njdrt-rdr

So if this all goes the way the BSA says it is supposed to, my troop technically has nothing that they need to do. There will be girl only troops. Correct? So does that mean we need an influx of new leaders and committee members to start up girl only troops. Or is it going to be expected that a scout master and committee will now start supporting two troops? It's more than enough work to support one troop and fine one charter org. Can a charter org charter more than one troop? I'm just curious how it will go with many new startup troops at one time. I'd also expect that since it's supposed to be girl only troops, chartering software should be modified to not charter scouts of the opposite gender from their gender designated troop. Same as it won't let you charter a scout turning 18 unless he changes to another scouting position besides scout.

I wonder if they will come up with a companion magazine called Girls Life?

Well, I have to state that while I know many councils did not follow through well with the presentations and that the timing was not necessarily ideal, but I did not hear much that I had not already heard over the past few years anyway, especially from parents with girls and often girls themselves.  There has been a call for allowing girls for years.  In truth, it started at the outset, but it did not have the societal push that exists today.  B.P. had to deal with it almost from the start.  So he turned to Olave and asked her to come up with something.  That something, of course, was the Girl Guides and it eventually folded into the British Scouting program, just as a large percentage of other worldwide Scouting groups have joined the genders in some manner.

 

As I have noted in other posts, this seems to me to be a golden opportunity to run with that, if done right and with open eyes and ears, will be a positive expansion of the program to a much wider group of young people.  

 

Naysayers and rigid thinkers will continue, to beat their brows as they peer at the sky.  Those that simply have decided that anything from National or professionals automatically is bad will continue to be irrationally obdurate, but those that care about the opportunity to reach more youth will simply work to make the new direction viable and tweak as necessary.  

 

I plan on being part of the latter group, even at my advanced tenure

I can tell you I've been in scouting for 9 years, den leader, cubmaster and den leader at the same time, asst scout master and committee chair and in my troop and pack and for a couple years I was a leader in both, never once did I have a parent say that they wished their daughter could be in boy scouts. Never once. until last week and the only person who told me they thought this was a great idea was one where their son quit scouts in the 3rd grade and her daughter is currently in college. Yes I care about reaching more youth. More youth boys because boy scouts is about teaching boys. In fact I have multiple parents that have boys and girls and let out a big "UGH" when they learned of this change. They don't want it either. Do I think everything national does is bad..No, I don't...Do I trust that they are looking out for the best interest of the kids. Nope I don't believe that either. Will this change work? Yeah it will work, it has to work. The volunteer leaders have zero choice. Make it work or quit. Will I opt to quit? I can't answer that question right now. If they keep troops all girls or all boys, I will stay. If they become co-ed at the boy scout level...Adios, I'm outta here. Not every volunteer is cut out to do every job and I know what my limits are. I have a large issue with inefficiency and honesty. And to be honest myself I'm just tired of carrying the ball, I'm tired of all the hours and I'm tired of the lack of help, I'm tired of most of my free time being dedicated to this organization, this is the last straw. As volunteer when national decides to double the weight of the ball, it's time for me to give them their ball back and walk quietly into sunset.

There is a FAQ out there. I was reading it earlier today - but that being stated, I had to hunt for it. I can't find it again as I type this.

 

Sure would be nice if this was all on the front page of www.scouting.org

 

Found it:

 

https://www.scoutingnewsroom.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Family-Scouting-FAQ.pdf

 

https://www.scoutingnewsroom.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/BSA_Family-Entry-Fact-Sheet.pdf

Sure would be nice if cubs in 2018 meant January or June or September...Make a big difference to folks on the front lines who may already be fielding questions about when their daughter can join

@Tampa Turtle Regarding how they announced this, I am not sure how they could have done it much differently. There is virtually no way they could have shared this news with scouts prior without it having been leaked to the media.

 

Any pre-announcement made to anyone other than everyone at the same time would have resulted in BSA losing the narrative. Someone else, perhaps someone opposed to the change, would have been the first to scoop the story and BSA would have lost whatever advantage they have in controlling the message.

No pre- announcement needed, but a news announcement sent out at the same time registered leadership gets sent an announcement on exactly how this plan is going to work sure would have helped the situation greatly so there wouldn't be all this speculation.

