NJCubScouter

Well, one might argue that there is a lot to see, but whether it is productive to talk about it, at this place and time, is up to the assembled multitudes.

Oh boy... well, at least this is already in Issues and Politics. Now I have to figure out if I want to say anything about it. I suspect most people who have been around here awhile can probably guess where I stand without me saying anything. The whole time the campaign was going on, I was expecting that someone(s) would start a thread (or many threads) about it. But except for one or two stray remarks, you wouldn't have known that a presidential election was happening around us. There was more discussion here during past presidential campaigns.

Perhaps even more awkward is that in looking at the requirements for the Shofar (Jewish) recognition, I wish I had known about it while my father was still around. I would have nominated him or gotten someone in his troop to do so, since his promotion of the youth religious awards and related activities really took place more after I was an adult and out of the house and not really aware of his day-to-day activities. He didn't really need another knot, but I think he would have appreciated the recognition, especially when it was becoming clear that his time was short. Oh well... sorry for the self-indulgence.

I think this document will answer your question for your particular religion/denomination; there is a table showing the awards and recognitions for each one. http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/512-879_WB.pdf They draw a distinction between "awards" for youth and "recognitions" for adults, and there are two different knots, as described in the following portions of that document; there are pictures of the knots there too. I noticed in looking at a couple of the links that while the adult recognitions are by nomination, some have specific criteria for nominating someone.

I agree with qwazse's suggestion of someone contacting the appropriate person at counsel - this would probably be an SE-level conversation. However, I think just one person should contact the SE and it probably should be either the Cubmaster or CC. I also think DavidCO has a good point, it sounds like there has already been too much discussion of this situation within the pack. I did a Google search to see if there is any BSA policy on this but nothing turned up. I have never heard of a policy on this subject. Perhaps @@RichardB could point you toward something.

I see what you did there.

Right, but that's consistent with what I was told in my troop. In that case there has definitely been a transfer of "primary" registration, because there is only one registration at a time.

Are you saying a young man can have his secondary registration in a crew, primary in a troop, and earn Eagle in the crew, with the crew advisor serving as unit leader and crew committee members serving on the BOR? If so, I am not saying you are wrong. I am saying it is contrary to what I was told the one time that this issue seemed to be coming up. (By the Scout's father, who had looked into it and was involved in both units. Of course, he could have been misinformed. Or maybe this is just another "rule" that my council made up that is not a rule from National and does not exist elsewhere. This would not be the only issue on which my council seems to march to the beat of its own drummer.) While you may be correct, your example does not necessarily prove it. Venturing awards can only be earned in a crew, so if the boy is secondary in a crew, it makes sense that he can still earn Venturing awards in a crew, because that is the only place he can earn them. So long as he has earned First Class in a troop, he can earn the later Boy Scout ranks in EITHER the troop or the crew, so it would not be illogical to require him to earn those ranks in the unit where he is primary. But like I said, I do not actually know what the rule is. I guess I was assuming that what I was told was correct, and we all know what happens when you assume.

Well, unless there is a successful appeal. Hopefully this situation can be worked out so there is a unanimous board and no need for an appeal. There is also the possibility (from the original post) that the Scout could have his BOR in a Venture Crew, which as I understand it would require the Scout to transfer his primary registration to the Crew. (We had a Scout who was registered in both the troop and crew, who was considering doing that before starting on his Eagle project-process, due to "issues" with one of the leaders in the troop. He would have had all of his Eagle project signoffs, Eagle application, unit leader conference and BOR all with the leaders of the crew. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and the Scout never did transfer and the Eagle process was completed within the troop. And they all lived happily ever after. Well, at least they all tolerated the situation and got through it with nobody yelling at anybody or going to council or switching units.)

I agree with those who say the Scout could have handled this a lot better, including by dealing with the "re-testing" issue between the first and second BOR's, not by waiting until the second BOR and challenging the board's authority as to how the BOR's are conducted (even though he was correct.) As someone else(s) has said, discussing this with the SM or an ASM after the first BOR would have been the way to go. On the other hand, he would not be the first teenager who made some mistakes along the way while learning to deal with people. I like MattR's suggestion that this be turned into a learning experience - maybe for both the Scout and the Board members. The one thing that I think is inexcusable on the one board member's part is the statement that the Scout would "never make Eagle." Not that he wasn't ready, but that he would NEVER make Eagle. (At a BOR for Life, not Eagle.) One board member has no authority to decide that, in fact the entire board has no authority to say "never", since there is a route to obtain a BOR at the council level as well as the potential of an appeal to National. (Which this Scout probably knows, since he seems to have some familiarity with the Guide to Advancement.) Perhaps quazse, in addition to speaking with the Scout, could "mediate" with the board member and get everybody to back down a little.

I thought there might be something useful here: http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/CubScouts/Parents/About/history.aspx, but there isn't.

It's a very nice sentiment. I knew someone was going to disagree with it, though. (I did not have anyone specific in mind.)

