MattR

I don't understand why participation can't be a requirement. Imagine the soccer player that only plays one game a season. Scouts is about doing so why not let the SM make a requirement? If it's too harsh then the scouts can go elsewhere. As long as it's consistent I'd be okay with it. I always told the scouts if they don't like the campouts then let's talk about it so they can do something about it. But it's easier to just not do anything. Getting back to the aims of scouting, I'm not sure how scouting can have much impact if the scouts are never around. Without the activities the aims are just a bunch of empty words. If the scouts can't make one campout a year then what's the point? Sounds to me like they just want that last patch. The cynic in me sees the point as sending $33 to national every year. Which brings up another point. My council chucked friends of scouting and now just requires $200/scout/year. So we've taken a few scouts off the roster. Five scouts that don't participate costs our troop $1000 a year. We can't make participation a requirement to advance but we will remove scouts from our troop if they don't participate. It doesn't really sound right but that's where we're at. I'll try and stop being a cynic now.

Every time I take a first aid course there's a caveat; don't go beyond your training. There's a guy that runs the youth program at our CO (a church) and this guy has seen a lot more than I have. Suicides, attempted suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, kids coming out. He's my go to person with experience. I only had to talk to him once but it was good advice. My advice is find someone with a lot more experience than you have.

I did a few on campouts but less rushed is not how I'd describe it. The scouts wanted to get back to whatever fun they were having. As much fun as I had with scouts I could never compete with scouts hanging out with their friends. I did a lot at my house. Those were the most relaxed and I could get scouts to talk the most.

@TDCA, welcome to the forum!

An important question, at least for me, is why? Why should older scouts do their conferences at campouts? Here are my guesses as to why. 1) There isn't enough time during meetings and the conferences are messing things up. SM is busy, older scouts aren't doing their job, .... This sounds plausible. It was frustrating for me that right before courts of honor a bunch of older scouts just completely bailed on their responsibility. If this is the case there are solutions. 2) The older scouts don't participate very much and this is a way to get them to do that. This is a bit cynical. It does add requirements and this one sounds wrong. That said, I did have a participation requirement that came from the fact that if you're in a patrol you're expected to help out and participate. Patrols are teams and teams require teamwork. This came from scouts always getting pushed to the back burner because every other activity does have rather severe participation requirements. I never found a good answer and I think this is a good thing to talk about. Anyway, trying to understand things from the SM's viewpoint might help this process.

I was at my district committee last night and heard something different. There are a number of LDS troops and just individual scouts in our town that are interested in continuing in the BSA past 2019. Some may want to do it just to complete eagle before the time limit runs out but there are also plenty that just like scouts. There's an effort by the district to try and find them a home so they can continue. Some troops want to move whole and some scouts are looking for non-LDS troops to join. The guy in our district leading this, who's on my camping committee and is about to become the district commissioner, belongs to the LDS church and is reaching out to others in the LDS community to let them know they can continue with scouts. He loves scouts and bleeds green. To be honest, when I get really frustrated with the district he's a great guy to talk to just because of his optimism. I wonder if anyone else has seen this. Apparently national is also seeing this.

Hi @Mic, welcome to the forum. Why not discuss it on-line? We're trying to do a leather work event at our next camporee and any ideas you guys come up with is interesting to me.

If he doesn't want to do the job then I'd let him quit right now. This has nothing to do with the OA. If it's something official you're worried about then let an ASM take his position but just don't give him a new patch. Sorry to hear that, btw.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I stand corrected. As for me, I'm conditional because my DE is starting to micromanage me and the rest of my camping committee. A month ago I thought this guy was good and now I'm suggesting that I don't need this kind of grief.

I googled "conditional scouters" and "conditional scouter" (both in quotes) and got 6 hits, all of which are on this forum. Bing showed fewer. It seems to have started with a reference to something that someone else said. Is it possible that we created our own thing that we can get angry about? Someone somewhere said something condescending and now we're blaming "them" for being un scout like. Maybe we should get back to dutch oven recipes or something else fun.

When I was in college and went camping with some friends, some had experience and some didn't, that's when I realized what I had learned as a scout. Part of that was respecting nature. Everyone knew that lightning, steep slopes and fast streams were a danger but those with experience had more respect for the warnings. I believe the reason we had that respect was due to the training we had as scouts. Whether it be for guns or making fires or some scouter just talking to us, we learned that there was a right way and wrong way to approach a situation that could be dangerous. This is why I'd much rather see the risk prevention people push training over simple rules that prevent scouts from learning. I used to live in the Bay Area and every year there were/are stories of people swimming in pools above water falls and getting sucked over and falling hundreds of feet. I never saw anyone say a scout did that.

Hi @TreverDodge, welcome to the forum.

Maybe you're reading this wrong? The class of 2023 starts high school in 2019....

Thinking a bit differently, can you buy a camping shower? Or rent an RV with a shower in it? Not sure how many people there are but camping showers are cheap. Not elegant but a 3 minute navy shower is always a memory. I can also imagine that camping at oshkosh would be worth the difficulties. I have a friend that camped under her wing. Now she's into sail planes so doesn't go to oshkosh.

Our commissioner asked if we were going to add girls to our troop and I said they needed their own troop. He said they could have their own patrol and I repeated the above. But, to answer your question, I think this is going to take some time to happen. I think there is interest for the younger cubs. Our troop has had nobody asking. There is one troop in our town that is all in, got an article in the paper, and has a couple of girls interested. It's similar to the number of boys that join after not having been in cubs, very few. I suspect this will all change in a few years as girls work up through cubs.

