NJCubScouter

Wilson, please try your post again, it should work now.

Christineka, please try your post again, it should work now.

Hey, an actual post!

Nice to see you too again, Stosh. Are you talking about the little star icon?

No problem. We have two threads on this, the non-political one (this one) and the political one (though I'm already getting static for moving it.)

Yes, nobody wants that, just ask my family.

I watched the video, and I read the article, and I read the other article that TwoCub posted in the thread in Open Discussion (and qwazse just posted here), and these girls don't necessarily seem "liberal" to me. Or "conservative". Or moderate, or anything else ideological. They're just girls. And I definitely don't see anybody "hating" the BSA. Just the opposite. These girls LOVE the BSA. They want to be IN the BSA. They want to camp, hike, compete at Camporees, wear Boy Scout (or Cub Scout) uniforms. The oldest one is already getting ready to be SPL, or at least den chief for her younger sister and her friends. I see no ideological campaign here. I see a group of kids who want to get in on the fun. Which doesn't necessarily mean they should be allowed in. I have said before that I have no problem with one Scouting organization for each gender. What I think needs to happen is that Girl Scouts (and their leaders) who want to do more outdoor activities, start doing them. If there is resistance within the GSUSA hiercharchy, have a little rebellion and change things. If there are that many Girl Scout who feel that way, and their parents/leaders back them up, they shouldn't have any problem. But I don't see any reason to view all this as a negative. People want to be Boy Scouts! Their interest just needs to be channeled in a direction that allows each of the two major Scouting organizations to focus on its own constituency.

I'm the one who moved this to Issues and Politics. (Where, statistics show, it will be seen by MORE readers than if it stayed in the Cub Scouts forum, not less. Or should that be, not fewer?) If anybody has a problem with that, please note that there has been a thread about this exact same subject - actually about the same group of five girls - in Open Discussion/Program, since yesterday, and it has stayed where it was, because people have just been discussing the idea of girls in Cub/Boy Scouts, without talking about "liberals" or "hating" the BSA. (And I'll get to that in a separate post.)

You just need to have faith. Oh wait, you ARE Faith!

Our troop always buys the POR patches. They are generally handed to the recipient with no ceremony whatsoever, which I don't really like. I think we should at least do what we do when a Scout passes a BOR for a rank during a meeting: At the closing ceremony he is called up by the SPL who congratulates him (and gives him the rank patch if we have an extra lying around, in which case he isn't supposed to get another one at the COH, but that system doesn't always work the way its supposed to.) The POR patches should probably be given out the same way. I seem to remember that when I was a Scout, the POR patches were given out immediately but then at the next COH the SPL would award the new POR-holders with an official BSA certificate that I think was called a "warrant of office" or something like that. Presumably these were purchased at the Scout Shop.

Well, everything but the Boy Scouts AND the Cub Scouts - the two largest programs in numbers of members. So a large majority of BSA participants are in programs in which youth membership is limited to boys.

In our troop SPL candidates nominate themselves. The appointment process (ASPL, QM, Scribe etc.) seems to work differently every year. Patrols are generally re-formed (if necessary) the week or so after the SPL election.

Your profile says you live in Mexico.

Well, as pointed out in the article, female-youth-persons have been trying to join Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts for 40 years. It's not a new thing. What is perhaps new is that in this case, some district or council person allowed the Unicorn Patrol to compete in a Camporee, where they won second place. (Leading to complaints that they had "invaded" events. Reminds me of the old Capital One commercials with the invading Visigothic hordes, except in this case it would be 10 and 13-year-old girls asking "What's in your wallet.")

Well, I wasn't lost, I have been knocking on the door at least once a day to see if it would open.

We seem to be back!

Won't work. See my post above. National has already taken care of that. Again, without getting into the detail of what is in the Rules and Regulations, if a council did that, and National sued to void the transfer (which they would), National would most likely win.