Krikkitbot did not ask whether it would be "mean". He asked whether the council could do it. I think they can. There have been threads in the past that have described things councils have done in the name of money that could be described as "mean". I have seen a thing or two myself that fall into that category. As for your opinion about when an application is necessary, if there is a sign that identifies the seller as a Boy Scout troop, or if the Scouts tell customers they are selling for the "troop" or the "Boy Scouts" or anything similar, or any other indication that the sale involves Scouts or Scouting in any way, then an application is necessary. The CO does own the unit, and the CO signs an agreement with the BSA to abide by BSA rules and regulations, and that includes the fundraising rules. Does your troop raise funds without telling potential customers that they are dealing with Scouts or Scouting or a Scouting unit? I doubt it. We don't. I don't know anyone who does.

Is that a typo for "Please remove my post?" I always remove posts on the request of the poster. You don't have to say the Please part, unless you want to be Courteous. (If you do make the request, I will remove everyhing since the deleted post.)

I think that is correct, which is why I asked whether a Unit Money Earning Application had been approved. In fact, the council can turn down an application simply because they think a fundraising idea would be more appropriate on a council level than on a unit level, even if there is no actual "conflict" at the time. One the council approves the application, it's a different story, at least in the sense of "good governance". Whether it could "legally" be revoked is something I have never looked into.

Moderator's Note: In case anyone is confused, the post to which Stosh was responding has been removed.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your answer.

Did the troop submit a Unit Money Earning Application to council, and did the council approve it?

In general, teenagers do want to learn. But they do not necessarily want to learn what "we" want them to learn, when "we" want them to learn it. ("We" in that sentence meaning, whoever is trying to teach them something at any given time.) Which is what resulted in this thread, because a Scout who is an Instructor in blw2's troop has difficulty getting his "students" to pay attention to him. In fact, Beavah, the two examples you mention involve teenagers choosing what to learn and when and how to learn it. Presumably no adult "assigned" them the task of learning the skateboard trick or mastering the video game. All other things being equal, the "fun" factor in "learning" Citizenship in the Community, or for that matter, calculus, is probably not going to be as great. But all other things are rarely equal, they vary from person to person. In high school and college, my son had fun learning calculus and physics and some computer stuff, but not so much fun learning literature and creative writing, which is why he is now a mechanical engineer as opposed to something else. Also in the original thread is the story of a Scout (the same one) who believes that fun and learning are mutually exclusive, at least for him. I think we have to take him at his word, since we have no other information to go on.

Welcome to the forums PrairieSM! I would count it as an activity.

Well, if that worked for your troop as a youth, that's fine. I don't see any benefit in telling a boy who wants to be troop QM, Scribe, Librarian or whatever that they can't because they were never a PL. Some boys don't want to be PL or are not chosen by their patrols but can serve the troop in other ways.

I share your concern. I think the First Class First Year thing is a good example. And in the case of "serving the entire family" we don't even know what the data is, unless I have missed something. My thought when I re-read the CSE's statement (when this thread began) was that National might have data indicating not only that girls wanted to join the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts (and that their parents wanted them to join), but also that there are a substantial amount of boys whose parents aren't enrolling them in the BSA because the parents want their daughters to be able to join the same unit. In other words, we're not only "losing" the girls because the programs are not coed, but we're losing the boys, too. Does such data exist? I don't know. If it does, we out here in the field should hear about it so we know what National is talking about. If it doesn't, then maybe National is looking to solve a problem that does not really exist.

This brings me back to what I posted on the first page of this thread. The CSE has said that the BSA has "stopped growing" and that the way to deal with this problem is to "find ways to serve the entire family." To me, this suggests that the BSA has done some kind of "market research" that indicates that getting girls involved will allow the BSA to start growing again. But maybe I'm wrong. It would be nice if we could assume that when the BSA makes (or at least considers) a major change, it is based on some kind of research. Maybe we can't make that assumption.

It will speak volumes about the future of the BPSA. I am not sure it will affect the BSA or offer the BSA any direction on whether to go "coed." Of course, anything's possible. In 10 years the BPSA could be larger than the BSA because what parents really wanted was a program where boys and girls aged 5-14 participated together in a single unit. We'll see. The older I get the more I realize that predicting the future is a worthless pastime, except for whatever entertainment value we may get out of it. And by the way, if Trail Life USA's Wikipedia page is correct, they went from zero (or "one", if you wish) to 20,000 in ONE year. At the risk of starting an argument, I suppose one might ask what it says about our society that a new organization built around the idea of exclusion grew at a rate 200 times faster (if my math is correct) than a new organization built around the idea of inclusion.

Well, they do, it's just that the only positions they can run for are SPL and PL. And yes, the system of appointing "staff" positions COULD result in unfairness or exclusion, but it does not have to. It depends on the SPL and the SM, who is supposed to train and guide the SPL. There also is some flexibility designed into the system in terms of which positions the troop is going to have. If a Scout wants or "needs" a position and one is not currently open, the Scout can look at the list of possible positions in his Handbook, look around the troop and identify a need and volunteer to do that job. A troop can have multiple Instructors, more than one Troop Guide, and for that matter, more than one ASPL, depending on the size of the troop. (That is basically what my son did; the troop had not previously had an "Instructor", at least not while he had been in the troop, and he was not interested in being SPL or ASPL, so that is what he volunteered to do, and that was his POR for Life and Eagle.) Maybe the troop has never had a Historian or Webmaster, but that doesn't mean it can't have one now if someone wants to do it and volunteers.