Oak Tree

I agree with the quote as well, or at least the general spirit of it.

The only thing I'd add is that bad staffers can have the same effect.

Now, I don't think that a lot of these people have any ill intentions. They do support the cause. And they don't necessarily need to be cut out entirely the way a cancer might be - there are often ways to re-assign them.

And there are others who aren't exactly rude, but aren't welcoming either. They continue in their role doing things the way they've always done them, and things gradually go downhill due to an absence of new blood, new energy, new enthusiasm. I do think this would happen fairly dramatically with Wood Badge, if it weren't for the requirement of bringing in new staff every year.

But even if this is a fact, and it's sometimes easy to identify the troublesome individuals, is there a way this should be handled systematically? Should every position automatically time out, so that people can't stay on indefinitely and become blockers?

We had one unit recharter with three youth. No one mentioned anything about a waiver. I figured I'd ask for one if they told me that I needed five youth, but they didn't say anything about it. Sort of an automatic waiver, I guess. So you might not even need one, depending on who is doing your rechartering.

Congrats to Wayne.

I looked over the list of past CSEs and realized I never knew who the CSEs were during my time as a Scout. Maybe that's a good thing.

You can be sure if someone is hurt the BSA's liability insurance lawyers will work hard to find a way to deny coverage, and not following the rules makes the lawyer's job a whole lot easier.

and

you need to understand that BSA lawyers work to protect the organization, not YOU the leader. They'll cut bait and throw you under the bus in a heartbeat to protect the council and national. They'll hang the CO out to dry if need be.

We hear this a lot on the forum. Can you provide any examples of times when the BSA has tried to deny coverage and thrown the CO under the bus? The BSA has a huge incentive to keep its CO system in place, and one of the big things that they promise is that they provide insurance coverage. This question gets asked repeatedly and I can't recall any time when someone has actually provided an example that described this situation.

Rayburn, I'm not aware of any reason this should not be done.

I'd ask the ASM to show you the rules that specify this. "I would hate to violate the US flag code in Scouts. If we're not supposed to raise the flag indoors, then we won't. Can you show me where it says that we're not supposed to do that?"

I doubt he can find anything. As you've observed, it's not easy for you to find anything that says this.

I'm with the others. If I were running the event, I might do things differently. There are various things here that don't come across great.

But I don't think that making a stink about it is going to be in anyone's best interests.

The only thing I might recommend, this being from my position as Scoutmaster, is that a parent who passes on some information from his son can provide a useful service. I don't know everything that happens, or how it affects every boy. So, getting some feedback about how some Scout is being really frustrated by some adult, or whatever, can be good info to have. In this case, though, it sounds like the Scoutmaster is already aware of this to some extent in your case.

Do you really want to be the guy who "puts up a stink"?

Our troop has found the hardest to fill is treasurer. We literally had your situation, where a family moved in, the dad was an experienced Scouter, and he said "I'll do whatever you need me to do". We made him treasurer, because at the time, our former one had just stepped down and no one had thus far volunteered.

I think that part of what makes it hard to fill is that it takes a fairly dedicated person, but those people usually are already volunteering for more visible roles. People who like to work in the background don't necessarily want to take a job that requires such constant attention.

Plus there is a smaller selection pool, since this is one job you really don't want someone to do badly at.

In general, I expect a MBC to be able to tell a Scout what he'll need to do to earn the merit badge.

The first discussion, which can be by phone, or can be in person, can help set the ground rules. What does the counselor expect as proof that the Scout has done the requirements? What is his interpretation of some of the details? Which requirements will they do together and which ones should the Scout be expected to do on his own? In short, I wouldn't worry about having the Scout being too unprepared for his first meeting.

Sure, it could be nice if the Scout has read the requirements, has a blue card, has a copy of the merit badge book, and has read it. But I don't think those things are necessary for the first meeting.

I think that someone's interpretation of the rules depends on what they believe the rules are intended to produce.

If we think it's a life skill, it's one thing. If we think it's to make sure you don't drown when you fall in from a boat or the dock, it's another thing. If it's to make sure you're fine playing in the deep end of the pool, it's something else.

At any rate, the rules don't explicitly say anything about what aids may be used. For today's generation of Scouts, almost all of them are used to using goggles in the pool. Most of them use goggles for the test. We don't say anything about it. If someone wanted to use a mask, we'd allow that too.

