mbscoutmom

Why do you think there is zero chance of having the decision overturned? Then why would they review it at all? The letter from the review committee did not state their reasoning for not overturning the decision, so I have no clue what the problem is. Here's what happened:

1. My son claimed that I physically abused him three years ago. This was reported to CPS, but no action was taken because it supposedly happened three years ago.

2. Someone reported to council that there was a CPS case against me, which there never was.

3. I received a letter from council revoking my membership, but it didn't say why. I had to write a letter to them asking why.

4. I sent a letter to the regional review committee explaining that there was no CPS case against me.

5. I received a letter asking me to send them a copy of the disposition of the case against me.

6. I replied that, since there was no case against me, I could not supply a copy of the disposition of it.

7. They sent a letter asking for letters of support.

8. I sent them more than 20 letters of support.

9. I received a letter from the regional review committee stating that they found no reason to overturn the decision.

10. Following the instructions in the letter from the regional review committee, I wrote a letter to the chief scout executive again explaining the situation, and enclosing copies of the papers from my son's juvenile court case to show them that it was against him, not me, and printed out pages from the county court website showing that there is no case against me.

So was all of this for nothing? Once the BSA decides someone is guilty of child abuse, even without a shred of evidence, is there no chance to prove their innocence?

I didn't post all the specifics because I want an answer to my question without getting off-track with all the other issues. I will tell you that he is my son. Just for now, suppose my husband and I love our son and would never do anything to harm him. (We didn't, but since you don't know me, some of you will undoubtedly suspect that I am lying.) Suppose, for now, that he had no good reason for leaving home and SM's wife had her own reasons for letting him live with her.

Here are a few of the points of the scout law that he has broken and continues to break:

Trustworthy--he told many lies to us while he still lived with us. He told lies about us to other people, resulting in my BSA membership being revoked, even though no one says they believe what he claimed, and he has changed his story since first making the accusations.

Loyal--far from being loyal to his adoptive family, he has deliberately hurt us.

Kind--see above.

Obedient--he does not obey authority unless he wants to. This resulted in a two-month stay in juvenile detention, followed by probation until his 18th birthday.

Reverent--he has broken commandments such as "honor your father and mother" and "you shall not bear false witness".

You can decide later what you want to believe, but if you want more details of the story, you will have to first tell me whether or not, based on the above suppositions, you think SM and his wife, and the CC, and the others who supported him in getting his eagle behind our backs, were doing the right thing.

There is a boy who has moved in with his scoutmaster and wife without his parents' permission. He was 17, so they couldn't make him come home, and he refused to obey them. This boy had been in Scouts since he was a Wolf Cub, and both of his parents have been adult leaders during all those years.

He was almost 18, and he decided he wanted to get his eagle without letting his parents know anything about it. The scoutmaster and his wife helped him through the whole process in less than 6 months, and he got his eagle a couple of days before his 18th birthday.

Then, at the Red and Green, in the presence of his parents and two younger brothers, he showed up with an Eagle patch on his shirt. His mother left the room in tears.

The scoutmaster and his wife say they went along with this because it was the only way he would get his eagle. My question: did he deserve an eagle when he was breaking several points of the scout law while getting it?

Does anyone know how long it should take to have a review at the national level of a decision to revoke a leader's membership? It took about 2 months to receive a letter from the regional review committee saying they were not reinstating my membership and telling me I could request a review from the chief scout executive. I sent that request in early December so it has now been two more months and I have heard nothing. I'm beginning to wonder if it is even going to be reviewed at all.

And before you jump to conclusions--I did nothing wrong. Lies were told about me and passed on to the council by someone who wanted to hurt me. I have learned that the health and safety committee did not even meet to discuss my case--a decision was made by one person based solely on hearsay. He didn't even check the facts. To make matters worse, the charter organization decided that until this is cleared up I can't enter the building when scout meetings are being held. I have to drive up to the door and text my sons to come out. So I'm anxious to get this cleared up.

I wanted last year's Tiger den leader to recieve his knot, but I'm confused about the requirements. Under "performance", the first requirement is to "conduct a Tiger Cub roundup for your pack with at least five new Tiger Cub boy/adult teams recruited." He was recruited at last year's roundup. Is he supposed to recruit Tigers at this year's roundup in order to qualify for the knot?

I think it's great to continue in Cub Scouts. Just make sure that you really do have the time for it. We had a couple of leaders who said they were going to stay on another year, but they got so involved in Boy Scouts that they didn't really have time to be in Cubs as well. Whenever there was a conflict, they always chose the Boy Scout activity. I would rather they had quit completely, because I never could rely on them.

Thanks. I was hoping I could give them a little extra time to finish, if they need it. Most have just a few requirements left to do. A couple of boys who started late and missed a lot of meetings may not be able to get their Wolf, but at least they'll get their Bobcat.