The story was the same in our council. I have to believe our local council execs were lied to as well. They would not knowingly deceive us in this way. I have some connections in the upper realms of BSA, and am going to ask for an explanation of the lies we were told. I am confident this deception was orchestrated by national BSA leaders. Heads should roll over this and jobs should be lost. This kind of dishonesty is unbecoming of any organization, but especially the Boy Scouts of America.

And for me personally it's really hard to want to be associated and donate my personal time and money to an organization where the leaders can't even follow the first point in their own scout law.

So you want to keep your troop single gender. The change allows that. So nothing has changed. How has your troop been ruined by other troops in your town or across the country allowing girls? Was scouting ruined when Venturing went Co-ed? If so, why are you still here?

That right there lies the issue. While this change says troops will be single gender. I absolutely 1000% believe that while that may be the case right now, I don't trust the BSA. I don't believe the BSA. It will morph into co-ed troops and call me whatever you want. I got involved in boy scouts to work with my son and boys. Period. I have no desire to work with girls. I can tell you from my standpoint. I've spoken to 4 leaders and two committee people in my troop and they all hate the decision. I also hate how the BSA lies to us leaders. Yes I was given a presentation and took a survey and would told 100% without a doubt that this change was not decided. I was taking a survey to decide if a conversation should even take place about this topic...They were direct "this is about making scouting more accessible. This model of girl troops or boy troops does nothing for that directive and I'm just tired of listening to Bull crap. Are we just minions that they can lie to and they think we are stupid..That was a whopping 3 weeks ago. So it went from "Should we even discuss this topic" To it's a done deal in 3 weeks. While our council leaders stood in front of our room and said to our faces "absolutely no decisions have been made, we are deciding if we should even persue it". I call bull crap...Then I already spend 100's of hours a month volunteering for this organization for the last 10 years. They announce this change with no friggin plan in place and now I have to spend more of my time fielding answers to questions that I don't have answers to. I already am busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest, I don't need to be wasting my time on this subject. There should have been a plan in place and then it should have been announced. But us volunteers are here to pick up the mess and honestly I'm just tired of it. .Heck we were at roundtable last night and the roundtable leaders and the council exec couldn't even figure out if joining cubs in 2018 meant January, June or September...WTF....So yeah. I'm bitter and I'm pissed and I'm not part of the "WE" that asked for this.

"Just to be clear, this is NOT a decision to allow girls into Boy Scout troops.  I understand that some here believe that will be the result, or the "second step", or whatever, but the fact remains that the BSA is setting up a separate, parallel program for Boy Scout-age girls, in which they can earn Eagle."

and exactly how is this making scouting more accessible to families. It's still two separate troops, two separate meetings two times they have to bring their children somewhere...

The more bullcrap that's spun is this is supposed to make scouting more acessible to families...So how are single gender troops or packs supposed to make it more accessible to faimilies..Parents are still going to be running to two different places at two different times for two different troop meetings or den meetings or whatever. It's no more faimily accessible then the girl whos on the girls basketball team and the boy who is on the boys basketball team..Our rec league has both teams, just beacuse the pay the same league for both kids doesn't make it any easier to get their kids to games and practices..Unless it's co-ed...Which is what it will become regardless of what the bullcrap artists at national say...and that bull crap rolls right downhill to the council. Should be an interesting roundtable meeting tonight.　

I'm glad my tenure is almost over. Lets spin some more lies. Just to be clear that video we watched and survey I just took last month was to be clear. It was clear in that it was a survey on whether a discussion should take place about this possibility. So it went from "should we discuss this topic" to a done deal in less than 4 weeks. They stood in front of me at our round table and said multiple times. "This is not a done deal, far from it. It to gauge interest on whether we should persue this topic".....Do they think I'm that stupid.. So when someone now sits there and says "Just to be clear, this is NOT a decision to allow girls into Boy Scout troops"....I'll call bull crap now...It may start out as a separate program and then when there's not enough scouts or leaders they will morph into co-ed troops. I can tell you from my troop experience. There isn't one female person that wants to be a scout leader. As a man. I'm not going camping with another male leader and no female leader and girls in a troop. That's all there is to it...I'm done...Boy scouts was the one last thing a boy could have to himself...It's BS and it's a money grab. Plan and simple...
lets stuff them into cub scouts, let the packs figure it out and then we will try and figure out how to stuff them into boy scouts..

