NJCubScouter

I agree, but nobody has asked me for my opinion, and I'm not paying for it. Come to think of it, I liked that plan 35 years ago for myself, but nobody really asked for my opinion then, either.

You could argue that any ceremony is corny. But if it is kept within reason, I think there is a benefit to it. In about a month my Eagle-son will be undergoing a much cornier ceremony designed to join him in wedded bliss to his girlfriend, till death do they part. The ceremonies don't stop, they just become bigger and more extravagant.

I am not a huge fan of the Eagle Charge. I don't think it's necessary to tell the kid he's a "marked man" at his Eagle ceremony. Let him revel in his accomplishment in the company of his family, friends, fellow Scouts and leaders, etc. A briefer reference tgo his future obligations to Scouting, mankind, etc. would be preferable in my opinion. The Eagle Pledge (we use the one with "make my training an example" which I have always thought was slightly curious wording, but I don't think the kids are sitting there analyzing the grammar), on the other hand, I am ok with. At the peak of the advancement program, there's a new pledge. They don't have to memorize it, they are just repeating after the person administering the pledge. In our troop, at that point all Eagle Scouts, ranging from those still in the troop to all others in attendance, are standing in a semicircle around the Eagle candidate and repeat the pledge along with him. I think it's a good part of the ceremony, and even better when my son attends an ECOH for his old troop and is standing up there, which I did not earn the right to do myself. My "Eagle dad" pride gets renewed a little bit. It's certainly better than listening to "Every 100 Scouts" and out of date statistics for how many Eagle Scouts are in Congress, the astronaut corps, etc. etc., for the 100th time. We know it's a big deal. That's why we're here. Let's get on with it and focus on our new Eagle, not some dry and obsolete statistics.

But the current pilot going on in many councils (including mine) is not part of Learning for Life, right? The kindergartners will be a Lion den in a regular Cub Scout pack, right? On a personal note, as I have said before, I cannot imagine that putting 4 and 5-year-olds in a Cub Scout pack could possibly turn out to be a good idea, except for purposes of making the cash registers sing and ring from here to Irving, TX. I don't think half the first graders are ready for the Tiger program, so we fix that problem by lowering the age limit by a year? I hope I'm wrong, since it looks like this program is here to stay...

Interestingly, of the two major-party and two major-minor party candidates for president, I suspect all four would continue the current administration's policy on this subject. The Republican candidate has said in the past that all drugs should be legalized.

So let there be a controversy. Let there be protest. But not in uniform. This is not a "Scouting" issue.

Your use of the word "partisan" puzzles me. Presumably the current administration has decided not to prosecute medical marijuana cases either because (a) they believe it is good public policy to allow medical marijuana or (b) they believe the majority of the public would support not prosecuting those cases, or both. I would put money on "both". As for "political", reason (b) is definitely political and reason (a) is arguably political, so yes, it's probably political. Policy decisions get made for political reasons all the time. One might argue that policy decisions are political decisions by definition. It's just our system of government. But where "partisan" comes in, I don't know. Are most pot growers Democrats? I don't know. They are very entrepeneurial. They could be Republicans. As for the office of FBI director, the current director is not of the same party as the president, so I think that negates "partisan". It happens that he was a high-ranking official in the George W. Bush administration and was a Republican at that time, though he has said that he recently changed his registration to unaffiliated. As for "political", the office of FBI director has not "become" political, it has been political from the very beginning. The first FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, was the most political one yet.

I'll bet my answer is unique. Our troop pays for the Eagle kit (not unique) and provides $100 (call it a grant, stipend, gift or whatever you wish) to the family for use in putting on an ECOH. Anything over that amount is the family's responsibility. I am not quite sure how that got started, but there it is. Obviously that would not work in many troops but we are fortunate to have the resources to do it.

