NJCubScouter

Wow, a thread with two posts, more than 10 years apart. The one I wonder about (besides Amelia Earhart) is Hale Boggs. But you have to be, in the words of one of our younger posters recently, "old" to remember him and his disappearance.

I was going to say. I only wear one ring, and it does not rotate anywhere or at any time.

I have seen the "NYLT" strips similar to the "Trained" strips. They were in our National Scout Shop so I assume they are official from National. (That may of course be an incorrect assumption.) I thought one of the points of NYLT was to eliminate the council-by-council differences in courses and names.

I bought a new uniform about a month ago. The shirt was made in Bangladesh. I don't recall looking at the tag in the pants to see where they were made. More information to follow when I get home. On the plus side, the red letters "BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA" were sown on rather than pressed on, as they have been for the past few years, so they will stay on, as opposed to some of our Scouts who are walking around with "UTS OF AMERICA" or other variations.

Probably. I sometimes have trouble knowing when someone is making a joke in a post. From past experience in this forum, I am not the only one who has that problem.

That sounds like a wise move. Hopefully she understood why you were fleeing. That reminds me a little of something that happened when George W. Bush, was visiting the U.S. women's volleyball team while he was president. The story is recounted here in one of your UK newspapers: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/11/georgebush.olympics2008 From your reaction, I take it that "French kiss" means the same thing in US and UK, but that is not what people are talking about when they refer to the "French kissy thing." They mean kissing someone on both cheeks, and according to MattR (and I have no reason to doubt him) you don't even actually kiss the cheek, it is more like a cheek to cheek thing.

No. If you leave room for the exercise of judgment it isn’t zero tolerance, regardless of what you call it. You can call a poodle a wolf if you want to, but it’s still a poodle.

Zero tolerance DOES mean "leaving good judgment at the door." It's zero tolerance. No use of judgment, no consideration of circumstances, no exceptions. If you are using judgment to say some infractions are excused because of the circumstances, it's not zero tolerance. That's why zero tolerance is a bad idea. It "sounds" good to many people, but as I said before, many of those people don't understand what it means.

Well, I don't think we're at that point. Unless you are saying that that has actually happened. If we ever do get to that point, where normal everyday human interaction is outlawed because it involves one person's hand briefly touching another's, it will be a sad and scary day world, and not one in which many people will be brave enough (or maybe that should be reckless enough) to volunteer for anything.

It might. In the example I gave above, I doubt that a brief, abstract mention of anger management would have made a difference when the first-year Scout felt that he was under verbal attack by an older and larger Scout, and decided that the best answer was a stab in the hand with a plastic fork. But it can't hurt to try. I would dispute the idea that "it isn't the weapon that's the problem, it's the person holding it." Sometimes it's both, but not in this particular case. There was a reason for the Scout to have the plastic fork in his hand while eating breakfast. There are other items that would not be appropriate to have in the dining hall.

Ok, sorry for the assumption. And I agree with you, but any more detailed comments would probably lead this thread too far away from the LDS church's relationship with the BSA, which is what this thread is about.

I think I have posted about this before, one July day about 12 years ago my son was in the summer camp dining hall, eating his breakfast with the rest of the troop, when an argument broke out between a first-year Scout and an older Scout. The first-year Scout "settled" the argument by stabbing the older Scout in the hand with his plastic fork. (My son was sitting the closest to the stabbed hand other than the Scout to whom it was attached, so he was Witness # 1 for the Prosecution. And this was the last meal before the end of camp, so I get to the camp to pick up my son and am told he is being questioned by the Scoutmaster!) As far as I know the camp did not stop supplying forks for meals (and the first-year Scout was placed in the care of his parents, and was never seen in the troop again.)

Was that directed at my comment? I didn't add anything. The requirements include the use of the Eagle project workbook and mention the application as well. They also refer the Scout to the Guide to Advancement, 9.0.2.0 through 9.0.2.16, for more information about the project. So for all practical purposes all of those things are part of the requirement. You could consider the G2A section to be just guidance in fulfilling the requirements, but the requirements suggest that people read it, so they should read it. I personally wish the BSA would put all information needed to become Eagle in one easily accessible place, but they don't, instead they put part of it in the Handbook and the rest of it in several different places that must be tracked down on the Internet. But at least the requirements mention what you have to look for.

I'm not sure what the problem is. If they read the requirements, the Eagle project workbook and the application, that's about 95% of what you need to know right there. I know that our council has on their web site instructions for setting up a project review, BOR, etc., I assume all councils do. Perhaps that is a foolish assumption, but then someone can call council and find out who their District Advancement Chair is, call him/her and get the council/district-specific procedural information they may need. Or the Scout can do it.

Our previous CC, a woman in her 40's-50's, when serving on an EBOR (for kids in our troop) would hug each successful Eagle candidate when the EBOR was concluded - in full view of his parent(s) and the other board members. I shake their hands. Nobody's filed a complaint so far...

Well, if the Scout declines to extend his hand, or pulls it away, I am not going to go grabbing for it.

That's awful. In my opinion, the fact that all Scouter/Scout interactions must be within view of someone else SHOULD prevent this sort of problem from arising. But apparently not. Presumably Mom was standing right there while 50-year-Scouter put the neckerchief and slide on her son. She could see nothing wrong was happening, and yet she reported the guy and got him fired anyway. It's pretty scary,

I shake hands with every Scout when they complete a BOR, at ECOH's and other times when congratulations are in order. Am I in trouble? (I am mostly joking, but not 100%.)

I haven't, in a very long time. I don't think I was ever in a school lunchroom (during lunch) during all the time my kids were in school. So I guess the last time would be when I graduated high school - 41 years ago. At that time, there were plastic knives. (Not that a plastic knife could cut some of the mystery meat anyway, but that's a discussion for another time and place.)

Someone could probably get a paper cut (actually I guess it would be a plastic cut) from the supermarket frequent-shopper cards that I carry on my keyring. Am I armed too?

That's ridiculous. Don't kids still use plastic knives to eat lunch in the cafeteria? Is that a weapon too?

Leeway for what? That is not a "challenge" - I just am not sure what you are saying.

I think most people who THINK they favor "zero tolerance" don't really understand what it means: No exceptions, no consideration of circumstances, no discretion, nothing. I would bet there are people who favor "zero tolerance" who, if you told them the story of the Scout who had a small knife safely locked away in an emergency kit in his car and was suspended from school for it, would say, "Oh, THAT is going too far." In other words, they would consider the circumstances - which means they are not really for zero tolerance.

Ok, well I'll be in the same room as several Scout Handbooks in about three hours so I'll take a look.

Just out of curiosity, what page is that? I probably would have thought the same thing, but I wouldn't have said anything. I probably would have just said, At ease, or something like that, and asked him to be seated. Once he did the Oath and Law WITHOUT BEING ASKED (right?), I would have known what I had on my hands and proceeded accordingly. If a Scout just wants to talk, that's fine. If in talking he happens to answer all the board's questions, that's also fine. If not, I'll stay there as long as he wants, even if its past my bedtime. But in the end, unless one of his reference letters is from his probation officer, or the Scoutmaster signed the application but wrote "This is all a lie", or something like that, we'll be congratulating a new Eagle by the end of the night.