BartHumphries

I'm glad it worked out.

I think a summer camp staff position (especially a completely unpaid position like the OP stated) is much more difficult and quite a bit more of a leadership test than a troop leadership position. A summer camp staff position is a real job -- you're working that many hours a day. Last summer I basically worked 12-14 hour days six days a week for seven weeks. A troop leadership position might only be a few hours a week. I'd love to see the PoR requirements rewritten to include working all summer at a summer camp as an option, with the caveat that a person still has to wait another four months before getting the next rank advancement, and that only summer camp staff or troop PoR's count so that we don't have people double dipping and getting Eagle when they're 10 (maybe we should just set age requirements as well as the PoR's).

If we say that summer camp staff is 8 hours a day, six days a week, and maybe six weeks long, that's 288 hours. A six month troop PoR where you maybe spend three hours a week is 78 hours. Summer camp also has non-working mandatory events like breakfast and evening flags, where the Scout would probably get to sleep in every day if they were loafing around at home all summer, and there are events outside the regular merit badge classes like swimming, shooting, totin' chip, campouts, hikes, that up the summer camp hours even more.

I'm an Area Director, which regular Scouts are too young to meet the age requirements to be, and I'll be working both Boy Scout (weeks) and Cub Scout (weekends) summer camp, but I estimate that I'll probably be spending a grand total of 720 hours by the time everything's all over this summer and I think those members of my staff who will also be working Boy and Cub summer camp will be working at least five to six hundred hours this summer. That's why I don't begrudge them running off to our Staff hangout cabin and playing Xbox or PS3 or whatever during off-times and evenings, they'll be putting in a heck of a lot of hours this summer.

At my summer camp, the one I work at, we don't have a pre-camp leader's meeting. Leaders should read and be familiar with the emailed documents that list merit badge prerequisites and other important stuff (they're also available from the camp website). But there is a "first night" leader's meeting after swim checks are over and everyone's set up in their camp. The leaders of the troops and the department heads meet together to iron out the schedule irregularities that always come up. Usually, by far, most people have the same schedules that they signed up for on the website, but it's always good to attend our "first night" leader's meeting just to check and make sure that everyone's on the same page and that everyone's taken care of.

You know, Troop Whatever brought a few extra boys who all want the same merit badges and that puts us overlimit on some classes with limits so we need to rearrange their schedules. A couple boys from Troop A really didn't make their swim test at all so a retest likely won't help which means that they should sign up for something other than the Lifeguard class. The website borked out on Troop One Billion or they signed up last minute after a fire warning closed the camp near them, so they need to sign up for everything. Only one boy signed up for Merit Badge Y at Z o'clock, so it would work better for everyone else if we moved him and sent that instructor to split up a different larger class at the same time instead. Boys from Troop Theta signed up for classes that, when thinking about attending meals and the merit badges, will have them walking completely back and forth across camp five times every day, with only a few minutes to make most of the trips, so they might want to rethink their schedule. Again, most everyone has the same schedules that they signed up for, but things happen, so it's good to meet together just in case, to iron those things out.

From his religion which says that it's immoral and thus not "morally straight". It's not rocket science to answer those types of questions, acco40. Just let it go.

I'm rather an introvert in private. People that remember me from high school may remember me walking from class to class with my nose in a book, not speaking to anyone. I have learned, however, to "put on my game face" when I'm in public, because that's what's expected when you're leading games. I'm not saying that it's all an act -- it's like not belching in public, I choose to act in a certain manner because that's what's expected.

For instance, many people appear to be great confident public speakers, but when you ask them about it they'll tell you how worried they get when they speak or how many butterflies they have in their stomach. They've learned how to better present themselves when speaking in public. This is something that introverted people tend to have trouble with and they tend to need more experience and more help getting to that point where they can speak confidently and fluently. My mom, for instance, is a great speaker, she talks all over the place for various groups, but she literally gets physically sick to her stomach when she knows she'll be presenting something before a large group. She's learned coping mechanisms which enable her to be able to present herself as a confident speaker, even though that's still not what she "really" is, even after all these years.

