NJCubScouter

Scoutdad, although the version you are looking at says "2003" I believe there is a newer version in which the paragraph in question has been rewritten to what ASM59 has quoted. The version on the BSA web site matches ASM59's quote. They seem to have replaced the "requirement" that each Webelos be accompanied by his or her parent or guardian, to a "preference" that each Webelos be accompanied by his or her parent or guardian. In the absence of a parent or guardian, the boy can "be under the supervision of a parent-approved adult."In effect it expresses a preference that the parents of

And then there's "She's A Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones. I would post the lyrics but that might be seen as promoting the use of illegal psychedelic substances... It's a good song, though.

I recall Terry has explained in the past that when the number of active users seems abnormally high (like in the thousands at one time), the number may not represent all real people. I think the explanation was that search engines that come through to re-index the site may show up as multiple simultaneous users, but it is not real people.

In response to the questions about where the information may be found: See http://usscouts.org/advance/boyscout/bsrank1.html This is the web site of the U.S. Scouting Service Project, an unofficial site though I think it is well-respected on the Internet and generally regarded as having correct, verified information. The change is in requirement 1 on that page but there is also a note above all the requirements in blue, stating: Effective May 15, 2004, Requirement 1 will be changed, as shown below, to establish a minimum age of 10 years old for all new Boy Scouts I looked on the official BSA web site for this but didn't see anything other than a reference that Boy Scouts is for "11 to 17 year old boys" which obviously leaves out some of the details. I also looked at the application to join a troop which is on the official site, but it is still the old version.

Packsaddle, as my response to FOG suggests, I do understand why STATES do this: To make money. What I don't understand is why a legislature wastes its time taking votes on individual plates. It would be like if the legislature had to take a vote to decide which brand of pens or mouse pads to buy for every state agency. Generally legislatures leave these administrative details to administrative agencies. The fact that they are deciding individual license plates just seems like an invitation to controversy... and guess what?

And you call yourself a lawyer? First of all, I see that contrary to some commentary by others, the old, curmudgeonly, discourteous (and non-several-other-points-of-the-Scout-law) FOG is back. Second of all: Well, yeah, I do. My comment was not a legal comment, it was a "public policy" comment. While a state legislature can approve anything it wants (within constitutional boundaries), it is a waste of its time for a legislature to take votes on individual license plates. It should delegate this authority to an administrative agency, as in most states.

I think the real question, which is not answered in this thread so far, is what criteria does the legislature use to decide who to approve? Or, do they use any criteria at all? If they approve EVERYBODY, that's fine. The BSA is anybody. But then, so is the KKK, the Virginia Communist Party, the Church of Satan, or whatever other group you might think of. Would all of them get a license plate too, assuming they hand over the right amount of paid applications? But if not, how are they deciding> Maybe a better question would be, Why is a state legislature in the business of who gets a license plate in the first place?

Otherwise, we'd be mixing 4th and 5th graders (or younger) with high school boys. Well, I think 5th grade and 4th grade (or more to the point, the ages corresponding to those grades) are two different issues. It is typical (at least around here) for boys who have earned Arrow of Light to cross over in February or March of their 5th grade year. Since Arrow of Light can be earned six months after completing 4th grade (last time I checked), theoretically that could push it up to November or December of the 5th grade year. So, eligibility to join a troop almost always occurs either during or at the end of 5th grade. The difficulty occurs when a boy has "skipped" a grade or for whatever other reason is considered to be a grade ahead of where he normally would be for his age. I know this sometimes occurs with home schooling, in fact there is a boy in my son's troop who was able to join a year earlier than he would have otherwise because he is home-schooled and his parents considered him to have completed 5th grade when he would have been in 4th in a public (or private) school. (But he was 10 and a few months when he joined, so the new rule would not have affected him anyway.) So, while you would not actually have a 4th grader in a troop (unless he is already 11, which means he has been "left back" or started school a year late), you could have a boy in the troop who is the same age as most 4th graders because he is considered to be in 5th grade.

