BadenP

Zephy The requirement says "Receive the religious emblem appropriate to your age and religious affiliation." Since your faith originated in China the closest appropriate available religious award would be the Buddhist Sangha. If you contacted the National Buddist Committee (650-574-4527) and told them you would like to obtain their award and that you also want to explore its relationship with Falun Dafa you probably could be referred to a local monk or spritual advisor who would assist you on the journey. If you are open to learn more about Buddhism as well as Falun Dafa and are honest with them upfront it might be a great learning experience for you and meet the requirement.

OGE Believe it or not all the equipment does not have to cost so much, our crew has gotten much of theirs from places like Second Hand Sports stores, garage sales, rummage sales etc. I myself got an elite $500+ REI backpacking outfit, pack, frame, and ultra light sleeping bag in almost brand new condition for $20 at a church rummage sale and it fits like it was custom made just for me. The crew got a trailer with eight kayaks from a state park sale for $200, all they needed was a little touchup paint. For advanced mountain climbing and rapelling we hire an expert consultant who brings a truckload of equipment for the crew. And the list goes on and on. For events we do only once in a great while we rent the needed equipment. Our crew fundraises to go to either the Sea Base or its counterpart to do large ship sailing for a week every 2-3 years, this involves a caravan drive across country, camping each night and is the most expensive thing the crew does. Most of our activities are more or less local and that helps keep costs down. So it can be done relatively inexpensively if you keep your eyes and ears open for bargains. High Adventure does not have to equal big bucks or massive expeditions. Many of our activities are done at local parks or lakes or rivers with a minimum of expense.

OGE If what you state about boy scout leaders is becoming the norm rather than the exception I am so glad to be out of that mess and in with a great venturing crew whose members and leaders all love the outdoors with a passion. At least the last connection in my scouting career will be a long term joy instead of dreading what change is National making now with the outdoor program for the troop. I think thats why I love Venturing, no mandatory program, voluntary advancement awards, the crew chooses the uniform or not. Yet our crew is constantly earning Silver, Ranger, and Quest awards each year, coming up with new fun activities for the outdoors and traveling around the USA. IMHO, the same should also hold true for older boy scouts as well and that is why in my experience we see more boy scouts coming over to our crew as soon as they are old enough. We had 3 more Eagles last year in our crew who told the Advisor they probably would have never finished if they had stayed in their troops. Bottom Line: Don't blame the Cubs blame your own lack of creativity, lazy leadership, and straying away from the very foundation of boy scouts (outdoors) if your troop keeps losing members. To paraphrase a famous quote, I love it when a plan and a great crew comes together.

Eamonn You are so very very right. Scouting has become more and more academic in nature from the time a tiger cub earns his first award to the completion of an Eagle Scout Project. Remember your very first campout as a boy scout, it will always be my most memorable, from hiking 5 miles with full pack to the site through the forest, to putting up the camp, cooking over the open fire, and going on my first nightime snipe hunt. Scouting was all about learning the skills to not only survive in the wilderness but how to appreciate, care for, and protect it, learning the skills to be a leader and a good citizen. Merit Badges allowed you to explore other interests you might of had, but the required ones revolved around the outdoors, leadership, and citizenship. That is why I personally feel so strongly about the further away scouting gets from its roots, mainly the outdoor emphasis, the less of an organization it will become. Scouting is not only supposed taught from a book but lived and experienced throughout a scouts time in the BSA, and those experiences continue to be revisited during the rest of their lives.

Being a Christian is NOT: 1) Being able to define the miracle of the Resurrection by the very limited understanding human knowledge can provide. 2) Defining your faith by what particular Denomination you are since all of them were created by humans and not God. Jesus showed us how to live our lives he did not create a religion, humans did. 3) Dictating to others what and how to believe, thinking your way is the only true way.

Barry I can't believe you are even asking such obvious questions. Diminishing Boy Scout numbers: just compare the figures for the last four or five decades, the numbers speak for themselves. Car camping: driving the cars into the campsite itself and allowing the boys to sleep in them, with bathrooms and showers right there at the site, typical cub scout stuff.

Outsourced's story is typical of so many companies here in the USA who were loyal manufacturers to the BSA for many years and now pushed aside to allow National Supply to make even larger profits with cheaper quality merchandise from Asia. Yes National should be allowed to make a profit, but how large a profit? The BSA already has a captive guaranteed customer base and an absolute monopoly on all their merchandise. This is my main pet peeve about Mazzucca, which I have personally said to him face to face, why does he need to go overseas when the BSA has always made a decent profit here all of these years?