We have one den where the den leader hasn't been keeping track of the boys' progress and getting their awards. Last week I learned that the den leader quit. The CM, whose son is in the den, decided to take over as den leader and make sure all the boys earn their rank next month at our last pack meeting.

At tonight's den meeting, he's going to assess what the boys need. I'm going to the meeting to find out for myself what the situation is. I know that half of them have not even received their Bobcat. If some of them need more than three weeks to complete their requirements, how long can we delay their graduation? Do they have to finish by the time school's out, or could we go into the Summer to let them finish?

I don't think you were wrong to quit, since it was interfering with your work. I hope you can find a better pack. Something similar happened at our pw derby. The boy running the computer tracking program didn't understand how it worked and all the scores from the first 4 races were lost. We had to quickly rerun the cars again to come up with a winner. Plenty of parents could have complained, but not one did!

Thank you, MaScout. You stated my question correctly. I don't want to make things harder for families than I have to, but I'll need to check on it with my council. We usually do our family campouts at Cub World at a council camp, and the wording seems very clear in the Cub World regulations: "For camping--a parent or adult family member must be with each scout and the siblings of that family." The Cub World requirements may be more restrictive than general requirements.

"This means that the BSA RULE for PACK & DEN camping/overnighters is that each Cub Scout attend with their own parent/guardian. The EXCEPTION would be if a parent/guardian can not attend with their child & gives another family member or adult permission to be responsible for their son."

"It really is not that hard to follow this policy. You simply tell the Pack families that it is BSA policy that a parent SHOULD attend with their Scout(s) & that if the family runs into a real problem, where a parent can not attend, then they will be allowed to designate a replacement of either another adult family member or another Pack parent."

Scoutnut, I'm confuses. Are you talking about all cub scouts, or just Webelos? I thought it was a hard and fast rule for each scout to be accompanied by a parent or guardian on cub scout overnight family campouts. I've been insisting on it at our family campouts at a council camp per their regulations: "For camping--a parent or adult family member must be with each scout and the siblings of that family." In BALOO training, we were told that you could relax that rule when you have more scouts in one family than you have available adult family members, but not to have a scout supervised by an adult outside his family.

For Webelos, it seems that the Guide to Safe Scouting relaxes the above requirements when it says that "A Webelos Scout may participate in overnight den camping when supervised by an adult. In most cases, the Webelos Scout will be under the supervision of his parent or guardian. It is essential that each Webelos Scout be under the supervision of a parent-approved adult." But I understand that to apply only to Webelos, not Tigers, Wolves, or Bears.

Those are very good questions, gwd-scouter. I hope someone has some answers to them, because I want to know, too. Our district has been making a big push for on-going recruitment this year, even to the point of signing boys up without asking the pack leaders! Maybe it should go in a different thread, though.

You're right, Scoutnut--if they let me scare them away, they're not very committed to the program. But they're all we have right now.

They do have parents who stay for the meetings and translate for the others, so I don't think the language problem during den meetings is that bad, though a bilingual den chief would certainly help. I'm not sure how well the den leaders are communicating with these families between meetings, though. I send out weekly reminders to everyone who has email, and this den has several families without access to email. I always ask the den leader to pass the word onto them by phone, but without any feedback from him, I don't know if it's being done.

I wish we had someone to write a newsletter again, and someone to translate it into Spanish. I wish we had a pack trainer, too, but we don't. We don't even have an active COR. (But we do have a brand new CM, ACM, and Advancement Chair, so I have plenty to be thankful for!) Should I ask the UC to speak to them, or should I visit a den meeting and speak to them first myself?

1) Good idea! We haven't had any den chiefs this year because our den meetings were at the same time as our troop's meetings, but I never thought of asking a different troop.

2) I guess I should visit a den meeting and see what they're doing. I've offered to help before, but they didn't seem to want me to.

3) I thing dues and fees are getting paid; contacting them for advancement info is often a problem.

4) Replace them with whom? No one else will do it. Our pack has a serious shortage of people willing or able to be den leaders, not just in this den but in all but one of them. My biggest fear is that in trying to help, I'll say or do the wrong thing and scare away the leaders we have.

As CC, I'm very frustrated with the Wolf den leaders. I repeatedly have said that every den must be represented at the leaders' meeting, but neither the leader nor the assistant attends. They don't answer my emails, either. They do seem to get them, because they usually know what's going on and show up for pack meetings and other events. I've had so little feedback from them that I didn't even know about two of the boys in the den for several months--they hadn't turned in any paperwork.

This is a new den--we only had one Tiger last year, and he dropped out last November. The leaders did attend training in September. But it's a large den, and some of the parents speak only Spanish. (Neither of the leaders is bilingual.) None of the boys have earned their rank yet. Some of them earned their bobcat in September, but since then they've earned nothing but a beltloop.