I figure the main point of swimming 100 yards is to show that you are comfortable in the water and can swim for an extended period of time, longer than what a burst of energy would allow.

I can see the point of saying "in a strong manner", but it's just a terrible test. What does that mean? How do you tell all of the leaders in your group to evaluate it in the same manner? What is the actual intent of that? If the point is to indicate that the Scout would be able to keep going beyond 100 yards, then change the test. Make it 150 yards, or 200 yards, or whatever it is you actually think they should be able to swim. If it means that they should be able to do it in some certain amount of time, then just write the test that way. As it is, my interpretation is roughly this - "if the Scout can swim 100 yards, he's able to swim in a strong manner."

The requirement for a trained lifeguard typically comes from the camp.

Our camp allows us to do our own swim checks, but they have to be signed by a lifeguard.

We've typically avoided the Scout camp swim check for multiple reasons. There's thunder. There's bureaucracy (waiting in a long line). There's the hassle of trying to make sure everyone carries their swim suit with them at the right time.

Much easier to do on our own. We also use that test to make sure everyone is ok for boating activities.

As for the "strong manner", that's the worst part of the requirement. If you take some kid who's learning how to swim, and finally makes the required 100 yards, are you going to tell him, "Sorry, not strong enough."? That seems like a great way to kill a kid's motivation.

Did he physically assault another Scout?

If so, he's gone from the the Troop in my book...period.

Yeah, if only life were so easy. It can be hard to tell who really started something. Even when one kid throws the first punch, it can be because the other kid was intentionally provoking him (sometimes for a long time). We once had two brothers get into a fist fight that clearly was being carried over from internal family frustrations.

Sometimes it can also be hard to tell where the "assault" started. Boys are rough-housing a little bit, and it gets out of control.

We certainly deal with all of those situations and take various steps, and it's really pretty uncommon in our environment, but it's not quite as easy as declaring a "zero-tolerance" policy.

We've actually never had to ask a parent to attend with a Scout, although that's definitely in our disciplinary bag of tricks. Most of the time we try to deal with it the way Stosh does. I find that new parents, and parents of younger kids, tend to advocate for harsher punishments. Some of them have told me that they have been impressed, over time, at how well the older kids seem to take direction from us, and they've come to appreciate the more subtle approaches to dealing with problems.

I could see that there might be a period of waiting until the council rep signed it. That would give council the chance to do whatever checks they needed to. But once the council rep has signed it, what's the point of waiting longer?

I'm with you - it seems like once the council has approved, the project should be able to begin.

Ok, I'll put on my best teacher persona and try to hand out credit.

The question hasn't been all that clearly asked, as we've demonstrated, so I'll make up my own idea of what the question was.

"In the given scenario, is this likely to develop into something that requires Scoutmaster action or are the Scouts likely to have a good result among themselves?"

Full credit to Beavah for arguing that the Scouts are fine in this situation.

"Provide a general framework for making such distinctions."

Full credit to Beavah based on his above post. Hard to argue with anything there.

"Provide an argument for this specific case that will be effective at convincing others of your point of view."

Partial credit on this one. The ongoing discussion and method of making the points seemed to create a little bit of a backlash.

Now, since I'm in teacher mode, and I can hand out passes or not, I'll deal with OGE's request: I find it disquieting that we give someone a pass who totally misrepresented what another person said

I'm actually going to hand out passes all around on this one. Forum members have to respond to what they perceive the other person to be saying. All readers are able to read the posts and make their own interpretation. Posters frequently take someone else's point and grab on to a more extreme variety of the point being made. Yes, it would be good to try to assume everyone else is being reasonable, but I'd rather focus on the ideas being discussed rather than whether or not we are accurately capturing what each other has said.

And lastly, on Beavah's point that he loves talking about issues, but not about people:

Half-credit on that one. Looking back through Beavah's posts to find the quotes I included above, I was struck by how those quotes were a distinct minority. So there is a great majority of the posts that do discuss issues.

