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Do you really need an an$wer to that que$tion? You are really wondering why the pro$s didn't proactively e$tabli$h a code of conduct? I wi$h I knew!

1. They are venturing crews, not venture crews. (Sorry, I'll take off my leader specific trainer hat now.) 2. If Seabase has a dress code, so should any BSA camp. We expect our lifeguards to adhere to a standard. It's not so far fetched to expect the same from young women and young men. 3. One of man's greatest inventions was clothing. 4. We have not trained our boys in Dinka culture. (Which carries punishment of death for not controlling one's biological displays of interest in the presence of a naked woman.) 5. Rather, our culture conditions boys to see women as prey. It conditions women that they can only achieve greatness by dressing like prey. Call it the spoils of the sexual revolution. Ideally, we would approach this on both fronts: instructing youth to dress modestly AND instructing them to regard one another as more than pieces of meat. But that ain't happening at home or school, and we scouters just are just trying to teach boys with an already limited attention span to start fires without burning the forest down. Very few of us want to be bothered with lessons on sexual harassment.

Well, this beats anything that I could possibly say about Son #1's wedding. But since you asked ... just about when you were coming to the rescue of a drunken disorderly ... The dance really started to "light up" as DIL and I started handing out glow sticks. (As I learned from an all-night scout climbing event a month earlier, things always go better with glow sticks.) What made that part of the evening special for me was memories of these former venturers dancing on the beach years ago.

You're distressed enough to talk to other scouters about it. That's reason enough to hold off on the SMC. Without yelling at the boy, you need to be very clear that you are upset and need to figure out if he really does have scout spirit, or if he's been playing you for a fool all this time. Tell him you don't need an answer now, but in a couple of weeks, you will need to know what's more important to him: scouting or his drug of choice.

What is compelling about NA cultures is the sheer level of resourcefulness. Understanding Other cultures, even in the most rudimentary sense of going through ceremonial motions, begins to show a youth how resourceful humans can be.

And Darwin face-palms. The secular myth of origins allows that high degree of empathy confers survival advantage among species with very social individuals. Or, in terms we understand, a scout is kind. There is something very good about a patrol of boys learning to adjust to one another's disabilities. With a new scout, this will involve some parental guidance, but soon the boys will gain the respect for the disability they need to deal with the situation.

SM either has a lot of assistance, the troop is truly in he hands of a solid PLC, or he may have OCD and should seek immediate psychiatric attention! I bet posts from the troop scribe would tell a more interesting story.

There is always a conflict.

Yes. Yes, which is why a lot of those parents make do with whatever. It's a lot to pay for a silly look. but as long as he's not tripping them and hurting himself when he runs/walks, I assure you, the psychological damage will be minimal. The only look you really have to worry about is the size of the smile on the boy's face!

We usually have enough drivers willing to camp with us direct contact adults to cover the boys who want to go. Most of our trips are within a 60 mile radius. The more distant ones are more challenging activities and attract fewer youth.

I half-way agree with Stosh. Bullying always conjures a long-term, somewhat subtle, behavior in my mind. Probably because I think that's the kind of behavior the average scout can slip into if we don't encourage all of the boys to think first about everyone having fun and being cared for. But I can easily see a kid with conduct disorder very quickly choosing "marks" who are less likely retaliate and attempting acts of sheer brutality. (Speed bullying?) A church-camp setting is just ripe for that kind of thing because Christian community in the American church is more of a thought experiment. In scouting we usually get fair warning about those types because parents know them from school or sports. I suspect some of BP's prep school kids posed as much trouble as boys from the hood. This might have been 2C's situation as well. Kids often fly under the radar until they are forced to reckon with "real world" tasks. The good news is more often than not, when the task at hand is truly real, kids are stellar at supporting the weaker link.

Not everything is amenable to a Socratic solution ... Especially if you are facing down 5 hungry boys!

Because, after all, none of us have ever had a friend who would return to the same watering hole of pain and abuse time after time. I don't whitewash it with my kids. The bait feels pain, the fish feels pain, any nerve-bearing beast conceived feels pain. But, there is a difference between pain and cruelty. Fishing teaches us to be less cruel.

