ParkMan

@The Latin Scot - that's exactly my point.

The guy ate a frog while filming a survival show.  Yes, he did it in a national preserve - a bad choice.  But, on the spectrum of offsenses the one seems pretty minor.  Why does that now make him a poor roll model?

I'd rather have him use it as a teachable moment.  Here's an opportunity to admit his mistake and to highlight the importance of national parks and their role in protecting the environment.

But instead you'd rather have him step down and no-one talk about it?  

I'm not going to knock the GSUSA for selling cookies or for partnerting with WB/DC.  The GSUSA has a different program than the BSA and that's fine.  More power to them.   That's why I think this lawsuit is inherently dumb.  They are two different programs with two different sets of activities.

On second thought - I do knock the GSUSA for partnering with DC.  If they'd had an ounce of sense they'd be partnering with Marvel - not DC. 

I guess my question would be:

What's more important, someone who is the best example of the Scouting ideals, but is boring, so someone who can capture the imagination of youth, insprire them, but misses the mark on things like this.  Sure - we'd like someone who is great at both - but those folks seem to be in short supply.

Thanks for sharing the podcast @AltadenaCraig.  

While i fully appreciate his point - that Scouting starts with the patrol method, I've found that strongest troops I know of focus on more than just patrol method.  They have a great outdoor program, they develop youth leaders, they have a strong advancement programs, they build a strong adult team to mentor the Scouts, they continue to push for continual personal growth opportunities for the scouts, etc.

I'd simply suggest that it's important to focus on all eight of the methods.  Don't overlook adult association because you're focused on working in patrols.  Don't overlook leadership development because you're foused on advancement.  Don't overlook personal growth because you're focused on outdoor program. 

On 2/22/2019 at 12:13 PM, ValleyBoy said:

Let me ask a question.  Is the unit in compliance if the registered adult female leader was in the adult campsite with no youth in that campsite and 2 registered adult male leaders were in the youth campsite over 100 yards away out of sight of the adult campsite instructing a scouting skill. If this is a violation of YP there would be YP violations at every council and district activities such as camporees and summer camp where a registered adult female was not present each camporee event or each merit badge class that had a female youth taking part in the event or class.  

 

Based on my understand - yes, the unit would be in compliance.

However, I tihnk you have to look at why the BSA made this YPT rule.  In essence, YPT rules exist for two main purposes 1) protect youth from situations where abuse is more likely to occur, & 2) protect adult volunteers from being in situations which are more likely to lead to accusations of abuse.  I know there is a third reason - to protect the BSA in lawsuits, but for the sake of discussion, let's not focus on that at this time.  I expect that the BSA leadership felt that situations with a female youth was alone with two adult males was a scenario where there was enough possibility of abuse or allegations of abuse that they created this rule.

Imagine a scenario where a female adult leader is on premises but out of sight and two adult male leaders are alone with a single female youth.  My understanding is that this would meet the YPT requirements.  Yet, it doesn't do anything to minimize the possibilty or abuse or abuse allegations over the original rules.

This is where I think that the BSA YPT rules are inherently unwiedly.  The BSA would have been better taking a more progressive stand by staying with their original two-deep rules or by taking an approach where no individiual youth of a one gender can be alone with one or more adults of a different gender.  i.e., two youth females and two adult males - OK.  one youth female, one adult female, one adult male - OK.  one youth female, one youth male, one adult female, one adult male - OK.  one youth male, two adult females - not OK.  etc.
 

I find the 8 methods are largely complimentary and go to building a diverse exerpience for Scouts.  For example, if you focus mostly on advancement - then eventually Scouts get bored.  If you focus mostly on outdoors - the same.  So, I don't think I'd rank them - but instead ask myself - what's the best I can do in each?

The strongest troops that I know seem to do well in all. Sure, not every one requires the same level of effort - but it doesn't mean it's any less important.  For example, an active outdoor program requires lots of time whereas uniforming does not.  Uniforming is more about setting the proper expectations early and simply reminding Scouts along the way.  Sure, with uniforming you can put some energy into things like uniform closets and "Class B" uniforms -  but even those don't require too much effort once they get going.

I'd also suggest that focusing on all 8 of them provides opportunities for more scouts & adults to get involved.  Scouts may get bored by high school with just patrol method, camping, and advancement.  That's where the focus on personal growth, leadership development, and adult association pays off.  Adult Assocation and outdoor program create opportunities for more adults to take on small rolls.