I notice some people suggesting an "audit". Have any of your units ever had an actual audit done? I know that if I ever suggested such a thing in my troop, people would look at me as if I had landed from the planet Vulcan, pointy ears and all. What would an audit of a troop's finances actually entail? Comparing all the checks with receipts? I think our treasurer gets receipts most of the time, but not 100 percent of the time. There are probably reimbursement checks written to leaders, and hopefully the treasurer gets receipts for all of those. But I have a suspicion that if an actual auditor (that is, a CPA) audited our books, we would not pass with flying colors. With nobody stealing anything

A proposal to do what? And I think it is the BSA that publishes Boys Life for the BSA.

Well, the argument seems to be that a place that is adjacent to a "target for crime" also becomes a target for crime. But if you buy that argument, then by that logic there also shouldn't be a council facility within 500 feet of a bank, convenience store or jewelry store. And these places are the targets of armed robberies, not mere breaking-and-entering at midnight looking for some plants. I think it's a pretty good guess that these protesters just don't want this facility in their town and are using its proximity to something with the words "Boy Scouts" on the sign to acheive their goal.

It sounds like this may be the BEST kind of area for something like this. While there will be Scouts in the Scout Shop, imagine if this facility were on a downtown street. It would probably be surrounded by retail stores, food stores, eating establishments, etc., all of which are frequented by youths. (That assumes that there is a danger to youths from being near this thing in the first place, which I am not convinced of.)

Welcome to the forums! Sorry you are in a difficult situation. One question: Has it been established that you are definitely going to become the treasurer in February? If so, in this kind of situation, I am not sure that I would rush it. It sounds like you have a suspicion that there has been improper activity with the books, but no actual evidence. Maybe the best thing to do would be to wait until the checkbook, bank statements etc. are turned over to you, and see what you see. If the records show there is a problem (not very likely) or if you do not get complete records (probably much more likely), THEN you will be in a position to recommend some action by the committee and/or CO.

If that's the purpose for which the Scouts attended the meeting, that's great. And around here, Scouts (Boy and Girl) generally attend public meetings for MB purposes in uniform. (That's probably bending the rules, but I think it has a benefit because the presiding officer seeing Scouts in uniform will almost always give them some recognition, and if there is an opportunity the Scouts will be greeted by members of the public body seeking to curry favor with present and future voters wishing to extend the hand of fellowship to the youth of their community.) If they are instead there to advocate a particular position, that's great too, and it is part of being a good citizen - but not in uniform.

I find it interesting that not a single poster (including me) has expressed support for the position taken by these leaders and Scouts. Mainly a bunch of subtle drug jokes.

First of all, it seems like the location of this facility has become a local POLITICAL issue, so when the Scout leaders go to a public meeting to voice their opinions, they should not be in uniform, nor should they be bringing uniformed Scouts to make a point about the issue. As for the issue itself, based solely on the facts in the article, I do not see why this kind of facility should be prohibited within 500 feet of a council service center. Apparently it is already prohibited within 500 feet of a residence or school, so depending on how this particular town is laid out, there probably are already only a limited number of places where it could be built. Start drawing more 500-foot circles, and it may be that it could not be built anywhere at all. I suspect there is more going on here than this article tells us about, and that the proximity of this facility to the council service center may not be the real issue.

Or a rumor. Or something somebody heard somewhere. Or something somebody thought they read. OR an actual council bylaw. Anything's possible.

Well, that post said they have some activities that are separate. It is not clear to me whether all of their meetings (in any particular age range) are "joint" meetings. Who is the "unit leader"? Is there one from each organization? Do they follow the YP requirements of both the BSA and GSUSA? I presume there has to be at least some separate instruction and advancement work since the requirements are not the same (though I am sure there is some overlap.) Don't get me wrong, I am not questioning whether this could work. I am sure it could be made to work. I am just somewhat curious as to how it works, and I am also not clear on whether this is the model the BSA intends to follow, if indeed they intend to follow any model at all.

Generally, when people use props to try to convince me to do something, or team-building exercises or games intended to teach me a lesson instead of just telling me what they want to tell me, I walk out, if I can. (Good thing I never took Woodbadge because my program would have ended right after, or during, that game that everybody always talks about.) Maybe it's just me. But if it works with people who aren't me, well, whatever works.