I'm not saying that everyone has to be loud or should be loud, but when the group is performing their cheer, you have to jump in and do it too, no matter what your personal feelings are. If it's your job to lead that cheer, then you have to jump out and lead that cheer. If you can't do these things, then as a leader you may be at a disadvantage at times, just as any person would be at a disadvantage at times if they weren't able to get themselves to do what was expected of them. I'm not saying that not being able to lead a group cheer after evening flags before dinner is a bad thing, we all have personal areas that we are working to improve, none of us are perfect.

The way the original post by Eaglemom2b was structured seems to suggest that introverts are better leaders than extroverts, which I don't quite agree with -- I think both types of people bring a different emphasis and tend to have different skillsets, all of which are useful and desirable in different contexts.

As I understand it, the leaders of units, Cubmasters, Denmasters, Scoutmasters, etc., are not part of the committee. All of them work for the committee and the committee as a whole are appointed by the Charter Organization. Now, many CO's are hands-off and committee members are appointed by the committee chair or voted in or whatever, but ultimately the CO is responsible to put together the committee who appoints the Scoutmaster, etc. Some CO's sort of ignore the committee and dump everything on the Scoutmaster, but that's not how it's supposed to work.

If you all get together as parents, create bylaws, etc., I suppose you could all be dual charter org reps and committee members? In that case, depending on the bylaws that you created, new committee members may or may not be charter organization members who can vote or whatever? I think, in that case, it would be better to simply say that the committee chair is the charter org rep and that the committee as a whole is the charter organization? Honestly, I have no idea how it's supposed to work for parents who get together and start a troop themselves and aren't working from a prior group like an actual parent-teacher organization or church or business or something like that.

There were a whole bunch of posts essentially saying, "I can't understand why some people would not want homosexual leaders in the Boy Scouts. Why not?" I attempted to explain why. I didn't expect several posts in response comparing whether or not homosexuality is more or less bad than smoking. That wasn't the point, it's just an example, an allegory, a means of explaining why some say no -- it wasn't an exhaustive reason either, there may be other reasons. Don't get hung up on smoking, though, it's just an example.

I hope it mentions something about this as well: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/06/01/131050832/a-mystery-why-can-t-we-walk-straight

I mention that when I teach wilderness survival -- I'll usually blindfold someone, have them try to walk across a big flat area that we have. Usually they'll start turning within 20 feet. In search & rescue, I have been told that it's more of a problem finding the right trail that a person took (which was their most recent path) than finding their trail at all. By that I mean, people will walk in big loops and if a person's trail crosses itself multiple times it's just going to take that much longer to figure out which was the most recent trail and actually find the missing person. You need an outside reference, a map/compass, a map/GPS, a solid trail that you're following, whatever, if you want to avoid getting lost.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether search & rescue will just be wilderness survival + climbing merit badges. At least we won't get any more discussions about why so much emphasis on "don't worry about food" and why we aren't teaching how to recognize edible plants anymore.

So, if I want to order nametags from a 3rd party supplier, I should go with 3 inch wide by 1 inch tall nametag? Just what size are they?

We all agree that whether or not the activity is disdained, the individual person should not be denigrated, right? The problem lies with children having a reduced ability to "hate the sin but love the sinner". To have an authority figure openly engage in a disdainful activity engenders the perception that the activity must not be "that bad".

This is why virtually every school district now bans teachers from smoking anywhere that kids could see, even if there's zero chance of second-hand smoke inhalation. Several times I've told Scouts or school kids or some other group of children that smoking is bad, only to have one child hold up their hand and say, "But my parent smokes." That's a tricky situation to be in, to have to explain that their parent, who is a good person, has chosen to engage in an activity that the child shouldn't choose to engage in; that participating in the "bad" activity doesn't make the parent a bad person, even though they're choosing to do a "bad" thing (like smoking).

