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I have mixed feelings. Technically, I always want to see a PL's signature in nearly all but the last two reqs for Tenderfoot 2nd Class and 1st Class. But then, I want that to be a PL/SPL I recognize. So I can understand why an SM might take that responsibility for a provisional camper. It sounds like you don't know this SM very well, and the boy garnered a lot of signatures. I'd either 1. Give the guy a call. 2. Ask the scout to review the skills he mastered with his PL, and get the PL's opinion.

The iNtel chip set bit our stats center. It's amazing how a 1 per million error rate can infiltrate so many analyses when they involve at least that many floating point ops for each . One of our guys in frustration put an Insel Intide sticker on our sys ops' door. Fortunately we had a legacy VAX/VMS to fall back on until new cores were sent. If your son agrees with the reasoning, that's fine. Just saying that sometimes a double-check is in order ... especially if it was only one scouter who made the comment without confirmation from the CC and SM.

Kids' reports from camp. If you or your leaders have access to social media posts from scouts and venturers (including camp staff) ... clip and repost them anonymously. A resume from your lodge chief and VOA president would nice ... Those kind of things remind leaders about who's important. I think a knot-of-the month might be popular. The "latest and greatest" for the first aid kit might be handy. Or wildneress first aid tips. Excersizes to perpare for high adventure might go over well.

No personal experience, but ... I have had several scouts attend there (a few, repeatedly, including a troop who wants to merge with ours) and have a great time. Some of those also attended Heritage Reservation, so here are some 2nd hand contrasts/comparisons: Aquatics facilties are small-ish. Food service is dining hall (patrols send waiters). I've not heard any complaints about quality or quantity. Staff are very enthusiastic. Buckeye council seems to bring them up over a number of years. MB program is pretty standard. The boys seem to know what they were supposed to have been taught. They do not participate in O/A, rather they have a tradition called Pipestone. It is designed to encourage scouts to return every year having advanced one rank. It's not clear to me from the boys who've done both if they prefer one over the other. Leaders have told me they try to stick by the first-years because the ceremony is held after dark and can be intimidating. Family night was Thursday (at least this year, I wanted to visit, but life intervened). I assume that the other areas compare well with Heritage Reservation since they didn't mention them.

Here's a thought. More than half of the requirements are pencil-whipping hoop-jumping. (Do service hours, participate, positions, etc ...) why do you think the "skills" requirements are any different?

By the way, it doesn't hurt to check out the math on that half-birthday. Also, if it was only the BoR requirement delayed for some adult reason (e.g. only held after the moon is in it's 1st quarter) some CCs will backdate the paperwork. Regardless your boy has class (and a nice set of chops after five years in band). Help him live up to his word.

GSUSA still has a huge sway in these parts. I don't see them going anywhere,@@Scouter99. As long as there are malls and makeup... I prefer it when my crew is balanced girls vs. boys (it's mostly boys at the moment). As a parent I would have preferred "one stop" shopping. I think a more productive change would be to allow SMs and ASMs to earn Eagle ... and require them to earn First Class. That would, among other things, open the way for adult females to experience the rank advancement process and maybe give girls a greater "me too" kind of feeling.

@@Sentinel947, you know full well that Americans care little about denominational lines. If there is an RA chapter next door and a fine young man such as yourself is leading it, and an otherwise loyal Catholic feels like BSA's concession is anti-Catholic, those Sothern Baptists start looking downright Orthodox! Of course @@DenLeader2 is dumping on BSA. You commented in the other thread that Trail Life's increases aren't commensurate with BSA's decreases. Well, here's a cub-aged program to also divert scouts.

Wiped out?

Since he opens with a sweeping generalization "For its first 100 years “morally straight†meant to the BSA that homosexuals could not be members ..." to combine the early periods where the ban may have been implicit vs. the past three decades when it was explicit, it's hard to tell which of his other arguments are painted with too broad a brush. I do not believe that he is trying to set up Trail Life as a safe haven for a CO looking for a program with restrictive recruiting practices. TL has the same exposure as the BSA in New York. When it is large enough to own its camps and hire staff, the D/A will come knocking. I do believe that the local option will be challenged as soon as some CO forces a leader's dismissal or denies membership on any grounds other than religious or criminal.

Welcome, and I hope things turn around for your pack. But, I would suggest listening to your husband! Scouting is a great fellowship when young parents pitch in and help each other's kids grow. When leaders are too burnt out to enjoy one another's company ... not so much.

Yes. Step back into the one job each of you do the best, and let the chips fall where they may. There is a trade-off. You will have to gush over any parent who steps into the gap. If they need to do things differently for whatever reasons, support them. (I have not been beneath offering flowers and chocolates every month.)

