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NJCubScouter

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Everything posted by NJCubScouter

  1. Well, I'm not sure that the absence of anyone from National jumping out of the bushes necessarily means that they "trust us." The fact is that they don't have nearly enough staff (and in practical terms, never could) to be hiding in the bushes in the first place.
  2. And now they have made the burnout problem even worse by adding Lions.
  3. If you are talking about the quality of unit leaders, as I believe you are, I would say that National does not see that as a major issue for National. They leave it up to local leadership and CO's to find quality leaders. They would start caring at the point where incompetent leadership becomes so serious and so widespread that it results in the disappearance of multiple units and members (and the registration fees that come with them.)
  4. I agree with David. I seem to recall for awhile that my son's pack had an IH (Exec. Officer) who was registered as a Den Leader. I think the logic is that the IH is not actuailly registered as a Scouter (which the COR is) so it does not present an issue of dual-position-holding. But I also agree that it should not be a long-term arrangement. It is kind of awkward. The COR can remove and replace the SM. The IH can remove and replace the COR. So if the IH is also the SM, you have two people with the authority to remove each other. Hopefully it never comes to that. But it is not an ideal
  5. This discussion reminds me of something that happened to me a few months ago. My wife and I (and one of my adult daughters, but that's not relevant to the story) went to a concert. She had driven. On her keychain she has one of these very tiny "pocket" knives. It did not occur to her that she might have trouble getting that very tiny knife into the arena, and I had forgotten it was on her keychain. So we walked from the parking lot to the arena, which was just within my wife's ability to walk in one stretch due to her arthritis. Sure enough, at the security checkpoint one of the security
  6. By the way, I do understand that "change management" is the management of "change", I just never saw or heard it as a phrase before. It seems kind of unnecessary to me, as "management" includes the management of "change." But whatever. My profession is fairly resistant to new business-management buzzwords, we prefer to use buzzwords that were invented in England 400 or 500 years ago.
  7. It seems to me that what we have here is a lack of common understanding about what a "zero tolerance" policy actually is. As I have said in at least one past discussion of this subject (and there have been several over the years), many people who think they believe in "zero tolerance" actually don't. If you think that exceptions should be made (or that the penalty should be reduced) under appropriate circumstances, then you don't believe in a "zero tolerance" policy. It's only "zero tolerance" if there is no possibility of considering the circumstances.
  8. If the administrators "bent" the policy, it was not really a "zero tolerance" policy. Or, to be more precise, either (1) the policy is worded as a zero tolerance policy, but the policy is not followed as a zero tolerance, because exceptions are made, or (2) the school district called the policy a "zero tolerance" policy, but the way it was worded allowed the exercise of judgment to alter (or eliminate) the penalty in appropriate cases, in which case it is not a zero tolerance policy regardless of what its name is. You can call an apple a banana, but its still an apple. (Credit to CNN.)
  9. Aside from a reference to the Borg on Star Trek, who and/or what are you referring to as the "hive mind," @RichardB?
  10. Do you think the BSA has a zero tolerance policy? Meaning that they actually enforce such a policy? In any area? (Other than actual abuse or other criminality, or the payment of registration fees.)
  11. This is just my opinion, but I doubt that the people at National believe that you are supposed to hang up on the Scout without saying a word, or flee silently from the campsite when you unexpectedly find yourself and a Scout being the only people there. (It is all well and good to ask where the Scout's buddy is, as some ask in these discussions, but the fact is that the buddy isn't there. Maybe the buddy had a bad fall on the trail and can't walk, and the Scout came to the closest place where he thought he might find help, which happened to be the campsite where one adult is sitting in a chai
  12. I hadn't heard of "change management" before. Is that really a thing?
  13. That is all great information (leaving aside any disputes about whether particular activities should be restricted or not), but it brings me back to a point I have made before. Right there on that page are 19 unauthorized/restricted activities and the Sweet 16 of safety. That's 35 things right there, and then there are the links to other publications, web pages, checklists, etc. Quite frankly, how is the average person with a full-time paying occupation supposed to keep up with all that? At what point does a volunteer start to say, this is just too much, I am not going to bet my house on w
  14. If the Scouts want mountains and if you don't care whether you are on BSA property, you can look in the other direction and do a couple of weeks on the Appalachian trail. Parts of it are closer to you than Philmont is. It would create different transportation challenges, and the mountains are not the Rocky Mountains, and it's not the time of year when I personally would want to be hiking on most of the AT, but it is an option.
  15. I don't know, I find myself using basic algebra on a regular basis. Seriously. Even when using a calculator or computer, you need to know which numbers to multiply or divide by which other numbers. I don't need to remember how to do it on a slide rule, which I did learn in Algebra class and was getting pretty good at in later math classes when slide rules suddenly disappeared. But the basic skills are still helpful.
  16. I think you can take some comfort in the fact that most people don’t think you are. A few people in this forum do. i am going to see my son (age 26) later today, I will ask him if he feels like a pariah.
  17. In my son's pack, the CO was the PTO, the IH and COR were both officers of the PTO who usually had one or more sons in the pack. So the CO and the parents were the same people. And as we know, even in the case of a "real" CO, often the CO abdicates most or all of their authority and responsibilities (except to provide a space for meetings), and they just sign on the dotted line when asked to, to the point where the current and former parents of the Scouts are really running the show anyway. That is true for my troop.
  18. Okay, so, we have a male president (and always have), the majority of members of Congress are men, most governors are men, the majority of CEO's of large companies are still men, with judges it is probably somewhere around 50-50, there is still a "wage gap," etc. On a much more micro level, when my son got his first job a few years ago, there were about five just-graduated engineers competing for the same position, some of whom were women, but he got the job. (Just one example, I realize.) So how exactly are we being discriminated against again?
  19. I can see that. I think that if, when I was a Cub Scout parent and leader, a man with no children (or other close relative) in the pack had shown up and volunteered to be a leader, eyebrows would have been raised, at least. In my direct experience, it has never happened. Boy Scouts is a little different, but even there, a childless man showing up to volunteer is almost always an alumnus of the troop, so there is some connection. In some cases they still have a younger brother in the troop. There have been a couple of cases of a volunteer with no connection at all to the troop, but they di
  20. @The Latin Scot, please forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but it was my understanding (mostly from this forum) that in LDS-chartered units, leaders are "called" (which I assume means the same as "assigned") to specific roles in units. That being the case, wouldn't there be a large number of leaders with no children in their unit, and also a large number of "younger adults" such as yourself, with no children at all? Meaning that your role wouldn't be unusual and therefore not attract any undue "attention" from parents?
  21. Please let us know of your findings.
  22. It's not in the shape of a gun? National hasn't heard about it yet? Place your theory here...
  23. Because, you know, there have been a few forum members over the years who seemed like they wanted to throw things heavier than flour, at me.
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