By the time a youth is a Venturing Scout, they should be old enough to make the distinction between people and activities, in my opinion, although I remember back then still thinking that people who ate bugs were "weird", for an example of a non-mainstream activity which engenders disgust in many people. A 10 or 11 year old Boy Scout could maybe make the distinction. A Cub Scout? Probably not.

I know some will say (and have said), "But there's nothing wrong with homosexuality." Ok, that's your opinion. Other people have other opinions. some religions preach that people should view their religion's teachings the same way that Scouts view the Guide to Safe Scouting -- even while we don't agree with everything that the Guide says, we'll still do our best to follow it. I'm only writing this post in the hopes that the discussion will die off, we're sort of beating a dead horse here.

The BSA isn't going to reverse a policy that over 50% of its charter member organizations actively support. No organization could do that and hope to really survive.

Whoever RichardB is, he most likely doesn't work in a vacuum. Even if his is the only name on the document, for something like the Guide to Safe Scouting, there's most likely some sort of committee or quorum. From National's point of view, the relevant matters have likely already been discussed and debated ad nauseum, so there's little to no point in sharing what happened with the rest of us. What probably happened is that kids used the wagons to race in, which was considered a stupid thing to do when I was a Cub Scout back in the late 80's/early 90's (at least by the adults then, and me now, although back then I was all for the idea).

Personally, I think it would be a better idea to "share the details" and use bad examples as teaching tools than to wholesale ban activities. Sure, people do stupid things on hikes and have to be airlifted out, but we don't ban hikes. Sure, people break bones and get all sorts of injuries skateboarding, but that's still allowed. I can't tell you how many papercuts I've had in my life, but Scouts still get to handle paperwork (mostly). When a nearby Scout troop had a bad hike and had to be airlifted out, I saved the newspaper article so that I could show it off as a cautionary "don't end up like this" story. The more you know what not to do during an activity, the more you can plan to make your activity safer.

Anyway, it seems to me that wagons, dollies (the kind you move things with, not the stuffed kind), handcarts, etc., are still just fine and dandy in Scouting. I'm not seeing where those little red wagons are banned. The word "wagon" doesn't appear in the GTSS, and "cart" only appears in reference to motorized go-carts. The word "red" only appears in "American Red Cross" and when they're talking about Lyme disease, "A red ringlike rash might appear around the bite." The word "hand" appears only in what might be in a comprehensive first aid kit, "A small bar of soap, or a travel-size bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizing gel". The word "dolly" isn't in there as the text "dol" doesn't even appear. The word "truck" only appears in relation to trucks -- interesting note, apparently hayrides are still ok as long as legs don't hang over the edge. The online "print only" guide (which seems pointless to me, I'm absolutely not going to load 20 different webpages and Ctrl+F multiple words on all of them when I can just download a single document to search around in) does, however say that ATV's are absolutely banned, when I know that they've been approved for use at some Council-run summer camps, so it could easily be outdated.

In looking at what changed in January 2012, with the comments that some people have made, I'm rather surprised that nobody has bemoaned tethered hot air balloons being removed from the list of allowed activities.

" then show me the remaining requirements which should include reading search reports of past lost scouts - what they did right/wrong, expense of search, injuries to all involved,..." When I teach wilderness survival, that's always been something that I've highlighted. Now that his movie has come out and he's more wildly know, I mention Aron Ralston. He's done amazing things, his resume is incredible. In most situations, he's a great example of what to do. That one trip of his, though, is a great example of what not to do.

He went out without a buddy, left a note that said he was actually going to a completely different location (so searchers were wildly off base), didn't really bring any good water supplies, his knife was dull, didn't have any sort of first aid kit, he pretty much broke every "rule" in the book and he paid for it by having to cut his own arm off to escape the predicament he was in. Accidents happen, they're why we should carry "day packs" when we go hiking. Sidenote, other than water, everything you really "need" can fit into a gallon-size ziplock bag.

