents down and tell it like it is. Again, of course expressing gratitude for their involvement at all. On the other hand, if they're bound and determined to do things "their way," then you really need some other adult(s) to run interference for you and dictate to all adults where the boundaries lie for them. But try UCEagle's approach first.

I can tell you really are passionate about scouting and I thank you for that. I wasn't telling you that you really ought to consider stepping down as your primary strategy here. Let me ask you something: just how deep is the personal history here? Because what I'm sensing is two things. One is that you just plain disagree with the COR's choices about who gets help and who doesn't. (and that's already been discussed, in terms of your options) The other thing I am sensing is that this is not mainly about policy disagreements, but more about personal disagreements. With that in mind, and considering that you evidently have a strong desire to stay with this pack, then I think you need to take every possible step to avoid making this a personality conflict issue (even if it actually is one). Request a meeting with the COR about budgeting only if your treasurer is there with you, so that it isn't "you" vs. "him," but rather, the CC and treasurer having a budget discussion with the CO's representative. Keep it dispassionate and about "how can we use our budget to the greatest effect, given the following constraints (cost of awards, number of families not paying, desire to remain solvent, etc.)?" Let your treasurer do most of the talking. Request a meeting with the IH to talk about the institutional values the CO wants to see the pack pursue. This would be a good annual practice, actually, to retain a healthy relationship. Don't make it a gripe session about the COR, but rather, "We want to be sure we're on the same page. Here's what we are hearing you want. Let's talk about how we can work to support that, and what it means on paper." If it is not what your IH actually wants, this gives them an opportunity to say so without making it a complaint-fest about the COR. If the COR is really bungling things and is also interfering in ways he should not - AND - if the IH wants and values YOUR service, then sooner or later, the IH will have to play the heavy with the COR, perhaps even replacing him. However, in the meantime, you cannot make the IH do this if s/he doesn't want to, and you'll likely fail to convince the IH if it looks like a personal battle between you and the COR.

OK so a couple of different perspectives have been offered here. Either the COR is just a big-hearted guy who can't say no, or he is actively reflecting the will and values of the CO, whom he represents. Either he knows and understands the financial implications of his actions (and they do or don't fit with the CO's wishes), or he doesn't know and understand the implications. If he is reflecting the CO's wishes and he understands the financial implications, then you have basically nothing to work with. In any other situation, you have a role as an educator. You can work with him to help him understand how his decisions are impacting the unit's bottom line. You can work with him to figure out what the CO's wishes truly are. You can teach him about budgeting, and explain why many families in the pack may view the status quo as a problem on an ethical, as well as financial, level. If you really think he is not reflecting the wishes of the CO itself, then you can request a meeting with the institutional head of the CO where you do the same thing. After that, you have fewer options. The CO gets to pick its COR. If the CO either agrees with the COR, or won't address the problem that you see, then you need to either live with the CO's choice, or else find a way to serve scouting in a unit that fits better with your views. Changing the CO's mind (if they have made up their mind already) or telling their representative how to represent the CO, are probably both losing propositions.

the problem you are describing, moose, is not that your COR requires the form. The problem is (as you state) that the troop can't plan for beans. The solution, therefore, is not to convince the COR to change her mind. The solution is for someone to lean on the troop to learn to plan. Maybe even the COR could play a useful role here.