But I took off forthe fact that there were indeed a number of posts where he did discuss other posters, at least to a small extentthe fact that the claim was insistent that he did not do this.the way the argument was presented in some of the posts on this thread - telling OGE that "Carryin' that type of anger and emotion for decades is not normal or healthy." While strictly speaking, this is talking to someone, and not about someone, it's also not a discussion of the idea being presented; it is a discussion of the person who is presenting the argument.

So yes, Beavah, you get credit for getting this one right. It's too bad that someone with your discernment and writing ability didn't get the point across without antagonizing others. Are you really arguing with Twocubdad, one of the most reliably reasonable posters on the board? And do you really want to maintain that you never talk about other people?

I don't think of this as a "youth protection issue", at least not in the terms that BSA normally uses.

It certainly is a legal issue that you need to address. Presumably, if a restraining order is obtained that requires him to stay away from the kids, he would not be able to attend troop meetings. You wouldn't have to do anything special to enforce this. I wouldn't see how the troop would have any more "responsibility to enforce the Court's order" than any other person or organization. As a leader, I'd hate being placed in the middle of this.

You don't need to ask him to leave. The Court is asking him not to show up, assuming that the order is granted.

I think I'd sit back, wait, and not have the troop leaders take sides.

What do you need a membership committee for? I don't think I've ever interfaced with one that did anything that really mattered to our troop.

We've found most recruitment works best at the unit level.

Honestly, my district works ok, and we do a few things with district-level folks, but if the district disappeared tomorrow, it would barely be noticeable to the troop.

Unless they are actively coming to you and screwing up your program, I don't see why you'd need to be so negative towards them. You seem to be expecting them to do something for you. They are just volunteers like you.

Did he say nice, supportive things about the Boy Scouts?

Yes.

I can't point to anything the President has said that's negative about the Boy Scouts. I was at the jamboree and I'm glad we didn't have the security nightmare.

I suspect, though, that his position on gay marriage and gay rights in general puts him strongly at odds with the national BSA policy. At some point I wouldn't be surprised if he were to decide that he can't continue to be the honorary president of the organization. I don't think the BSA is going to kick him out, and I don't think he'd do anything prior to the election, but if he's elected for a second term, I wouldn't be shocked if he decided to step down as honorary president.

Yeah, our pack would have been ok with both examples in the original post. The first one (shooting when everyone else is) I don't think we would have thought twice about.

For the second one, I think that having a shooting club set up the range and the rules, that's pretty much equivalent to having the council do it.

Now, if you are reading the G2SS literally, you're right, I think you'd decide that they aren't allowed.

As for your four examples later, I think we could actually manage to do most of those in some fashion or another.

"Let's go bb shooting, I have a big back yard." This one would be the hardest, as it seems to be expressly denied. However, if you get some adults to take the council shooting sports training (and for our council, the guy came to our CO and put on a program one Saturday morning.) The council actually loaned us BB guns. If the backyard is big enough and safe enough that you can set up a real range and follow all the rules, you might be able to get it to be a council-approved activity.

"Let's do archery, my club will put on a program." I think that the archery clubs have rules very much in line with what the BSA has. I'm always comfortable allowing professionals to run things.

"Let's go canoeing on the lake." For this one, we might say that we're doing a day at the state park. There will be some family free time involved. Families who want to go canoeing can.

"Let's go to that place that offers rafting on the river, it's a blast." Again, we might do this on a camping trip, with family free time.

The primary rule for the top two is that you make sure you have official competent supervision. For the next two, you make it clear that parents are responsible for their own families.

Our district actually put on one event at a park where families could take out the park boats, so I know they viewed that as ok.

If you wanted to be really correct, you could always talk to someone (DE or someone else) at the council office, and get their stamp of approval.

Yeah, moosetracker, in some cases the DE could be a reasonable person to go to. One reason that people might go straight to the SE is that in the G2SS it says "Any violations of the BSAs Youth Protection policies must immediately be reported to the Scout executive."

Another is that for problems like this, a DE might bump it up the chain and have the SE deal with it anyway.

However, especially in large councils, the SE isn't going to be able to deal with all of these problems personally. I know that in our council, if you call to report a problem like this to the SE, you're going to get referred to the Director of Field Services, who is a very reasonable guy.

A lot of DEs just don't have the experience needed to deal with the situation. Some do, though, and if you happen to know your DE and feel comfortable with him, that would be a great place to start.