I just wanted to point out that you don't have to be married to a person to give them control over your health/estate if you're sick/dying/dead. Just give them power of attorney. You can make it as general or as specific as you'd like.

Same here. I'm always amazed at the non-rural people who can get letters within a day or two of the letter being mailed. Not to mention people who actually have their mail delivered to their house -- the USPS refuses to deliver mail on the windy twisty roads where I live, so each household gets a free PO box. My parents only check theirs every week or two.

They're only away for a week. If parents aren't helicoptering or enabling ("If you get worried, just call, I'll be right by the phone and can come pick you up any time...") that's barely enough time for most kids to notice that their parents are gone. Let it wait, then sit down with some good food and hear all about everything that happened at Scout camp in more detail. If parents ask for a post card, they're going to get the post card version of events and the kids will complain about how they already told you everything when pressed for real details. If parents find themselves dreadfully missing their kids during that week, well, perhaps the parents need to start up an extra hobby or something.

When I teach knots, I tell the real world applications for most of them. Square knot, that's what I use to tie my boots, since when you torque it, it'll become a slip knot. Tautline hitch, I've used that to tie down a load when I don't have ratcheting straps. Bowline, there're better knots for every possible use, so learn it for tradition's sake, but then forget it and never use it again.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says, and bear in mind that this is the viewpoint of a single Charter Organization, that "Scouting and Duty to God strengthen faith in Jesus Christ, character, relationships, and skills. In addition, they provide opportunities for young men to develop abilities that are essential to the priesthood ministry to which they are called, such as leading and serving. ... Scoutings outdoor program is part of its message of self-reliance, but its more than that. Its a relationship-building program in which young men work with each other and with their advisers, doing things that stretch them physically and emotionally. It puts them in contact with nature, freeing them from the distractions of a world that is growing increasingly noisy. And it allows them an opportunity to commune with the Spirit and to reflect upon their lives and their relationships, including their relationship with Deity." Referencing a 50-miler trek, "When we do and teach hard things, we bring young men to a level of competence and confidence that prepares them for the future..."

"I never said BSA would accept anyone as a CO, I just said it would defend the membership policies of the organizations it does accept. I'm pretty sure that would be a requirement of any sort of Local Choice policy."

So... one of those parent groups gets together, starts a troop and it turns out that the parents are all members of the Aryan Nation. The BSA will now be defending that membership policy? How extensive will the new background checks be that the BSA will be conducting and how deeply will the BSA be defending its CO's membership policies? That may be an extreme example, but that's the reason Target, for instance, gave when they turned down the Salvation Army's request to put a bell-ringing Santa in front of their stores, that the Aryan Nation had wanted to solicit and that they couldn't find a way to avoid lawsuits without saying no to everyone.

With the current policies, the Aryan Nation would never sponsor a Scout troop. But with a "choose your own membership policy and we'll defend it" stance, it could get really messy fairly quickly.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (15.5%), the United Methodist Church (14%), and the Catholic Church (11%) together have 40% of the registered Scouting youths and they actively support the current policy. Enough other churches also support the current policy (such as many Lutheran, Baptist, and Episcopal Church - United States congregations, although not all of their congregations, since those churches have sort of split stances on the topic) that the number of registered youths whose member organization actively support the current policy is well over 50%. Out of the remaining member organizations, most of them don't care. No organization is going to change a basic policy when over half of its members don't want the policy changed and most of the rest don't care. Some people have said, "Well, I'm Methodist and I care and don't like the BSA's current stance." Ok, do you care enough to change troops or to otherwise do something to make your "vote" (voice) count?

The camp will work with you to figure out what has to be done to enable your troop to come. Call them and have a chat. They'll probably pair you with another troop.

As to #8, Tenderfoot through First Class is essentially a repeat of Wolf through Webelos. If a person knew their Cub Scout stuff forward and backwards (granted, most don't), they'll blow right through T-1. Personally, I think a policy of repeated learning should be required. Most of the Tenderfoot through First Class items can be recited/performed within an hour by someone who's really ready to do that. Each rank after First Class should require an hour where the Scout runs through those requirements again.

