NJCubScouter

Stosh, I am pretty sure we have had this same conversation at least once before, so I'm not going to go through it again right now. My suggestion is that you send your concerns and suggestions for changing the program (whether this aspect or any other) and maybe they will consider changing it. Until then, I hope you will understand that most of us will encourage our Scouts to have elections for elected positions.

I suspect you know the answer to that question, but here is the BSA's answer, from the Patrol Leader's Handbook at http://www.scouting.org/filestore/boyscouts/pdf/Troop_Leadership_Positions.pdf: I think the BSA expects people to read that and do something reasonable with it. "Perpetual" is inconsistent with "schedule of elections." A day or a week are not reasonable. Your other options probably account for more than 90 percent of troops.

In our troop the kids are given the full picture of why they should not wait until the last minute. In fact the primary "don't let this happen to you" example is MY son, who did make Eagle, but only as the result of a great deal of scrambling around and stress and anxiety on the part of various adults who did not deserve it (including me and my wife.) My son, and his successors, knew and know full well why they should not wait until the last minute and yet somehow things often do seem to get down to the last week, or less. Not in all cases - we have had kids make Eagle at 15 and 16, but many more last-minute Eagles than there should be. And you would think something like "You don't want to be doing an outdoor project in December" would mean something to a kid whose birthday is the last week of the year, and yet we just had a kid finish (well, really, start and finish) his outdoor project in December. He lucked out with the weather.

Good one, SSScout, and it sort of reminds me of a TV commercial I have been seeing for the past few weeks. It's a device and service that is advertised as an alternative to costly cable or dish tv bills, and it is... but if you pay close attention to the description, it's really just the broadcast tv channels in HD. So after all this time, we've come full circle where the Latest Greatest Thing is the same channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 that were my only choices into adulthood (because my parents never got cable, and my mother still doesn't have it. In fact what she has now is a free, and probably-not-HD, version of what I saw advertised, with the same 7 channels she had 60 years ago. Some sort of digital converter or something. My parents only gave up their rotary phone when it stopped working. Yet she does have a cell phone and an email account, mostly so she can get pictures of her grandchildren/great-grandchildren.)

That's good but I suggest you come up with a phrase for that other than "backdating", which already has a different meaning and it's not one we wish to teach the Scouts.

Yes but unfortunately, it is not far removed from reality. (I guess the best humor never is.)

Are the terms one year? I think it would be more understandable to have a one-term limit if the term is one year. If the term is six months then it doesn't seem so reasonable. Although we have no term limits at all, there is sort of a "natural" limit, which is partly due to the fact that our terms are for one year. We have had several Scouts be elected to two terms, but they usually do not run for a third term. The one who did run for a third term lost the election.

Listen, I'm all for people trying to figure out how to warp space and time and stuff. When you figure it out, let us know. When Stephen Hawking made his guest appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation, they took him on a tour of the set, and when they got to the "warp core", he smiled and said, "We're working on that."

It never fails, every discussion in this forum that has anything to do with SPL (or PL) elections will at some point turn to the burning issue of whether there should be elections at all. For most people (including me) it is enough that the BSA says these are elected positions.

First of all, welcome to the forum! The BSA does not impose any limit on the number of terms that an SPL (or any other position) may serve. Some troops do impose such limits, some do not. My troop does not. The troop I was in as a youth, did. It is up to the troop. I think it would be unusual to have a rule that SPL's cannot run for re-election at all - in other words, a limit of one term.

Skip, I don't want to send this thread off on a tangent (though why should it be any different), but am I correct in thinking that this issue would not even come up in the UK? You do not have chartered organizations, correct? Is it the Scout Association itself that "owns" the units? (Which, I believe, is how the GSUSA works.)

I think the idea at the time was that that was just the first step toward something greater. I think there is some benefit to mankind reaching beyond this planet. Call me an idealist. Call me a Star Trek fan. Whatever.

Yeah, "just". Well, as long as it's easy.