In the end, it doesn't really matter who you talk to at the council office. You just need to talk to someone.

Big people talk about ideas.

Smile. Yep, I got this one covered. I'm definitely a big person. Even bigger than the guy who is intimidating PepperSammy over in the Cubmaster Problems thread. I'm all about ideas.

I'll pass on the discussin' others bit.

I've got to work on my body language. My smiling good-natured attitude just isn't coming through entirely correctly.

Even while discussing ideas, people come up every now and then. I just can't resist things like "Lisa'bob does a great job of giving reasonable responses" or "Don't you love the way Beavah writes?" Or even, "Stosh's advocacy of a pure boy-led troop, followed by his subsequent dismissal, presents an interesting advocacy dilemma. How far do you recommend going in that area?"

Plus, I know that every now and then you do at least mention other forum members, even if it's not a big part of your contribution....

Dang! Where's Kudu to jump in and say, no, no, all this talk of multi-tasking is just newfangled management woodbadge BS.Right after I was agreein' with BobWhite on his reformulation, too. Then he hits me with R1, R5, and R3, plus his typical "lets make this a personal dig" twist, eh?That moderator, in my personal opinion, tends to be one of the few here who take sniping potshots at other posters I do know that I've learned a lot from a number of folks here, eh? Good ideas, good perspective that have helped me in my work on behalf of scoutin'. Eagledad, Lisabob, jblake, scoutldr, Eamonn, Oak Tree and many, many others. Yeh all know who yeh are!Yah, yah, we also have Merlyn, of course, but we keep him around as our pet troll.

That's all I'm saying. When you get together with people to talk about ideas, you can still find it convenient to come back to your common point of reference - including referencing those who advocate some of those ideas.

Now I'm off to try to lose some weight and become less big.

Should I be able to complain without giving my name?

Maybe you should, but there isn't any easy mechanism for doing this. Still, you could definitely do it. Call the CO or the council office from a phone that's not yours, or send an email from some email address that you get just for the purpose.

Honestly, though, I'd really hope you don't want to complain anonymously. Do you have friends in the pack? If you don't, I'd just leave. If you do, I'd get together with them and make a multiple complaint. If I were the CO, I'd want to know about this, so that I could remove the CM. Most COs would, I think, unless this pack is chartered by a "friends of" organization that is led by the CM. But if you are chartered by a church or a community organization, there is no way that they want this guy to be CM.

At this point the facts are so egregious that everyone is going to take swift action to fix things, if they are told about them. So either tell someone or leave. Tell everyone. Tell anyone. Tell them in person, or anonymously. I don't think that you'd be out of line asking for a personal meeting with the SE. Tell them the story either by yourself or with others. But if you want this pack to survive and you want to stay in it, and the facts are all the way that you relate them, you've got to do something.

Now, as an aside, I reckon the propriety of gossipin' behind people's backs and makin' side bets about their character or tendencies is left as an exercise for the reader.

Actually, I agree with you on this one (and yep, I did note the smiley that went along with it). In general, I'm a big fan of openness. I find this an effective way to deal with leaders. I don't want to say "Now, don't tell Bob that I said this, but ...". If another leader comes to me and says "I don't like the way Bob is doing things", then I'll say, let's get Bob over here and discuss it.

So, for the same reason, I'm not really taking side bets behind Beavah's back. I'm admitting it right up front.

At the same time, though, I reckon that all of us who post on the forum need to recognize that people are going to form opinions about us. All of us who lead youth need to recognize that the youth are going to go home and talk about us. Some people might even not like us. Just goes with the territory.

But I do try to encourage my leaders not to "gossip" about the Scouts. It's an easy trap to fall into - sitting around the campfire after the Scouts have gone to bed, and talking about how one of them has terrible behavior, or one of them seems to be totally uncoordinated, or whatever. But things that you say like this have a way of getting back to the Scouts. So I do try to encourage everyone to say things that they'd be happy to say to the Scouts directly.

And besides, it wasn't really a side bet. I may have exaggerated a little on that point. :-)

Still, I'd be happy to meet up with you and discuss all the other forum members. Hard to resist.