Our pack had a financial model where Scouts paid for events as they go.  So, one year we decided to have our B&G catered.  It ended up being about $5-10 per person.  We had no objections from families.  In fact, most of our families told us that they preferred paying a little bit to avoid having to pull together a potluck dinner.

I think you really just have to know your pack families.  $20-$40 to attend the B&G wasn't going to break any of our families, so we traded some convenience over saving money.  Worked well for us.  Had we been a pack with a different set of families, maybe we wouldn't have done that.

Hi @PARENTinSCOUT,

If you really want to see this policy happen I would encourage you to seek out your council's Youth Protection champion.  If your council has one, this would be a senior volunteer who has the mandate of making Youth Protection policies successful in your council.  This volunteer would not get involved in resolving what happened in your specific troop.  But, they would be a person to talk with about the possibility of your council adopting a no retaliation policiy for reports of Youth Protection violations.  Futher, this person would be aware of similar regional level contacts who they could discuss this process of how to get a no retaliation policy adopted at a larger level in Scouting.

Best of luck!

There's two different issues here.

1) the question of which stands in court really has nothing to do with the BSA directly.  In court, it will be up to whichever lawyer makes the more compelling argument.  In this case the BSA has two documents - one which defines the policy and one which expands and clarifies it.  Here, I think just about any lawyer would be able to make the argument that both hold.  But, I'm not a lawyer - so perhaps I'm wrong.

2) I completly agree that the BSA should be more precise in this language.  There's probably something like 10-20 different adult supervision scenarios that exist.  I don't want more rules, but writing these exisiting scenarios out makes a whole lot of sense to me.

14 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

DE couldn't do it, but the Scout Executive can. And I can tell you in my experience, SEs will avoid getting involved in unit matters .

I think this confuses many people.  They presume that the "BSA hierarchy" will overule, supervise, correct, etc. unit leaders.

I recognized a long time ago that the BSA is essentially a francise system.  The BSA provides the program and infrastructure for the chartered organizations to run their own program.  Local unit operations and volunteer supervision is entirely within the domain of the chartered organization.  The BSA does not get involved in unit operations unless there is a safety or youth protection issue.  Beyond that, the BSA really attempts to stay uninvolved in local unit management.

4 hours ago, dkurtenbach said:

 

Check out the discussion on the Facebook page of the Girl Scouts of Colorado.  The Council's comment included the following:  "This all started as an inside joke with her friends and family.  She has sold her supply of 35 boxes or so, and is no longer using the image to sell cookies - though her cookie season is ongoing."  Other comments delve into the intellectual property issue, as well as the appropriateness of using an image of a shirtless, well-muscled man to sell Girl Scout cookies.

My daughter's are girl scouts and I wish the GSUSA all the success in the world.  

But given how part of the GSUSA lawsuit specifically focused on the actions of individual local units, their comment seems remarkably hypocritical. 

Ugh - I just wish this had not stooped to the level of lawsuits.

My understanding that a retaliation clause would more directly effects those who are friends of the YPT offender.  i.e., we're going to make your life tough for making a YPT report against our good friend Scoutmaster Joe.

It would seem pretty reasonable for the BSA to have a statement prohibiting retaliation of good faith YPT concerns.  Simply saying that retalation in response to good faith YPT claims can result in revocation of membership in the BSA ought to be sufficient.  Leave it to the BSA to arbitrate what good faith means on a case by case basis.

I have to assume that in a one-on-one meeting, either parent (male or female) could serve as the second adult.  It wouldn't make any sense otherwise.

I would concur with @Sentinel947.  In our area, gifts are not typical nor expected for completing Wood Badge. But, if you'd like to present a small gift, I'm sure it would be meaningful to your Cubmaster. 

I have a Fieldbook presented to me as a gift by the den leader where I was a den chief as a Scout.  A different situation - I grant you.  But, it's something that sits on my bookshelf to this day and is meaningful to me.

I'm still intreguied by the new unit Commissioner part of @Ranman328's question.

I've always been of the understanding that the role of a UC is to provide guidance to the unit leaders to help them be successful.  Advice can certainly sometimes be directive i.e. "you should allow the Scouts more time to individually finish ranks on their own timeline instead of rushing it."