Sounds good. I suppose that if I were cursed with thinking like a lawyer 24 hours a day (oh wait, I am) I couldn't help but notice that the new SM is probably "adding to the requirements" a little, but he's doing it in an understandable and constructive way, so if your son is ok with it, that's fine.

In doing a bit of Google research for the past 10 minutes, I have concluded that it is much easier to find information about how money is to be raised at the council level than about how it is to be spent.

I think that with 23 Tigers - in other words, 23 first-graders - you are not going to have productive den meetings with fewer than 3 dens - 2 dens of 8 kids and one of 7. Even a den of 12 first-graders is too much. A beneficial side-effect of three dens is that once the dens are divided up and everything is running like a well-oiled machine (one can always hope), word of your great success will leak out and a few more boys can join without splitting dens again. Ten first-graders is probably just barely manageable. I wouldn't go higher than that. I think you need to tell the parents that if they want this program for their sons, they need to be den leaders. I remember as an Assistant Cubmaster, with my own son probably a Webelos I at that point, sitting around with a group of Tiger parents and telling them that without two of them volunteering to be leaders (one DL and one assistant), there was not going to be a den. I heard back later that they had been pretty shocked about this. Nevertheless, two of them volunteered, and they had a den. It's a difficult thing to tell a group of people who walked into a room with their sons expecting that a program was going to be magically provided for them by other people, and then finding out that they are the ones who are going to be doing the providing. Any parent who was once a Cub Scout or Boy Scout is not surprised, because they know that's how it works. But for everybody else it is a surprise.

Well. While I think that this is not the publisher's fault, and it's not the GSUSA's fault, and I don't think it's something to get "outraged" about, I do think there is room for legitimate concern about the some of the messages that "society in general" is sending to girls, and to a lesser degree, boys. I am talking about some of the things that Rick-in-CA mentioned in his last post, and it is only getting worse. I remember 20 years ago when the Jon Benet Ramsey case happened (wow, has it been that long), being shocked to learn (among other things) that there were beauty contests for 6 year old girls, and the photos of this girl made it clear that she had been dressed up and made up to be attractive to men. I hadn't known that this sort of thing went on. I am sure a girl that age does not even know the significance of how she was being made to look. In a more logical world, that case would have created a sense of outrage among the public and those sorts of things would no longer take place. Instead, I think that sort of thing has become even more prevalent. Our society is not moving in the right direction when it comes to the messages being sent to young people, and their parents. I think it is part of an even larger issue about what people find important vs. what they should find important. But what can you do about it? We have a "market" economy and a relatively "free" society, and people can make their own (bad) decisions. There's nothing wrong with writing a letter or circulating a petition or whatever, but one who does so should not expect much in the way of action. It is possible, through great effort, to change the actions of governments, and it is possible to change the actions of large organizations (as we have seen in the BSA), but changing the priorities of an entire nation full of people, and the resulting actions of the "market", is not so easy.

I went looking for Boys' Life circulation figures, but I couldn't go on after finding this at boyslife.org: Nice to see they are still running the same jokes as when I started reading it, which come to think of it, would be 50 years ago, to the month. Thank you, David L. of Hicksville, New York.

So you are saying the GSUSA puts too much of an emphasis on their own centralized fundraising? As opposed to what? The BSA? They have Girl Scout cookies, we have FOS and (in some councils) popcorn sales. Admittedly the Girl Scout cookie sales are nationally driven and FOS and popcorn sales are council-driven, but to those of us in the local trenches, it is (as we say in my profession) a distinction without a difference. I would argue that FOS is more intrusive than Girl Scout cookie sales, since BSA National is asking us to dig into our own pockets to (in part) pay the salaries of their executives (hence the half-joking "Fund Our Salaries") while product sales involve our (and our children's labor) to raise money from others. On the subject of fundraising, I would say that the BSA has a built a glass house, from which we should not throw any stones at another organization.