NJCubScouter

Actually, an 18-to-20-year-old (male or female) can hold any of the "assistant" positions in a Cub Scout pack: Assistant Cubmaster, Assistant Den Leader, Assistant Webelos Den Leader. (Someday I'd like someone to explain why, when they officially created the position of Tiger Cub Den Leader about 2 years ago, they did not create a corresponding "assistant" position. Maybe they thought that those working with the youngest Cubs should be 21 or over, but I don't see how that applies any more to a 6-year-old Tiger than a 7-year-old in a Wolf den.) As for a female Venturer under the age of

Well Bob, Mark does not want this thread to become a "platform for debate." On the other hand, I see nothing wrong with debate. I will just say this: The problem arises from the BSA policy itself. If it did not have the policy, or allowed local option, it would not be in a position to ban what would otherwise be a perfectly legitimate chartering organization. And you don't have to keep repeating the fact that the BSA has the right to have this policy. That is irrelevant. The policy itself is wrong. And your comments about the BSA "program" are irrelevant as well. The BSA program has n

I tried to heavily edit that post because I realized you said "unbiased" and the UUA web site by definition could be no more unbiased than the BSA web site on the subject. But the editing function isn't working, at least for me.

Well, a web search on "unitarian universalist boy scouts" turned up a bunch of hits, but you might start here: http://www.uua.org/news/scouts/ It is the church's own position on the subject and looks like it has tons of links. I am sure somewhere down the search list, you would find a link to something that states the point of view of the BSA, or least one of its apologists on this subject.

Littlebillie says: Still, it does seem to be a first step, over-all, in the same direction as asking California judges to separate themselves from the BSA or else recuse themselves from certain cases. Did California actually do that? The last discussion I recall, they were considering it. Of course, I missed a couple of months worth of posts here in the late spring, so I could have missed that.

Fortunately I have not had to deal with anything like this. The parent-teacher organization that was CO for my son's Cub pack took no interest in our finances (or much of anything else for that matter, which isn't quite as bad as it sounds because the leadership of the CO and of the pack always overlapped to a degree anyway. And for a time, because the previous leadership of the pack had "missed" a year of fund-raising, the pack treasury consisted mainly of IOU's so there wasn't anything to take an interest in anyway.) On a brighter note, the church that is CO for my son's new troop appears

This hits close to home for me. My son (a first-year Scout) returned from summer camp yesterday. He went to camp as a "non-swimmer," being able to do nothing more than dog-paddle. He returns, according to his Scoutmaster, being able to do something more than that, though I have not yet seen for myself what that is. I suspect that he means that my son is more confident, and that he has the ability to learn. To date, only his parents and other relatives and other relatives had tried to teach him, so it is clear that he can benefit from swimming lessons, and we are about to sign him up for a

Twocubdad says: I'm bothered by the fact that they are disallowing our participation in a state program based on a policy which should be a private matter among the members of our organization. But, doesn't it stop being a "private matter" at the point where an organization asks for the state's assistance in raising funds? After thinking about it for a few days, I agree with the Second Circuit Court's distinction between the situation in the Dale case and the Connecticut situation. Both Connecticut and New Jersey have decided that as a matter of public policies, discrimination agai

I am now suffering whiplash from being suddenly yanked back at least 27 years into the past, to the last time I heard that song (at Scout camp.) It was like a suppressed memory suddenly coming back. It would probably take years of hypnosis for me to remember any of the verses. It's sort of like when I attended my first Cub leader pow-wow a couple of years ago and they handed out the words to Scout Vespers so we could sing it at the end. Suddenly it hit me that although I had not heard the song for (at that point) about 25 years, or even heard it mentioned, I still knew it, and didn'

That link did not work. I looked around and found the same document at https://www.perscom.army.mil/tagd/tioh/ROTC%20Misc%20NGB%20page/Silver%20and%20Gold%20Insignia.htm It is interesting and explains among other things that while in ranks, silver outranks gold, in most military awards, gold is highest followed by silver and bronze. So why is it that I have heard of the Bronze Star and the Silver Star but not the Gold Star?

This thread is going to send my anxiety level through the roof, by no fault of the other posters. My son is at Boy Scout camp this week for the first time, this is his first camping trip without me, and he is one of only two first-year Scouts in the troop. He was given the means to call us if he needed to, and there have been no calls, so I suspect that when I pick him up tomorrow morning I will find that everything was fine, or at least reasonably ok. (His mother and I are not completely fine, we have missed him a lot, she was crying the other night. We are not really worried about any ph

Right Acco, I had always heard that the "silver over gold" comes from the military, though I had not heard the part about the the origins of the military practice. I would only add that this "symbolism" is not limited to Eagle palms but is standard in Scouting. A Wolf or Bear Cub Scout first earns a gold arrow point, then when more electives have been completed, a silver arrow point(s). I believe that the patches for Senior Patrol Leader and Assistant Senior Patrol Leader still have some use of silver and gold, respectively, though not quite as colorfully as when I was in these positions in