But, generally I've always thouht of the UC as more of a trusted advisor or a consultant.  If a new UC showed up and started telling me what I was doing wrong, I'd don't think I'd listen too much.  "who is this UC person and why do they think they can just show up and tell me how to run my meeting?"

I wonder what other people thought in this instance.  For the sake of discussion, assume for a minute that the Scoutmaster did the wrong thing here.  Should a new UC to a new Scoutmaster critique the first meeting like this?

I'm not surprised to hear that the Scoutmaster is new to the role.  The new 2019 Scouts BSA online training is really playing up the buddy part.   I was struck by how prevalent it now is in the materials.

I could very much see how a newly trained leader could be confused by that one.

There is no tax implication for the reason you mentioned.  Theoreticallly it's like a church allocating $1,000 to their youth group.

5 hours ago, Cubmaster Pete said:

While I do not have a problem being more involved with the CO, and they have been generous in the past, this really boils down to 1) they can't get their own members to show up and help with this public event and 2) they have had a few dissenters in the past about remaining our CO (been since 1940's)

They do provide a meeting space, but we choose to use a local church hall for both pack and troop meetings as it is much larger and more conducive to what we need. They do not provide storage for any gear other than space to park a small trailer.  They also provide a small campsite area.

Understood.  I think this is one of those "lemonade from lemons" situations.  

It's been my experience in dealing with CO's that they are not terribly well versed in how to manage the Pack/CO relationship.  So, when they do nutty things (like trying to bribe the pack to help out), it helps to take a step back and ask "what are they really saying here?"

I think it's always worth strengthening the CO/Pack relationship.  If you think that the CO is asking for too big a committment, then to @fred8033's point - start a dialog and see if there is something that does work.

You're going to need about 50 scouts to do this over the course of the year.  With 40 scouts between the pack & troop, you'll probably want to ask each scout to sign up for 1 or 2 spots.  That's not an awful burden to help fund the pack.

But, I think my real question would be - do you want to do this?  As I see it, your CO is basically asking you all to be more involved in the CO's success.  We as Scouters are often commenting how uninvolved the COs are in our units.  This strikes me as an opportunity to be more engaged with the CO.  That can be a very good thing.

My recommendation would be that you think of this as an opportunity to do regular service for your CO.  Discuss with your leaders if they want to have an ongoing service project with the CO.  Make it less about the money and more about the service and about being part of the CO's community.

If you all decide to do it, I'd have an honest discussion with the head of the CO.  Basically, explain to him/her how doing something like this monthly will become a significant task for you.  Make sure he/she realizes that it will take some hard work on everyone's part to mobilize families (most of who are not members of the CO) to volunteer like this.  Make sure that this is what he/she really wants you to do.  I've found that sometimes these things seem better on paper that in reality and that often once people understand the real cost - they change their mind.

@Mom2Scout My last post was getting long and this is a different point, so please pardon the double post.

In your specific situation, I would encourage you to start participating in the committee meetings.  Something that I took away from @ianwilkins great post is that it's not necessarily the decision to start a troop for girls that is the issue.  It's how the interaction works between the troop for boys and the troop for girls that is the area of focus.

A great place for you to be able to impact how this all works out is from the troop committee.  You're already quite active in the troop - so why not start working with the troop committee to help this all progress smoothly.  The other benefit to being active on the troop committee is that you often develop a stronger working relationship with the Scoutmaster.  You become part of the group of adults who discuss things like "should we have a troop for girls" and "when should we announce the troop for girls?"  This is a great position to say "excuse me, we probably ought to tell people about this before recharter."

The Scouts tend to notice the actions of the SM & ASMs.  But, often when the parents start seeing things like how decisions are made and communicated, that's really a big part of why troop committees are important.

4 hours ago, Mom2Scout said:

Thanks, Scouters.

Unfortunately, we live in an area with few troops.  The other one somewhat nearby includes his school bully, so....switching would likely be traumatic.  There is a lot I can't say without being so specific that if the SM was on this forum (likely) that he would know I aired some dirty laundry here.  FWIW, the same night the boys were officially told, the parents were also.  It wasn't  heart-to-heart so much of a this is how it is, deal with it kind of thing.  I think they could have come up with a better compromise to make families less unhappy.  I mean, yes, their scout sold popcorn at tables in freezing temps, but many parents were out there too.  They were adamant about sharing funds vs. having a a separate account for the girls. 