I have probably made this thread more complicated than it needed to be. The change that has been made affects only boys who have not yet reached their 10th birthday, and in my second post, that is what I was mainly interested in, whether anyone has come across what I assume is the very rare case of a 9-year-old (or even 8-year-old??) Boy Scout, or under the new rule, a would-be Boy Scout of that age. The issue of 10-year-old Boy Scouts is an entirely different story, and I sort of injected it here where it doesn't directly belong. Clearly large numbers of boys can and will continue to be able to join troops before their 11th birthday, especially those within 6 months of reaching age 11. Some of them are ready and some are not, but if they have at least been through the Webelos program, they are probably ready enough. But 9 years old? It is a rare event that needed to be made impossible, and now apparently it has been.

To complete the thought started in the previous post: Has anyone had any experience with 9-year-olds actually joining a troop under the old joining requirements? I seem to recall some discussion about boys joining "a year early" but after their 10th birthday, which would not be changed by the new requirement. Has anyone seen the new requirement "in action"? In other words, has anyone been required to turn away a boy younger than 10 from a troop when he otherwise would have met the old joining requirements? In the past when the issue of "age" has come up, my general feeling is, there is really no reason to push a boy into a Boy Scout troop just because some quirk allows him to do so when he is 9, or 10 and a few months. Unless there is some really exceptional circumstance, let the boy be his age. If the boy is in Webelos, "graduating" with his den is a positive experience, especially if all or most of the boys are going into the same troop. As my son could attest, being the only boy joining a troop in a particular time period is not the easiest thing in the world... and my son did join at the "normal" time, in March after he earned Arrow of Light and had his crossover at the Blue and Gold Dinner. In fact, my son could have joined a troop the previous October, when he turned 11, but we saw no reason to do so. It was better for him to "complete" the Cub Scout program and join the troop in the spring, when (even though there were no other new Scouts at the time) the troop was more "set up" to receive him.

If we have discussed this before, I missed it, and I apologize for the repetition. Something like this had been discussed in the forum about a year ago, but I never saw that they actually put it into effect, or exactly what the change was. A change in the Boy Scout joining requirements went into effect on May 15 of this year. The old requirement was: Meet age requirements: Be a boy who has completed the fifth grade, or is 11 years old, or has earned the Arrow of Light Award, but is under 18 years old. The new requirement is: Meet age requirements: Be a boy who has completed the fifth grade and be at least 10 years old, or be 11 years old, or have earned the Arrow of Light Award and be at least 10 years old, and be under 18 years old. The change is that the two requirements that previously had no age "floor" -- that is, complete the fifth grade or earn Arrow of Light -- now have a minimum age of 10. I think this will make a difference in only a very few cases -- basically where someone has started school "early" or is otherwise considered to be at a grade level in school (or home school) that is a year (or maybe two) earlier than their "peers" in age. I have not worked out the Arrow of Light "timing" lately but I think the same thing applies: If a student somehow completes first grade at the age of 5, it is possible to earn the Arrow of Light at the age of 9 and join a troop at that time. Or at least, it was. That loophole has now been closed. Now, if it were me, I might have considered making the absolute "floor" 10-and-a-half. I see boys joining my son's troop at right around 10-and-a-half and they really seem too young to me, but the program is set up so that they will benefit from it anyway. I think that (on average, of course there are some boys who are exceptions) every month below that in age potentially creates the risk that the boy will be so "lost" that they lose interest and quit. A few months can make a difference at that age. But this is a positive development.

Hops, although I already congratulated you in the other thread, I saw a mention (in an already closed thread) that you hadn't gotten as many posts as OGE. I think if people count the posts in the other thread that also refer to you, you'd move up a bit. Though it isn't a contest of course. So anyway: Congratulations! Though I have to say that under the circumstances, btps may have found a better thing to say in this situation, which is: Good luck. By the way Hops, I'm sort of assuming you already have the Computers merit badge, maybe for being a moderator they have some sort of extra oak-leaf cluster or something for you.