Tampa It is not too much cub camping that hurts boy scouts it is that too many troop camping trips are at the same level as cub camping. Why, because too many Troop leaders lack the outdoor skills to offer their boys a really challenging outdoor program. I think Kudu is very correct when he says that the first class scout of today is equal to a webelos scout of 30+ years ago. All SM's, ASM's, Advisors, and Assoc. Advisors need to get throughly trained in high adventure activities in order to bring to their teens new and exciting programs that truly will excite them and keep them coming back. IMO there is absolutely no excuse to car camp in boy scouts, this is one of the primary reasons boy scouts continue to diminish in alarming numbers. Any SM that uses car camping as the norm or other than in an emergency should be forced to step down immediately. Time will prove that the Mazzuca plan for the boy scout program will not work. Emphasizing an indoor high tech program, which I am seeing more of in some local troops, and continuing to diminish the level of outdoor training troop leaders receive, and the diminishing amount and level of outdoor opportunities for troops and crews can only lead to the final demise of scouting as we know it.(This message has been edited by BadenP)(This message has been edited by BadenP)

OGE Overnight rules for coed Venturing are not decided on by Venturing but by the same morons that brought you the G2SS who think you have to tell the advisors not to let the boys and girls sleep in the same tent or bed. On our crew coed outings the girls tent in a seperate area from the boys with the adults in two rows in the No Mans Land inbetween. If we are in a building the adults have adjoining rooms to the youth but our adults do not sleep in the same rooms as the kids for obvious reasons. We usually have one male and one female advisor available in the area on shifts should something come up. Our teens however know what is expected of them and in all these years there has never been one problem on any of our outings with regards to sexual impropriety. National, as usual doesn't have a clue what they are talking about.

bluejacket You bring up a good point about sizing and this seems to always be a problem with asian made clothes since they are sized according to asian male standards not American males.

Permission slips are common practice in our crew, included in that slip is also a code of conduct and both the parent and venturer sign the slip so there are no excuses. Now in almost 9 years there has never been a major problem come up yet, knock on wood. As far as adult leaders are concerned on a coed trip of less than 14 youth the minimal requirement is one male and one female, however in our crew the adults are quite active and we have between four to eight depending on the size of the crew going.

Barry 1COR15:14 If Christ is not risen then our preaching is in vain and so your faith is in vain. St.Paul basically says that if there is no resurrection than we have no afterlfe to look forward to after our death. So can you still be a Christian? I guess it is how you choose to define "Christian". IMHO if there was no resurrection of Jesus or for us then the basic tenant of Christianity is gone and no reason to be Christian exsists. So you can follow the precept of the hedonist, "eat, drink and be merry for tommorrow we will die." We humans were given free will and the ability to logically decide what we choose to believe and follow. I saw a bumper sticker a while back that said "Those who do not believe in Hell better be right", and wondered why religion has been used as a weapon and in an adversarial manner all throughout history when its basic premise is to promote peace, love and understanding it has instead fostered anger, intolerance, hatred and violence. Yeah I know the scripture quoting Jesus saying he has come to divide households, etc. The Christianity created by humanity has fallen way short of what the Bible intended. My question is, Can you still be a Christian and be intolerant or vengeful against those who believe differently from yourself?(This message has been edited by BadenP)

Eamonn Even when we were kids there was talk of Boy Scouts being an organization primarily for middle class white Protestant boys. Catholics and Jews were actually discouraged from joining by their clergy because scouts went camping on the Sabbath/Sunday. Nowadays it is the high cost of belonging outrageously priced multiple uniforms, camping equipment, activity fees, scoutbooks, etc, all of which continue to skyrocket in price. Then there was, and still is, the argument about Sports taking kids away from scouting. Today there is the current trend to "modernize" scouting and to make it more "relevant" to todays youth by moving more and more away from the traditional outdoor program and adding new High Tech things like the Robotics MB, etc. Will this make scouting better or stronger or grow larger, only time will tell. Personally I think scouting will radically change over the next decade or two and most of us long time scouters, who will be in our retirement years, will barely be able to even recognize it. If this change is postive or negative will be left to the historians to decide.

I agree with Blancmange, lets keep this in proper perspective. The social network is here to stay and growing rapidly, as long as the kids are trained in potential internet risks and act responsibly online, no harm no foul. Besides SD what are you going to do drum the boy out of scouting? Let rational minds prevail, talk to the boy casually about it but don't make a crisis out of it.