Since our troop does not push 1st Class first year, most of the boys have accumulated camping nights once they meet rank requirements. It's possible that your son's friends did too. But I would find it frustrating if there were campouts that I could have attended but nobody invited me. I think it's a fair for your boy to ask, "how can I go camping as much as <insert buddies name>?" Your son should have been involved in electing the boys from your troop. He might have missed that meeting. It's at election time that all of the boys' eligibility requirements are reviewed. He probably was at the ceremony where the boys were "called out" at camp. It sounds like the boys went on their ordeal that same night, did their day of service in silence the next day and were awarded their regalia. That's how they organized things when my son#1 was called out. When son#2 was called out, the ordeal was held in the fall so as not to disrupt the boys' camp program. The nice thing about a fall ordeal is that boys from different camp sessions are gathered.

Love Mike's stuff! But, I'm not so interested in seeing it in the insignia guide. The necker-wearing suggestions should be part of the Boy Scout Handbook. That is the first set of instructions that boys and their parents read.

If a boy wanted to cook for us during a troop meeting, we'd allow him. Right now the troop is one patrol, and all the boys fit in the church kitchen. Planning menus and preparing meals should be part of the routine for every troop or patrol who camps monthly. There are plenty of other ways to complete the badge outside of summer camp.

Yes, it's a family decision, and in one sense, anything goes. In another, think about what the boy might rather do. He might want to recognize units on both coasts, but not enjoy the monotony of a 2nd CoH. If that's the case, encourage him to have the CoH on one coast, and a "reception" on the other. The latter may be in the form of a favorite activity, like a shooting sports day, ending in a campfire.

@@SSScout, Although he caught flack from a lot of folks on this forum for his pronouncements as chief scout executive, Bob Mazzuca did right by us volunteers when he was SE of Greater Pittsburgh council. The letters to employers was a nice gesture.

I strongly discourage scouts from taking an MB if they haven't done the pre-reqs. If they didn't make an effort before camp, what's gonna ensure they do it afterward? That said, I have no problem with scouts accumulating partials. Even if they never convert any of them into a little round patch, at least they learned something! Besides in any other organizations camp, the kid wouldn't even get a pretty blue piece of paper for what they did during the week.

I don't search for topics via forum categories, so it's no difference to me. One personal side benefit of reading about how scouting is implemented in different settings, including LDS, is you are able to hold a knowledgeable discussion with people you meet day-to-day in real life (you know, the one where you don't need batteries to experience it ). I was talking about scouting to a Mormon acquaintance the other day, and he was impressed that I understood the outline of their Young Men's program.

@@CalicoPenn brings up a very important point. Counseling is not testing. This is nothing new. I don't recall doing a single push-up in front of my personal fitness MBC. Nor did I open my wallet to show the exact change for my personal finance MBC to audit. There is this thing called scout's honor. Unless a boy has betrayed that, we should have reason to believe in it. I think the best strategy is to find a third MBC to go over everything your son did for the remaining requirement, determine what, if anything remains to be done, and approve or make a solid plan for completion.

Heritage Reservation dropped Cooking from its MB program because it could not be completed given its food service arrangements. When the reservation director discussed this and other program changes with the SMs none of us had any objection. Neither the dining hall nor the patrol cooking camps allow for boys to create their own menus, order the ingredients at commissary and cook for their patrols. There is certainly enough property to have the boys arrange for a trail hike -- a backpacking trek on the Laurel Highlands Trail is available to older scouts. But, it would take a very flexible food service program to allow for youth to plan their own menus. And, the reservation is not there yet. I doubt that many many camps are. However, assuming that one day camp commissaries change their business model, @@Hedgehog has the right idea. The challenge will be to implement this in camp where a few boys working on Cooking have the time they need to do their work, while the boys who are not can do their program. Perhaps if all patrols at camp were required to develop their menus from the list of ingredients available at commissary, it would be feasible to reintroduce Cooking MB during summer camp.

A favorite memory was coming home with the bowstring I made at camp and fitting it to an old bow my brother had discarded. I hope you have a chance to provide your scout the opportunity his camp denied him.

Haven't seen that feature in years.

Welcome to my world 'skip. (Western PA, The Midwest of the east.)But this is no mere hyperbole for the sake argument, the dread of same-sex predation is palpable among scout parents here. On the other hand, the notion that I might expose attractive youth to an admiring opposite sex coadvisor (or ASM) is rarely considered, or if it is, goes unmentioned until I'm actually teaching Youth Protection. The working presumption is that homosexuals lack the restraint that is supposedly innate in heterosexuals.

Mind=blown. Got a picture?