This happens every season as the new scouts join up. While the Webelo and AOL year are kind of supposed to be transition years, it doesn't always work that way as they have the same den leader as they did in the past and often to continue spoon feeding the scouts and then it's culture shock at the troop when they get there. Honestly I wish there were a position for a webelo leader who just did the two webelo and aol years...But that's not feasible unless you had someone that wanted to hang around scouts and just do that.

I'm interested in setting up some kind of geocaching event for my troop. My first inclination is to hide 4 or 5 geocaches in the park myself and have patrols find the caches in different order. Store envelopes in each cache, one per patrol with something specific written inside the envelope for them to record (this is so that when they return to the start I can look at what they wrote to determine that they found the cache) 　

Send the patrols out in different orders or at staggered times, but all covering the same amount of ground and award first place finishers, etc...　

I don't know how many gps units we have in the troop so possibly use an app on the phone that they can put coordinates into.　

Anybody else do anything with their troop and maybe have suggestions?　

Thanks,　

Nick　

　

I'm not sure this is the place to ask, but our troop has a couple bucket of mish-mosh lenghts of rope. We want to do some more lashing activity and cut some specific lengths of rope for lashing practice so I've been tasked with getting the rope and some putting together some lashing poles.. Any recommendation on what type of rope, what diameter and where to get it.

Thanks

Curious all you folks that don't have trailers where do you store all the equipment that that belongs to the troop. Dutch ovens, stoves, fresh water jugs, dining fly, tarps, tents, rope, lashing poles, axe, saw, shovel, etc? What do you do for washing dishes, do you not wash dishes, do you set up a wash station, if you set up a wash station, where's the tubs, the stove to boil the water, etc?

For our troop it's all in the trailer and I personally don't have room to store all that stuff at my house, nor would I want to store it all. If I did then I know it would be me loading it and unloading it on every trip. While it sounds all nice to say have the scouts do it. It's isn't a logical reality in our troop.

Backpacking is a totally different story.

But I still wouldn't tow it because my truck's weight is not much different than the trailer weight. That can make for a dangerous situation on slick roads.

That's why trailers have brakes. If the entire towing industry went by your standards, nobody would ever tow anything.

Our trailer is our storage unit and we bring it camping with us, we also use it to store food overnight while camping. Prior to having a trailer,  it all stayed at a leaders house. Troop camping would be with 30+ scouts. Not all scouts had tents. Each patrol has their own cooking gear box. The troop has the tents, the stoves, the dutch ovens, etc. Fresh water jugs, wash basins for washing dishes, etc...Prior to the trailer it was always a couple adults having to make sure gear was loaded into someone pickup, car, whatever...Who has a car big enough to fit backpacks or coolers of food, etc. .With the the trailer all the gear is in there, it just made logistics better.  There's always been a leader in our troop with a pickup truck to tow the trailer. It works great, meet at the school, all scouts throw their personal gear/backpacks into the trailer and away we go. When the troop does smaller backpacking trips, that's a different story. It usually a smaller group of not brand new scouts, they pack light and they pack in and pack out. Not all "camping" has to be backpacking or light weight camping for it to be camping. There are two types of campers in my opinion. One type is campers who hike an the other is hikers who camp. Each trip requires it's own gear. Neither is right or wrong. We have a big campout where we run an iron chef competition. 4 or 5 patrols so each patrol gets a camp stove, a couple a dutch ovens, a folding table, a water jug, a lantern, etc...Who the heck wants to be loading that gear. Or trying to prepare food off a broken picnic table at some campsite, etc...For our troop the trailer works great.

Our council gave me the answer of have them do the 5th grade level and present their findings to a boy scout patrol, leader, etc since they are no longer in cubscouts. Nobody in my troop knows anything about the cyber chip yet.

1)  If the state requires tags on the trailer , then the trailer has a "title".  It is a vehicle, albeit a non-powered one.  The title has a name and address on it, and probably either the driver's license number or the SSN of the named individual.  If it is titled to an "organization", , then the org's EIN, perhaps..

2) Find the title  If no title can be found, go to your MVA/DMV  and ask for a replacement title ($$). If named owner is  dead, then next of kin will probably have to get in the act.  Certificate of death?   With that in hand, go thru the process of selling (?giving?) the title to someone (something? ) else.  Talk to a sympathetic (yes, they can be)  MVA agent about the problem.  It is a Scout Troop trailer.....