For instance, the Scout should have been tying square knots since Wolf, sheet bends and bowlines and two half hitches since Bear, etc. It should be relatively simple for a 14-year old Scout who's presumably known those knots for the past seven years, half of his life, to tie those knots during the BoR or Scoutmaster conference. If somebody is new to the BSA, then they have a bit of an extra challenge ahead of them, but they have to learn them in the first place, right?

I would also say that a person couldn't get their Eagle before their 14th birthday. Seriously, nobody remembers what they did when they were 12 if they've never engaged in those activities again in their life.

As far as #9 goes, what if (to make an extreme example) the Aryan Nation wants to sponsor a Troop? There's a good reason that some policies are not "choose your own adventure."

Wow, cool. When you carried on your 5-minute conversation, how many words (roughly) were conveyed? Is there any words-per-minute requirement?

What's the slide to the nose trick?

I agree with Beavah. Wahl's work wasn't "effective" lobbying. It's quite literally political showboating.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (15.5%), the United Methodist Church (14%), and the Catholic Church (11%) together have 40% of the registered Scouting youths and they actively support the current policy. Enough other churches also support the current policy (such as many Lutheran, Baptist, and Episcopal Church - United States congregations, although not all of their congregations, since those churches have sort of split stances on the topic) that the number of registered youths whose member organization actively support the current policy is well over 50%. Out of the remaining member organizations, most of them don't care. No organization is going to change a basic policy when over half of its members don't want the policy changed and most of the rest don't care.

Wahl made the news, good for him. The only way his petitions are going to make a difference, though, are if he tries to change those member organizations that at this point support the current BSA policy (or don't care at this point). He's literally barking up the wrong tree.

The point of the requirement is that boys should be camping throughout the year, not just one week during the summer then nothing else. Also "long-term camp" has a specific meaning in Boy Scouts. It's a six-day five-night "resident" camping experience. If you go on a week-long backpacking 50-miler, moving camps every night, then it's not a long-term camp. Philmont treks aren't "long-term" or resident camping. "Under the sky" doesn't necessarily mean literally under the sky either -- a wilderness survival shelter counts too.

Don't get hung up on the requirement, the intent is that if your troop only ever goes on one week-long camping event a year, it's not enough. Other than that, if you're going camping multiple times a year, pretty much everything counts as long as people are really "camping" and not sleeping in a cabin.

BDPT00, the Scout Leader's Training Knot: http://www.boyscouttrail.com/square-knots.asp#scouter Be an adult leader for two years and complete all your basic training.

Then do five things from the big list, most of which you're already going to be doing as an adult leader, like actively participate in the Courts of Honor (set it up, decorate, work with the Scouts to get the flag ceremony right, etc.), participate/support your troops fundraiser, "participate in a support role" for five overnight campouts, etc.

Adult knot requirements are guides to the sorts of things that you should be doing "in your position" and if a person is wearing the James West Fellowship knot, then they should continue to donate if possible. It shouldn't, in my opinion, be a one-time "purchase". I'm not saying that it should be like the Quality Unit patch or something, but adult knots are rewarded for things that you're usually supposed to continue doing for as long as your in whatever position you were in to earn the knot in the first place, in my opinion.

All of the adult knots have static requirements but represent those things that you "should be doing anyway". For instance, the basic Assistant Scoutmaster/Scoutmaster knot -- be around for two years, complete basic training, complete Youth Protection, do a few other things which might include attending roundtables, etc. After you earn the knot, if you have that position, you should continue to do those things.

I think the same would be true for the James West Knot, especially since a person is always "in that position". If you're going to wear it, then you should continue doing the requirements for it, continue donating. If it was just a one-time "I bought this knot 20 years ago" then, yeah, it's really not a great knot. If it's, "I have a history of putting my money where my mouth is and supporting Scouting with my time and also financially" then it's a great knot.