Well, imagine my dismay to look at the forums yesterday (after being away most of the weekend) and see that THIS old thread -- with my name plastered all over it -- was at that time the "top" thread in Issues and Politics. In light of recent events in this forum, it was even more dismaying that this thread was being used (by one or more persons) as an example of something that should not be in this forum. As others have pointed out, this thread had been dormant for seven months. In fact, the person who resurrected this thread has succeeded in drawing far more attention to it, and attention at a much more "difficult" time for the forum, than my starting of it ever did. This thread was active for exactly FOUR DAYS in December, and as of Saturday must have been about 40th or 50th on the list before it was sent zooming back to the top. I have mixed feelings about having started this thread. On one hand, I still think it was reasonable to do so at the time. It dealt with a news event that was "big" that week, regardless of whether anything thinks it was newsworthy or not. I felt there was an interesting point to be made, though not one that was directly related to Scouting. (By the way, in the 2+ years I have been in this forum there have been a number of threads that were equally unrelated to Scouting, but mine is the one that has been singled out. I am not going to start yet another debate-within-a-debate by identifying the ones I am talking about, but presumably they are still hanging near the bottom of the list.) Several people decided to join in the discussion, which lasted approximately as long as it should have lasted -- four days, not very long in the greater scheme of things. Although obviously I didn't agree with some of the responses to my post, nobody went "over the line" or engaged in un-Scoutlike behavior or violated the forum's "rules of decorum." (Although I personally could have lived not knowing about FOG's dating history, which I had forgotten about until I just re-read the thread.) It was just a little short-lived thread minding it's own business and never hurt anyone. On the other hand, if the same news event occurred today, I would not start a thread about it. In light of the havoc that has occurred in this forum, I will probably stick with Scouting-related topics, at least in the threads I start. (And I have never started very many, probably between 5 and 10 in Issues and Politics the entire time I've been here.) I just want to say one more thing, and it relates to threads in Issues and Politics in general, not just this one. This thread was "revived" with a post that questioned whether the thread should have existed in the first place. I can see questioning posts in other topics ("Open Discussion," "Cub Scouting" or whatever) that become overly controversial, and suggesting that the thread be moved here. But if the thread is already here, I personally wonder why people waste their time posting things like "Haven't we discussed this subject enough?" or "Why is this subject being discussed at all?" or "Don't we have better things to talk about?" or the like. (Or in the case of one person who shall go nameless, "This isn't something that unit Scouters need to concern themselves with.") Unless one is a moderator in this forum, I don't see what business it is of anyone if two or more other people want to discuss a particular subject. And I don't mean that if things get really, really out of hand with multiple irrelevant threads, it isn't ok to express concern. (I think I did so myself in the case of the recent "hijacking" of the entire forum.) I mean if things are going along, and you spot a thread you don't think should be here, or if you think the issue of (whatever) has been discussed enough, my personal suggestion would be that you read something else, and let those who want to talk about the topic, talk about it. This is especially true of the few "hot button issues" (Scouting related) that are not going to go away anytime soon. That is why, I think, the forum owner has put a big "warning label" on "Issues and Politics" that says this forum is here so that people who want to avoid those topics can avoid them. The flip side is, people who DON'T want to avoid those topics should be permitted (as long as the forum owner and moderators choose to permit it) to discuss those topics without being constantly harangued about it by other members. In my opinion.

Oh... but does that mean they won't be able to give their own opinions anymore? I have seen people try to be both a moderator and a participant in the same forum at the same time. It often leads to the person becoming either one or the other but not both. But I think the two people who have been chosen could handle it, if anyone could.

Hey, excellent choices, Terry! And congrats, MR. OGE and hops! (And I'm not just kissing up here, if I didn't think so I wouldn't say it. ) (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

FOG, I just looked at the G2SS section you are talking about. Unfortunately I have a lot of experience in looking at other peoples' writing and realizing that while they thought everybody would know what they meant by using a particular word, the fact is that most people aren't mind-readers and give words their normal meaning. The word in question here is "driver." I'd be willing to bet that the person who wrote the sentence in question used the word "driver" to mean "a person who drives a vehicle with other Scouts in it." Whereas, you and I see the word "driver" and figure it means "a person who drives a vehicle." I guess the other way to put it is, the G2SS is talking about "driving" as a BSA activity which it really only becomes if the driver is transporting other Scouts. Otherwise the person is just showing up, whether at camp or a troop meeting or whatever, and assuming he has a license and his parents' permission if its their care, it's nobody else's business how he got there. But you are correct that if read literally, that's not what it says.