Well, I did a little digging on the Internet and it seems that the BSA Charter and Bylaws is no longer a restricted document: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/bsa_charter_and_bylaws.pdf However, the answer to the question I had about council assets in the case of a de-chartering is in this document: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/membership/pdf/BSA_Rules_and_Regulations.pdf As I suspected, and without going into all the paragraphs of legalese that are used to establish this, and omitting the details and nuances: If a council is de-chartered, title to any real estate it owns is transferred to National, and any other assets it owns come under the control of the National Executive Board. So, National can revoke a council's charter, and a council with a revoked charter loses all its income and assets. That being the case, if push comes to shove with National, the value of being a separate corporation amounts to pretty much nothing.

The councils (meaning the "local" councils) are separate corporations, but they are only BSA councils because National charters them to be BSA councils. It is my understanding that National can revoke (or is it, decline to renew?) a council's charter for any reason. (I don't actually know this for sure, since I have never read the bylaws, which I understand are a restricted item and not published on the Internet, but I have heard that enough times on this forum that it is probably true.) So a "revoked" council would still be a corporation, but presumably it would not be able to collect revenue for any BSA-related activities (including FOS), so it wouldn't have any revenue at all. Which means that five minutes later, it would not have any payroll, either, and if it leases its service center(s), twenty minutes later it wouldn't have those either. I assume there is something in the bylaws about what happens to a revoked council's assets (camps, bank accounts, service center(s) if owned, etc.), but I don't know what that is. So, assuming that a revoked council loses its assets, there would still be a corporation, but it would not have any income, assets or employees. If it has anything, it would be debt. There are many corporations like that, which were once operating businesses.

I really like the line "The wife is another matter." I think that's the best line in the whole thing. But RememberSchiff, I am curious about something. You gave Mike Rowe's answer to the "gun" item, but when I look at the document itself, that line is garbled and only the last word ("family") appears. But you have the whole thing. Where did you get it from?

That's the point. I agree with John. There is a difference between an ad and a "sponsored blog post" that is in the "voice" of a BSA employee or Scouting magazine. As for some of the irrelevant analogies that have been mentioned... Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon were entertainers. We as a society have come to accept that entertainers and other celebrities hawk products. "Bryan" is supposed to be providing us with information and viewpoints about Scouting. If he really feels that ABC Rifle Company makes the best rifles or XYZ Candy Company provides the best fundraising program, that's fine, let him write a column about it WITHOUT ACCEPTING PAYMENT for it from the company in question. (And that goes for his employer as well, which is the entity that is actually getting the payment.) But that's not what's happening here. Bryan shilling for products tends to reduce the credibility of his "non sponsored" columns as well.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I am not aware of any significant clamoring in "society" for Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts to become coed. I see nothing in the media about it. (Unlike, for example, the "gay issue", before the changes were made... or going further back, the "female adult leader" issue, before those changes were made.) I don't hear people in my community or in my troop talking about it. Admittedly I do not hang out with Cub Scout parents much anymore, but the parents/leaders involved in the troop who are still involved with Cub Scouts don't mention it as an issue that they hear about. I'm not aware of any "outside groups" that have this as their big issue. When Robert Gates comes to the podium and makes a speech or the new CSE lists his four priorities for growth, neither of them are saying we have to have female Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts or we're all doomed. It's just not a subject that I hear talked about or written about - except in one place, and that's in this forum. But in my opinion some of us here imagine it is a much bigger issue "out there" than it really is.

Really, have you polled every troop in the nation to determine what the youth wanted for their particular community? Every troop? I just said I have never asked any Scouts about it. In my troop or any troop. That's why I said "I don't know if that's what the boys want." That was not meant to imply that the boys don't want it. I meant what I said: I don't know.

The BSA does use the word "member" somewhat loosely in referring to the Scouts and volunteers.

I find that the pageantry still goes just fine even if the illusion has been tarnished a little. Most of the scripts that have been used in our troop go through the drama of the M.C. asking the Scoutmaster whether the candidate has fulfilled all the requirements and is "recommended" for the rank of Eagle - when everybody knows that everything has already been approved. Or as someone once told me, a little extra razzle-dazzle never hurt anybody. And I recall at least one instance in which a Scout was awarded both Eagle and a bronze palm at their ECOH. If you think about what that means, it also works against the illusion that the Scout is "becoming an Eagle Scout" at the ceremony itself. But I have never seen anyone who seemed to care.