We've all seen that. It's just that there was apparently going to be a discussion at NOAC about that announcement. I'm just wondering if it really happened. As in, was there feedback given on the idea.

Glad you went. Inquiring minds want to know, what was decided on OA and helping with webelo bridging? Can they use their regalia? Thanks!

First of all, get a list of ideas, have the scouts vote on what they'd like to do next, and bring that much gear around to every meeting until it's used. How about the old Morse code or signaling requirements? Get some dowels and do a drum circle on whatever can be found. Chairs, floor, tables, other scouts .... A board game. Some form of basketball or soccer that requires moving via a crab walk. Do this in the parking lot, but starting a fire with a hot spark and different types of kindling (dryer lint with accelerent works well) in a pie pan. All of the low cope/teamwork games. The human knot thing requires nothing. As desertrat77 said, practice skills for the next campout. Since it's likely that there are no skills required, brainstorm some skills they might want to learn. Learn the fast version of a clove hitch, the Japanese square lashing, and the other version of a diagonal lashing. Make a patrol woggle. Learn how to do an eye splice. Learn how to do a bunch of fishing knots. Find a bad pun and figure out how to make a skit out of it - so the pun is the punch line. If it's dark, go outside and find some constellations (next weekend is supposed to be the height of a meteor shower) That's all for now. Good luck.

Welcome to the forum, @SamMidkiff.

Wow, Moab this time of year? @oldbuzzard, I'm not convinced a sweeper would have helped. It's really easy around there to get off the trail. It's a desert. It would be easy for the group to split in two, go different directions and nobody would know. It's not like the intersection is an obvious place to stop. My troop has gone there and it wasn't so much buddy system as group. We all stayed together. Being a desert, hot, dry, and plenty of opportunity to hurt yourself on a bike, we asked everyone to stay closer together and look out for each other. One ride we did was on Slick Rock and one scout's derailleur broke. We had to remove it and turn his bike into a single speed to get him home. Later on I got caught in my clips and nearly broke my wrist. Fun place! The good news is the scout had a smile, if not a bit sheepish, on his face when he got off the copter.

That makes sense. I've told older scouts they can have their own tent and none of them ever took me up on it. They will bring big tents and shove a bunch of scouts in, though. I just assume it's because they don't snore. These guys have been tenting with each other for 7 years and hanging out with each other is a great part of scouts so not being able to tent with each other after a birthday is an issue for them.

We may have to agree to disagree. I let scouts have water fights with squirt guns and they can climb on rocks higher than their waist. Certainly I took a risks with things like this and 18 year old scouts tenting with 17 year old scouts. But I'm okay with that. To me, the chance at having fun was worth more than the possibility that something bad was going to happen. You obviously see this differently and I'm okay with that as well.

@WisconsinMomma, should the focus be on the scout or the problem ASM? There is a difference. If the focus is on removing the ASM and the committee hesitates then you're in the position of having to leave the troop. I don't think this is what the scout wants. If the focus is on the scout then he is asked what he wants and he continues to get support. Concerns can be brought up with the SM, CC, DE, SE but it's not the focus. If they go slowly or not as expected then while it might not be ideal it's okay. The focus with the other adults and scouts is on developing support for the one scout that needs it, not on removing the adult. I've been in situations like this before and the parent that comes in telling me what has to happen and when it has to happen gets a lot less attention then the parent that comes in asking for help with their son. One approach is beating on relationships and the other is developing them. The other adults already know about the one ASM so making demands isn't going to change much. In the meantime the scout is having fun and, believe it or not, slowly learning to deal with idiots. Again, he's a tough kid and what would really help him the most is having other scouts and adults validate his sense that what this ASM did was wrong. I don't know what happened between the SM and the scout but I suspect he is getting that support and developing a good relationship with other adults and scouts. It sounds like he doesn't want to walk away from this so he's doing okay. Yes, he was brought to tears by the one ASM but somehow he came back from that. Again, I don't condone what this guy did, but, like everything else in scouts, maybe in this case it's okay to let it play out. Let the SM and CC deal with him.

I'm stuck on this. The boy had fun. If he had called Tuesday, crying, and said everyone kept laughing at him then, sure, it's time to bring out the nukes. Rather, the SM and another ASM had his back. Clearly we've identified that the ASM/old Cubmaster is a jerk. But this boy is dealing with it. He's a tough kid. I hope someone is telling him that. The same adult that keeps "grinding his gears" can't keep him down. This adult is just proving his own lack of character. The scout is honing his mettle. This certainly doesn't make what this adult is doing okay, and if he gets thrown out then so be it, but if this scout has the support of the other scouts and other adults then I'd ask him what he thinks. Since he says he wants to stay then so be it. Keep the support going. Some day he'll be able to fall back on this experience. Maybe some day this adult will yell at him and he'll just face this guy down. He might even say something un-scout like.

We have a scout in our troop that for the first year slept with a parent. The parents wanted him on his own. He was just immature. Now he's fine. There are worse things. Like today I got email directed to all camp staffs that reminded everyone that they should put in baby changing stations at camp so as to support family camping. I wish they put as much effort into developing stronger patrols as they do for family camping.