OK Bob, I see what you are saying. Obviously the BSA needs to clarify this so that all of the books and all of the training match each other, and everybody can know what is expected. Now, if the issue is whether the rules and YP training for leaders and MB counselors should be the same, let me give you two headlines: "Scoutmaster pleads guilty to molesting boy, age 11" or "Merit badge counselor pleads guilty to molesting boy, age 11" Do you think the public is going to regard the BSA any worse based on the first headline than the second? I don't. I think the BSA wants to avo

Bob says: The BSA recommends to the MBC to have a buddy or make sure the scout has a buddy for the same reason. I don't think "recommends" is correct. I copied this from an online version of the Merit Badge counselor application: As a merit badge counselor, I agree to: Follow the requirements of the merit badge, making no deletions or additions, ensuring that the advancement standards are fair and uniform for all scouts. Have a Scout and his buddy present at all instructional sessions. Renew my registration annually if I plan to continue as a merit badge counselor.

Well, now this raises another issue. It is my understanding that you do NOT need to have 2 adults in the car. What you need is to not have a 1-on-1 situation (unless the Scout in the car with you is your own son.) Meaning, one adult can drive two or more Scouts. Otherwise, my son's new troop would have multiple YP violations on every trip. No car has more than one adult. In fact, on the one camping trip I have driven to so far (other than summer camp where it was just my son in the car), my son decided (to my annoyance) that he wanted to ride with another boy in his father's car, leaving

I finally got to read this opinion. I would like to post a link to it, but as I said yesterday, there is something wrong on that web site. I could not read the readable version online, I had to save it to my computer and then read it. Maybe the error message was just due to something out of whack on my computer, I don't know. The opinion itself is barely more illuminating, and I would say that the non-lawyers among us may not even want to bother trying to read it. If you want to try, try this: Go to: http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov Click on "Decisions" at left, then choose "

Can anyone confirm or deny what I mentioned earlier, that regardless of who can drive what and where, that for an 18-year-old "Scout" (he is really an adult leader even if not yet so stated on the charter) to drive in a car alone with a Scout is a violation of YP? That is how it seems to me. It is one on one contact between an adult and an unrelated youth for an extended period of time. And that's no good, regardless of how many days or years the driver has been an adult. Right? I do not specifically remember what if anything was said about drivers and passengers during my YP training.

Well, I managed to find the opinion online, but the Second Circuit web site is not working properly, so the only thing I could download or print was an unformatted mess that I can neither read without getting a headache, or cut-and-paste from to this forum. I will have to try again later. From what I was able to read before needing to take some Tylenol, the court did indeed focus on whether the facts of the case fall within the boundaries of the government action prohibited by the Dale decision, and concluded that it does not. But I gave up reading before I got to how the court reached that

Hmmmm. While my opinions on the "same old issue" are well known (at least to those who have been in this forum more than about 4 or 5 months, before I suddenly disappeared), I do not see how this decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals is consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Dale case. Based on this article, it seems to me that the arguments made by the State of Connecticut are essentially the same arguments made by the State of New Jersey, which were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. I will try to find a copy of the actual court decision online tomorrow and see

mk asks: He reregistered during rechartering in January as a youth, then turned 18. What does that make him now? It makes him an adult, regardless of his registration status. I do not think he can be alone in a car with a Scout, and I don't think the permission slip helps. If something were to happen, I don't think it would be worth the paper it's printed on. This is one of those situations where the rules collide with common sense. You know full well nothing is going to happen, these boys ride together outside Scouting and have spent much time alone within Scouting. Also co

I remember that, and thinking, "Raiment? What's raiment?" We figured it out soon enough. And my one and only trek there also was during the Nixon Administration. I believe he resigned within a week-10 days after our return.

Acco, I have seen references to Hindu clerics as "priests." Or is that just an English-ism? (As is the word Hindu and its variants, I believe. I read somewhere that that word is not an English translation of what they call themselves, it is just what we call them.)

Well, I'll be relatively close to you on Sunday: About a half-hour to the north, in Bucks County, PA, dropping my son off at Camp Ockanickon for his first-ever week of Scout camp. (Actually his first camping experience without me. We all have our fingers crossed, but others have lived through it, so he will too.) I have read the literature for this camp and the difference between Scout camps now and when I was a Scout in the late 60s/early 70s is truly amazing. They have Atomic Energy merit bade at camp, for crying out loud. They have a whole science center. However, my son is still wor

dsteele, are you saying that if an adult and a youth (not the driver's son) are the only people in a car coming back from a trip, after other youth have been dropped off, that it makes a difference whether the boy is in the front or back seat? It seems to me that it is a violation of YP either way. It probably happens fairly often anyway.

Our pack's CO is the parent-teacher organization for the school where the pack meets. Every year, someone from the pack puts the charter paperwork under the nose of one of the co-presidents of the PTO (one or both of whom often are parents of boys in the pack), and it gets signed without question. That's about it. The PTO obviously does not own a place to meet; they and the pack are both considered "school connected organizations" and have the ability to use the school for free, during the week and for a certain number of hours on Saturday before custodial overtime would kick in. The only