3)   Unit Committee and CO (the COR?)  need to talk.  Why is the CO a CO for a Scout unit if not to SUPPORT the unit?   Closet space, parking space, insurance, etc. all are reasonable "support".  If the CO owns the trailer, CO's insurance should cover theft and loss while not being actively towed (check with your insurance agent).    Towing vehicle is USUALLY the "insured" if involved in a traffic accident and attached to the trailer. 

4)  Discuss maintenance costs:   Service brakes, new tires, burned out light bulbs (out of the "Scout Spirit" of the adult leaders?).

5)  Here's a "what if" to discuss:    Mr. ASM tows trailer to the Camporee.   Forest fire breaks out, camp is evacuated, everyone is OK, but the trailer had to be left behind and is now a total loss.  Who pays for all the tents, stoves, lamps, etc.?  How to claim it, God forbid? Is there an inventory?   20 year old trailer is worth how much now?

 

I'm just sayin' ...

It depends on the state. Here in NJ. Trailers are required to be registered and get a license plate, but they don't receive a title. a hand written bill of sale is all that's needed to transfer it from one person to another. No inspection required either.

So here's my question. Brand new crossed over scouts come up to me and ask me "How do I earn the cyber chip, the book doesn't tell me how" So I looking into it and it's done online. There's a 4th-5th grade and a 6-8 chip. So the 4-5 grade chip says to do stuff and present to your den, pack, etc...But AOL scouts are 5th graders in boyscouts, not cubscouts.

So do you change the requirements or have the 5th graders do the 6th grade requirements? Or do you tell them they can't have scout rank until 6th grade...IMO this is a real BSA screwup.

who uses the my.scouting site.

I'm a committee chair and I keep an eye on training for our troop. The my.scouting site totally sucks.

Is there anywhere on the site that I can see what training courses the leaders have completed. All I can seem to find is a report when YPT was taken and expires. And another report that shows leaders are trained or what course they need to complete. But nowhere can I find out what course they have completed. Like I want to know what leaders have taken Hazardous Weather, trek safey, swim safety, etc...

We have AOL and crossover at the same event and do lunch. We have dens build decorations for whatever the theme is. We also include the Webelo II scouts in some of the speaking parts of the ceremony. We award our dens their awards and before dessert we take all the boys into the gym for some game time. They also get to go into the gym before the event also. They seem to enjoy it. It our pack it's purpose is for the Webelo II's and it's just always been that way and never been an issue. Ours lasts a couple hours.

One year for a christmas meeting along with doing coffee mugs where you can slide a picture into them (we colored a christmas themed paper and took a picture of the scout). We also made our own hot chocolate (I have a recipe that uses cocoa powder, cremora, sugar and something else, I can find the recipe if you like) Each scout scooped the proper amounts of each ingredient into a bowl, mixed it and filled a mason jar with it. Then we decorated the mason jar with a red ribbon and piece of green cloth and glued on felt snowflakes. Then they gave the jar and cup to someone as a chrsitmas gift. It was one of their favorite meetings of the year. The kids were head to toe with cocoa powder. It was a good time. Also, I'm a guy and I'm not super crafty either. The hot chocolate recipe I got from my boss and the decorating the jar idea I found online. My wife still has the mug and that was 3 years ago I think.

While in the fairy tale land of how the BSA says a pack should run, dual roles shouldn't happen. But it is what it is and I was in the same boat as you. CM was leaving. I was a den leader. I liked being the den leader. We couldn't get anyone who would take over as CM. I wound up doing it while still being heavily involved in leading my den. I did get a person to step up to be den leader. But yes between being the CM and the den leader and doing all the stuff that a CC does. I've had enough. We have a small pack and while it's fine and dandy to say your committee should be getting a new leader. It just doesn't always happen. For the sake of wanting the pack to continue you assume multiple roles. Sometimes you assume multiple roles just because you want it done right. I will say that we do have in place a person to take over as CM when I go so it won't be as rough of a transition as when I took over.

I'm a cubmaster and got invited to to attend the eagle court of honor for a friends son.

Do I wear my scout uniform or civilian clothes?

We have a family division which is anyone in the family other than the scout. We charge $5 for the car kit that the family purchases from us. We hand out 3 trophies in the family division and it follows the same rules as the scout divisions. We run ours in stages, so it's scout round 1, family round 1, scouts round 2, family round 2(final round), then scouts final round.