Interesting posts here, I find myself agreeing with basement and Ed. In addition I am one of the few here that firmly believe that parents should not be leaders for their kids from Tiger thru Eagle as IMO, most of them can not be truly objective about their own kids, plus the boys need to experience other leadership, instead of mommy and daddy riding their coat tails, to really grow from boys into men. Cub Scouting does not hurt Boy Scouts, but what does hurt the program are helicopter parents who refuse to let their boys mature on their own and insist on being involved as scout leaders for their own boys from Tiger to Eagle. For my own two boys I was their leader only one time as a SM, however I made it a point NEVER to sign off on their requirements and had one of the ASM's do all of their SM conferences with them so there could never be any accusations of favoritism. Both my boys had a terrific time in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, and both made Eagle.

As I have said before on this topic if you want to run a much more fun and easy going PWD let the kids do it all and keep all adults at least 100 yards away from the track. At all the PWD's I have attended over the years it has ALWAYS been an adult leader or parent who has started the mess and it just escalated from there. All the boys want to do is race their car and could care less about a trophy, keep the prizes small and reasonable, but when packs go out and buy big expensive trophies thats what mom and dad focus their sights on, so beware, lol.

hadzulo Don't tell me that you have all your COR's at every council exec meeting, that is not the reality in any council. Secondly even if they all did show up, which I seriously doubt, all a COR can do is vote yea or nay on any proposal brought up by the board, the COR's DO NOT create policy. Sure they can shoot down any board proposal but that rarely happens, and as a current COR myself I can tell you without the joint support of the executive board, who are also volunteers, nothing gets accomplished. You really need to get some experience serving on a exec board or as a COR before you make such ridiculous statements. The only reason your camp was saved was because the majority of the board and the COR's had enough votes to overturn the proposal to sell it. I have had the same experience at another council but in that case the exec board had more votes including many of the COR's present to overide the rest of the COR's present who oppossed it, so we lost the camp. In EVERY council, except for the SE and their paid staff, all the rest are VOLUNTEERS, that is nothing new or unique to your council hadzulo.

No matter what policy the BSA finally comes up with concerning this problem, somehow, some way some individual will find a way to use the internet to cause a problem. What is National going to do, make a rule stating no communications between scout leaders and scouts online? What happens to the leaders who do send email updates to their troop is National going to blackball them out of the BSA?

Hey stosh No need to get your knickers in a twist. Many of the old time honored traditions and scoutcraft skills of the past have fallen by the wayside over time and will continue to do so as our culture and youth continue to change. Have these changes been right or beneficial, that is for each individual to decide. Our high tech and fast paced culture of today looks at many things from the past as being obsolete or insignificant in todays world and this outlook has to continued to change and reshape the BSA, like everything else, whether for better or worse remains to be seen.(This message has been edited by BadenP)

Sablank Yea it is much more low key family oriented camping. In the past we showed Webelos and Bears how to make a dutch oven cobbler and they got to make one, and with adult supervision cooked it. One time we even did a snipe hunt with them, they had a blast.

stosh The BSA removed the requirement to salute because of it being too closely allied with military protocol during the early years of Vietnam and the antiwar sentiment prevailing in this country at the time. If you think about it it was kind of an anachronistic custom to begin with, the BSA was never meant to be a paramilitary youth organization. Times change and so do the customs.

j rush More probable is that National is trying to find a way to get more Venturers into the new shirt (think of all the potential new income) by making it seem less uniformlike. However the teens don't buy into it so once again national supply failed to sell their even higher priced non uniform uniform shirt to the masses and crews will continue to design their own uniforms. The OA flap pocket I am willing to bet was more of an oversight by the National Mazzucca Uniform Designers, NMUD for short, back to the drawing board people.

hadzulo Time for a reality check, the exec board can only replace an SE if they have reasonable cause, not because they don't like the guy. Another reality is that in most councils less than 5% of the COR's ever show up to an exec board meeting, and unless there is a major crisis going on they seem to be okay with letting the appointed board make all the decisions. It is the SE in most councils who ask influential individuals to join the board, so guess which way they might vote? Your scenario, while it may be how it is on paper rarely imitates the reality of what is going on in most councils nationwide, like it or not.

hadzulo Your post is incorrect, the registrar is part of the council staff and is the responsibility of the SE alone, and not any volunteer. The SE is selected by the council executive board who can ask National for a replacement at any time for just cause. The day to day operation of any council is the responsibility of the SE and his professional staff. If OGE is asking for clarification of advancement policies that come out of National he should contact National for answers. Individual councils are ALL subject to the same National rules and policies.

Bart I was a boy scout in the late 60's and no scouts ever saluted each other in our troop or at any district or council event. You need to take what Wikipedia says sometimes with a grain of salt.