Good question. Perhaps @@Hedgehog might be able to shed some light on this.

I understand the difference between science fiction and science fact. I understand that "Star Trek" can't happen until someone disproves Einstein so we can travel faster than light. And even on something much more mundane like traveling to the closest planet, I understand there are difficult challenges to overcome. But I feel like we haven't really tried. If there really is a choice between, say, eliminating cancer and traveling to Mars, I would choose eliminating cancer every day of the week. But I don't think that's the choice. Maybe the cure for cancer is waiting for us on Mars. (Probably not.)

I have never been involved with one nor do I know of any around here. According to the table I just looked up, about 3 percent of BSA units are chartered to "business and industry." I would add that the description, "every year it seems like we are more and more of a burden to them", probably applies to a lot of units, with all types of CO's. My troop is chartered to a church, and while they are very accommodating to us in some ways, there also have been annoyances over the years, like losing most of our storage space.

It must be that monolith buried right under the surface, with dimensions 1x4x9.

Trade-off implies we couldn't have done both. I see no reason to believe that.

Welcome back LeCastor! As for Trail Life, if that map on their web site is current, they seem to have three (3) units in the State of New Jersey. I did not know there was such a map until Stosh mentioned it and I went looking for it. It does give kind of an indication of what their membership is, even though membership figures within each unit are not provided. As might be expected, their greatest concentration seems to be in the South and Midwest.

That, again, is not really a "myth". It is something that some people do. If someone claims that there is a rule from National that permits and/or requires them to do so, THAT is a myth. Whether a Scoutmaster actually has the authority to do so... well, I'm not sure.

I just looked at their web site and I think it is safe to say that the program is similar to the BSA's, plus their particular religious focus.

Maybe I have missed something in this thread, but there seems to be a lot of agonizing about how to satisfy an OPTIONAL requirement. The requirement gives six options and you have to do two. Only one requires snow. So if you have no snow, and aren't traveling to where they do, you do two of the other five. There are practical issues to some of the others too. For example, I would have to get out a topographical map of northwestern New Jersey to determine whether there is a practical way to gain 1,000 feet in elevation while hiking in this state, even on the AT. Our "High Point" (which is on the AT) is 1,803 feet above sea level and obviously the surrounding area is elevated as well. Of course, it doesn't say you have to do it all in one day, but it would still be interesting. And you can always go to Pa. or NY. And I guess there are other states where this would be even more difficult, if not impossible. On the other hand, we do have snow, but there's no guarantee that there will be enough of it on the ground in a given weekend to call it a "snow camping experience."

I'm not. Even if I wanted to, which I don't, I would not meet their leadership criteria because I am not of the "right" religion. I have heard very little about them since the original flurry of publicity. Their web site does not seem to have any membership figures, or none that I could find in a quick look around.

Interesting quotes. [Redacted after correcting original post] As all of the news reports today have been pointing out, he has the distinction of being the last person, so far, to stand on the Moon. I remember his missions from when I was a pre-teen and teenager. What is a little disappointing is that it has now been slightly more than 44 years since Gene Cernan walked on the moon, and we have no current prospect of going back. If you had told me when I was 14 years old that that would be the case, I would have said it's impossible. By 2016 there will be passenger flights to the Moon every week, not to mention the flying cars. Where are the flying cars? Anyway... R.I.P. Gene Cernan.

I somewhat dislike doing this, but the best thing I can do is quote myself from the second page of this thread, almost two months ago. It is a real shame that none of various adults involved is willing to cut through the bureaucracy for your son, who has now been waiting for several months after a successful BOR for someone to officially recognize that he is First Class. I am not surprised that the new troop was somewhat hesitant when presented with a signed book from a troop that has declined to submit an advancement report, and with the BOR members from the old troop apparently willing to lie about this, the new troop does not want to deal with it. What does surprise me a bit is that the council will not just do the advancement report itself, whether under the "appeal procedure" or some other means. I guess the answer now is to just do a new BOR with the new troop, although your son really shouldn't have to do that.