I've had many other problems to contend with this year, but now that we have a Cubmaster, Assistant Cubmaster, and my son's den has a new leader, I have a little time to deal with other problems. What do you think I can do to help this den?

My youngest son will soon be in Webelos I. My oldest son is starting his second year as a Boy Scout, and my second son just crossed over last month. Going from Bears to Webelos is enough of a transition, without thinking so far ahead to Boy Scouts. Let the Webelos program itself do what it's intended to do and gently lead them towards Boy Scouts. Their parents become less involved in their advancement, more is done with the den instead of at home, and they go on two non-family campouts per year, the second of them camping with a troop. As they prepare to earn their Arrow of Light in the second year, they do more with the troop. My husband was the leader for our middle son's den, and successfully crossed over all six of his boys. In the first year, he concentrated on activity badges. The second year, there were few badges left to earn, and he spent a lot of time transitioning them to Boy Scouts, even holding their den meetings in the same room as the troop.

Sorry to disagree, but I think that, since Webelos have to get a new belt, they should be able to earn belt loops again that they earned before as Cubs. It's an awful lot of trouble to move them from one belt to the other, anyway.

Our chartered organization has a food pantry, so our troop and pack work together to collect a lot of food. Scouting for Food is in early February here, and each pack or troop is assigned an area of the city. The boys go around the neighborhood hanging bags on the door one weekend, and return to pick them up the following weekend. In addition to our assigned area, our pack did a neighborhood which had no pack of its own, and the troop also did an additional neighborhood. We also handed out bags to our parochial school, and put a notice in the bulletin for parishioners to bring donations to the school. In all, I think the troop and pack collected over 1,000 items for the food pantry. That was really needed, because our area had taken in a lot of Hurricane Katrina and Rita refugees.

What's your point about 50yos? Are we too old to count?

Personally, I don't have a problem with adding kindergartners, and I think my husband, who earned the rank of Lion, himself, would like to see that rank used in Cub Scouts again.

Having younger kids in dens is a good way to get parents more involved in scouts. Once involved, they tend to stay involved. Our Tiger den this year is where most of the new pack leadership is coming from. I don't know what we'd do without them.

I just hope they work the bugs out of the program before they bring it to my council.

I homeschool my youngest, and am not physically able to teach him pe, so I put him in YMCA sports. I make sure to write on the application form "no Tuesday practices", and usually the coaches schedule practice on a different day.

Last year two of my Wolves missed a lot of meetings due to basketball. This time I made sure they didn't--I put my son on the same team with them, and planned den meetings so they weren't on the same night as practices or games. All three boys earned the Basketball beltloop and pin, too.

I have 2 daughters and 3 sons. The oldest girl was in Brownies for a year, but we weren't thrilled with it. When the boys got old enough for Cub Scouts, we put them in it, and over the years have become more and more involved. We love scouts, and I wish our daughters could have had a similar experience with Girl Scouts when they were growing up. But I don't wish they could have joined Boy Scouts! Cub and Boy Scouts are designed for boys, not girls. There are so many ways that society tries to make girls be just like boys--wearing their clothes, playing on sports teams with them, etc. Cub and Boy Scouts is designed to turn boys into men, and I wouldn't want it turning my girls into men!

Our pack advertises School Night for Scouting for cubs, but I've never seen a bulletin notice or school announcement for when, where, and how to join the troop. My older son has been in the troop a year, and I've never heard of a "bring a friend night". Is it just our troop that's this way?

If I were running the troop, I would want to try hard to recruit 6th graders. That seems to me the ideal time to join Boy Scouts, if you haven't been in Cub Scouts, or dropped out before crossing over. Every year we get a few 5th graders who are interested in joining Cub Scouts. This rarely works out for them, because they're too far behind the other Webelos. (We have an exception this year, who's going to receive the Arrow of Light next month.) These boys might be better off starting Boy Scouts a year later, if only someone would invite them.

I'm not really upset about it. This district has been hurt by falling numbers this past year, so they're really pushing us to recruit more cubs and try to get Webelos into troops. I do think it's important to transition Webelos into Boy Scouts, but I think the troops should try to recruit older boys directly as well.

It may be stated as #10 on the list of purposes, but as far as our district is concerned, transitioning Webelos to Boy Scouts is the top priority.

This is where you need a CC. He or she would schedule the monthly leaders' meeting and run it. In the absence of a CC, you could do that. At first, you probably won't get many leaders to show up, but if you keep at it, they will eventually. Especially if they get signed up for things in absentia.

As the CM, it's your job to plan the pack meeting. Go to the leaders' meeting with a plan in mind. Assign each den something to do at the pack meeting. If the leader isn't there, inform them afterwards what their den is doing. I try to get all the parents involved in some way, also. One den's parents brings refreshments, one bring items to raffle, another sets up the room, and another cleans up afterwards.