Ditto. But stay positive. Just because things don't come up roses immediately doesn't mean you did the wrong thing. The kid is getting a light shined on a dark spot of his life. It ain't gonna be pretty. And I would suspend him until his mom tells me that he has been showing her the utmost respect for a few weeks. The family has issues that you (and your committee) can't fix. In all this, you need to emphasize that for him to move forward, he needs to act like a 1st class scout. We have a boy like this, but the family worked very hard to give him a set of coping strategies (e.g., leave the room, walk it off, avoid fisticuffs), and the kid has the stones to apologize. Also, in these situations, an SPL may feel guilty for bearing the bad news that got the kid suspended. Keep an ear open about that.

What you are arguing over is documentation. What if all of your boys decided not to go to a BSA facility this year, but they all got comprehensive sports physicals? Or, maybe the practice they go to has a doc that waives his fee for scouts if he can just print pertinent medical info from his database, set aside an evening for each patrol, review and updates each boys status, clears them to participate in whatever, and with parents' consent, prints everything in a binder for you -- with a separate sheet of med schedules for your contingent's health officer? Would you still want national to require you to jot everything down on their form as well, just because whatever you are doing is as strenuous as BSA's training bases?

Did it tonight. SM gave the boys present a paper and pen and said "Give me a list of two patrols." There were some points of contention, but the boys worked it out.

One more question now that I've reviewed your post ... Do you mean the "primary" adult? Or, are you talking the 4th-string driver. Also, what is your average distance to your "insertion" or "extraction" points? If it's just those longer distance trips that are a chronic problem: have a plan B location that doesn't involve transportation. Some of the hikes that I plan, actually involve thinking through with the boys alternate insertion points. Once I did have to fall back on a "Plan C" because of heavy rains the week before.

Thing is Brew, if you factor in a half-dozen vehicles on top of the other dozen needed to haul the boys and gear who show up on time. That's more ruts in the road, and may be the tipping point for any farmer who would let this troop pack on his/her property. You want to know ahead of time how many boys you can accommodate with minimal intrusion on your site. I agree that making this a patrol-managed issue is the way to go. Two meetings prior to the trip, each PL reviews the permission slips then during the meeting sounds off how many will attend, who their drivers will be for each leg of the trip, and if there are any unmet transportation needs. If the PL's can't resolve them on the spot, they have a week to make some calls. The issue gets reviewed next week under "old business."

What a disappointment. Encourage your son to have a servant heart. If he does that, the sash will become secondary. That's the Order in a nutshell. For the rest of you folks who want to warn that there's two sides to every story, I want to say that I've seen our very good lodge make poor administrative decisions. That happens. Sometimes if youth don't step up, and adults have no margin to take up the slack, troops will not have elections. Or, parents will be perplexed. Whatever. We're all learning, I guess. But it takes years for candidate scouts and their units to get over missteps like this.

Another guide might require a different medical form (or none at all). But, the general principle remains the same ... http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/...k_factors.aspx

Having a Presbyterian CO, you'd think we'd be required to. But we don't. The troop has had a series of CC's who've moved things along quite nicely. They come with a prepared outline, you may request an item be added to the agenda in advance. There are unwritten rules of decorum. Folks don't speak for more than a minute. (For me this is really, really, hard.) Everybody get's a chance to discuss. We settle on a motion, then if everyone agrees (or, at least, is willing to concede), we move forward. The last crew committee meeting ended in a pissing match years ago, so I said "Don't convene unless the crew president is present." I figured if a youth were in the room, folks would mind their manners. Instead, the CC opted to never hold a meeting! This actually helped the youth take a little more responsibility for their destiny, and MC's volunteered to support when asked, so I was fine with it. I agree that the people who find rules of decorum "stuffy" and/or "pretentious" are often the ones who try to muzzle a member or railroad a decision. However, I have also seen a very clever fellow use the rules to derail an assembly for which he had contempt. So, I don't see such things as the "killer app" for ordering meetings. You still need a moderator who is firm yet compassionate and patient.