One for every outing. In addition to general permission it contains contact information for the parents (or others if the parent is on the trip) as well as permission for the leaders of the outing to obtain medical treatment for the Scout if necessary.

Oh, and yes, I did click even though I am not a Christian. Sorry.

Jason, I think you really do have a problem. (And no, I am not a licensed psychiatrist or psychotherapist, but I have known and worked with so many people on both sides of the couch, as it were, that I feel free to issue disagnoses from time to time anyway.)

SR540 raises a good point. While my almost-13-year-old son does know "the facts of life" (though I don't think he really understands, which is about where I probably was at that point), I am fairly sure he does NOT know what an abortion is. For that matter, and Rooster related the two, I am fairly sure he is completely oblivious to the entire controversy over gays in Scouting. He appears to know the things that are appropriate for him to know at this point, and not much beyond that. I think Scouting teaches my son the things that are in the realm of Scouting (which is a wide enough area as it is, and does include some "personal" things as self-protection from sexual abuse), but I do not need Scouting teaching him things that are outside that realm. Now, since I have come suspiciously close to discussing abortion in this thread, something I will not do, I think I will bow out at this point. Even the discussion of peanut butter, which I helped perpetuate as a light diversion at the beginning, seems to have taken an alarming turn.

Rooster, I know this response is not going to satisfy you, but Scouting does deal with non-Scouting issues, and it does so by teaching Scouts that part of good citizenship is learning about national and local issues and making their voices heard -- and having them practice doing so. This is part of the requirements of two Eagle-required merit badges: Citizenship in the Nation, requirement 5: "Name your two senators and the congressman from your congressional district. Write a letter to one of these elected officials on a national issue sharing your view with him or her. Show your letter and any response to your counselor." Citizenship in the Community, requirement 7: "Select a city, county, or school problem or issue under consideration from the local newspaper or news broadcast and write a letter expressing your views to the mayor, administrator, or school board president. Show this letter and any response to your counselor." (Obviously the first is more on point than the second in this case, but I think that both contribute to a single theme, which may be stated as: A good citizen is knowledgeable about public issues and participates in the legislative process by making known his views on the issues.) But what Scouting does NOT do is to tell the Scouts which issue or issues to be concerned about (of course there may be suggestions in the merit badge pamphlets, I have not seen them for almost 30 years so I don't know what they say these days), or what to think about the issues they select. So a Scout could select abortion as his issue, or at least I assume he could, since I see no prohibition here on issues that are really divisive.

Yeah, Ed, I'm with firstpusk on the refrigerated peanut butter issue. I've encountered this now and then when some member of my family has put the peanut butter in the refrigerator. I want my peanut butter to spread on the bread, not stay in an unyielding clump.

SR540: Smooth (actually, I think "creamy" is the technically correct term.) OK, that's it, plastic peanut-butter knives at 10 paces. (With any sharp or serrated edges filed off, of course, we don't want anyone to get hurt.)

I'm pretty sure I've never expressed an opinion on this subject in this forum, and I plan to continue not doing so, but I will say that I am fairly certain the BSA takes no position on it, and has no reason to. (Hey, me and the BSA, happy together.) You know, with all of the controversy on the BSA's plate at this point, on subjects that directly affect the BSA (membership, funding sources, governmnet involvements, lawsuits, etc.), it seems to me that it really doesn't need to reach out for more controversies. Come to think of it, if you think of the "big issues" of the day in the political and judicial arenas, the BSA takes no position on the vast majority of them.

Oh, and for whatever interest it may have to Scouting historians, the year that I remember my father being Webelos den leader (and me being a year too young yet) would have been the first year of what was then the "new" Webelos program, when the Lion rank had been abolished, and Webelos activity badges were introduced for the first time. I guess that was 1967.