As for voting with feet, our troop maintains Scout accounts where they receive a portion of sales to help them personally go to camp.  Since the fundraiser was so successful, many parents feel tethered and trapped to the troop until at least summer camp because of their scout's account.  If they leave, they cannot take it with them to another troop. For some people, this is several hundred dollars.  This has led many parents to be wary to join in the next fundraiser because they want to see how this is going to play out before deciding to stay or go.

I don't want you to think I am anti-girl.  I am not.  I am more anti the process that was forced upon the troop.  I support our troop with time, talent, and treasure.  We are two weeks in to this and it is going to be a bumpy road.  I share our experience mainly for others to understand some of the issues that have come up so that they can hopefully avoid some of the same issues if they look at standing up a girl troop.

@Mom2Scout I completely agree with you that the troop leadership could have handled the timing of this better.  Waiting until after recharter is done suggests that the leadership feared that Scouts would leave and they wanted to avoid that.  It may be untrue and unfair, but that's what it suggests.  The leadership team should have avoided that perception and announced it earlier in the process.  Perhaps just before recharter.

In my experience, Troops are essentially small communities.  For most Scouts, their involvement in the troop is a significant part of their lives.  So, their families tend to invest lots of energy to support the troop.  Making abrupt changes like this tends to alienate many families - and as such should be avoided.  It's generally a good idea to give the families enough heads up so that they are aware something like this is coming.

It's true that the Chartered Organization owns the troop and could unilaterally decide this - but I think it will be rare.  In the BSA structure, the troop committee is tasked with serving as a board of directors for the troop.  One of the troop committee's roles is to make strategic decisions affecting the troop.  If the troop committee believes that developing a troop for girls, whether linked or separate, is the right thing to do, then it's wholly appropriate for them to start the process.  The Troop Committee may decide to solicit opinions and input - but ultimately they should only ask for input if they are prepared to make decisions based off it.  It would do the troop community no good if the Troop Committee asks the Scouts and then does the opposite.  Better to have not asked in the first place.  But, if the Troop Committee is willing to follow the decision of the Scouts, then by all means - ask the Scouts.

Once the decision to start a troop for girls is made, they should work to start it in a way the will lead to success for both troops.  If that means two tightly linked troops, then so be it.  if that means the troops should be linked only at the highest levels, then so be it.  Surprising families at the last minute is not the best way to do that.  This is where I go back to my original point of community.

It feels like advancement often gets a disproportionate amount of attention.  As I see it, advancement is just one of eight methods of Scouting.  It's not the most important nor the least important.  It's just one of the eight.

Our troop provides lots of opportunities for Scouts to work on advancement.  Often it's in the form on a PLC organized event, skills instruction, or adult organized time to work on something.  We make sure the opportunities are easily and readily available for a motivated Scout who wants to advance.  We don't force advancement on anyone, but nor do we try to slow it down.  In our troop, if you participate actively and want to, you can get to first class in about a year and you can be Eagle at 14 or 15.  Or you can come to every meeting and event and be Tenderfoot until your 18.  It's the Scout's choice.    On the whole, our scouts tend to move along.  Most get to Life by about 14.  Some power on to Eagle, others stay at Life for years.  Our older scouts don't really focus on advancing - they focus on doing things that they think are fun and it keeps them engaged.

This feels about right to me.  Again - advancement is just one of eight methods.  We make it possible to advance if you want, we make it possible to do other things if you want.  Scouts who want advancement advance. Scout who want to camp camp.  Scouts who want to be leaders lead.  etc.

My takeaway from @FireStone's post is that it's not about whether you advance too fast or too slow.  It's about whether the Scouts are advancing at a pace that's rewarding to them and keeps them motivated.  Make sure the opportunities are there and let the Scouts decide.

I do like this description on the advancement method from the BSA:

Quote

Advancement. Boy Scouting provides a series of surmountable obstacles and steps in overcoming them through the advancement method. The Boy Scout plans his advancement and progresses at his own pace as he meets each challenge. The Boy Scout is rewarded for each achievement, which helps him gain self-confidence. The steps in the advancement system help a Boy Scout grow in self-reliance and in the ability to help others.

1 minute ago, mrkstvns said:

Must be the new math...

I figure it to be 12 girls troops and 1 boys troop per state. 

Guess I need to go back and work on my math skills.  Oops!

Still - seems pretty impressive to me.

That's about 30 new troops per state.  Not too shabby!