I think that a U-Haul trailer could work well. I'll just add one word of caution, which may or may not apply depending on where you are renting. They seemed to be extremely disorganized in terms of knowing exactly what trailers they would have on hand to rent. You could reserve one, but they seemed to be depending on the fact that people might be returning trailers to them from other places.

Some places seem to have way more trailers than they could rent at any one time, so you would probably be fine in those situations. But if you happened to pick a very busy weekend, there might be some uncertainty in terms of exactly what you'd get. This might not matter too much if you can be flexible in your size of trailer, too. The worst case situation would be if you reserved something, and showed up, and they didn't have any trailers on hand. "Well, we're expecting people to bring them in at any time."

Still, I think for a lot of troops, this may indeed be a more economical option.

Yes, ours get used off-season. The districts hold their camporees there. Units use them from time to time. Our pack has camped there a couple of times, but I don't think our troop has. The OA Ordeal is held there. Wood Badge is held there. Training programs (IOLS, BALOO) are held there.

Other groups are able to use the facilities as well, for a rental fee. I don't know what the usage looks like, but I do have the impression that there is some.

Oak Tree, I'm not quite sure what you are asking.

Are you asking if whether the opinion of a half dozen people has convinced me that all pranks should be forever banned in every scout unit across the land?

Are yeh asking whether I think that some pranks are inappropriate?

Are yeh asking whether I think that when lads do poor pranks that the proper response is to ban all pranks in a unit?

Are yeh asking whether I find Alan Funt and the modern Canadian candid camera pranks to be contrary to the Scout Law?

Yeah, I guess I wasn't clear in the way I phrased my question. I wasn't really asking any of the above items (especially the Candid Camera one :-) and I'd agree with your answers to all of them.

I think my questions would really be something more like:

If the acting SM from the OP decided to discourage the older Scouts from doing this prank, is he really thereby treating the younger Scouts as if they are "made of glass"?

As I read your statements on their own, without the context of the original post, I don't see much that I'd argue with. The thing that I see is that your statements that pranks can be ok, in the context of the original question, seems to be arguing that this particular prank is not at all inappropriate.

So in that regard, my question would be, do you think that the prank as described might be inappropriate? and would it be ok for the acting SM to discourage it?

I'm also testing a side bet with another poster as to whether you'd ever admit you might be wrong. In this case, I don't think I'm so much saying that you're wrong, but instead that the way you are choosing to argue your position is coming across in a way different from what you might intend.

And, in the interest of fairness, here are my answers to your questions:

Do you really feel it's appropriate to ban all pranks if one somewhere sometime went awry in the mind of one boy? No. If so, how is that any different from banning paint rollers or canoeing? Well, I'm not making that argument, but if I were, I think it would be that it's crazy to ban paint rollers and canoeing, because those things have a positive part in a good program, whereas pranks might not. Note again, though, I'm not arguing that.

Are yeh really claiming that all pranks, as packsaddle suggests, are violations of the Scout Law which have no place in Scouting or in a scout's day-to-day life, from Alan Funt on down? No.

Do yeh feel that when boys do somethin' inappropriate in a unit, the proper response is a unit-wide prohibition? No. So if, as BDPT00 points out, a lad has a bad experience at his OA Ordeal, we should prohibit OA Ordeals? An off-color skit means banning all campfire skits? No, and no.

Did yeh refuse to watch Candid Camera back in the day? Nah. Would yeh walk out on the Canadian version I linked to? Tell your parents it was inappropriate for scouts to watch because it glorifies violations of the Scout Law? Or did yeh sit down and say "Wow, some of those were really clever!" and note how they all ended in smiles? No, no, and yes. One difference is that I know that Candid Camera talks to the people afterwards and gets them to sign releases that allows Candid Camera to televise the episodes. Everyone on the TV has expressly agreed to be publicly humiliated (or more likely, they don't think it's actually embarrassing or humiliating.) Now that I think about it, that might actually be a good test for a prank. If you are willing to film the prank and the Scouts (both prank-er and prank-ee) would likely be happy to show it to their parents, then it's probably ok.

I agree that some of the literature does make it sound like the chaplain would normally be an ordained minister. However, my experience is that that would be a rare situation in practice. We've had a number of troop chaplains, and none of them have been ordained. I really think that most troops do not have an option of having an ordained person serve as chaplain. A layperson would not just be not unusual - it would be far and away the norm.