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This falls under "too early to tell". Let the scout visit. Maybe he knows some of your scouts. Maybe he likes your activities. Maybe his troop is linked to a troop for girls, and he's uncomfortable with that. There could be a thousand reasons. And only a half dozen might be ones that the other SM can fix. After you meet the scout, and maybe you compare notes with the SPL or whoever talked to him, you can decide if the SM needs a heads-up. FWIW - I talk a lot to other SMs and we have a good feel for what our boys are doing and why they might want to switch troops, or not. We might not name names, but at a campfire or roundtable we might even say, "Gee, one of my scouts might like your troop/crew." And, we follow-up on who has switched and make sure they are doing okay. The best way, IMHO, to handle this is to have the scout try and plan an activity with the other troop.

I don't think so. SB is not supposed to freak out over such things. In any case the forum discussions.scouting.org primarily answers SB questions. So, you'll get replies from volunteers who've been working with the product a lot. (Although, some Luddite scouter occasionally comes along and spouts off rhetoric about independent patrols, MB class limits, and insignia dorks. )

Interesting thought. If COR's had more weight what might have happened? More or less ... consiliatory attitude toward the three Gs (Girls, Godless, and Gender Discordant)? will to "lock-in" advancement at age 18? acceptance of the New Scouting Program? layers of protection from abusers? efficient communications? FOS participation? marketplace of ideas? merger and acquisition? This no doubt varies by council.

Yes, get to know your registrar. Order her one of those JTE gold patches!

Following on @Jameson76, a key area that National will be forced to revisit is supply. Publications will need to be lean, printed in black and white, and use plain text where possible. More newsprint, less magazine. Obviously, online redundancy is a given, but print still has power. Otherwise, MB pamphlets would have been pulled from shelves long ago. Beleaguered camp properties should be grown into forests or other ecological preserves and assigned a resource harvesting schedule. This is typically what is done to tracts that by law revert to the estate of the donor. But, if BSA actually owns the property and can get the correct resource designation, a judge could order that creditors can only be paid from a portion of the sales of resources as they are scheduled to be harvested. This will require some state and federal help to obtain the proper land designations. The down side: it will make it harder to develop things like aquatics playgrounds, grand buildings, and other big-ticket facilities that donors would rather put their name on. The up-side, scouts will have access to unique camping locations, albeit in smaller numbers than the usual densely packed summer camps.

In Western PA, we got around that by throwing Hail Mary's and catching Immaculate Receptions. 🤣

Or someone is lying through their eye-teeth to look good. Either you have 30 units or 22.89. Ask for the list of unit leaders. Check the ones who showed up at last month's roundtable or klondike. The rest? Call each leader. No answer? No unit. Scratch that one off of the list. Make a copy of your edits, give the copy to the DE and tell him/her to fix it before you announce at the next RT that your district's JTE is a lie.

Kudos to the secularist who thought up that one.

My Master gave strict instructions to set aside the judging of hearts ... it's above my pay grade. But, as @mashmaster notes, that's quickly forgotten among practitioners. There has been a lot of "digging heels in", and most of it traces back to the Cold War. That's why this issue seems like it's a hundred years old. It's been closer to fifty years old. Anti-Muscovite Christians pressed the issue, non-Christian patriots pushed back. Scouting become less an outlet for what Baden Powell coined "practical Christianity" and more an arm of the American religious. With every lawsuit BSA won, it lost a little heart. If going far back in time matters, the very word "God" finds no origin in a particular religion. It's what missionaries (and, no doubt, merchants and others) found to be a close enough term used by Northern European people of the heath (from where we get "heathen"). Could the grander and greater thing in an atheist's world view fit the ancient notion of "God"? It's hard to say. Ancient Christians were stoned to death by Romans under the accusation of "atheist," but eventually gained respect as decent citizens. So, there's precedent ...

Why stop at Eagles? Why not all those who earned 1st Class, Star, and Life while with this troop. Invite every former member. The rosters have to be out there somewhere! Otherwise, I really like your program. I think you should then have a sing-off. Scouts from yesteryear could form up in heir old patrols and present a song or skit. That should liven things up!

Well, he never met some of my scouts! But his point still resonates. The movement is a net good for this country.

I find that if I'm offering up what I believe to someone, asserting that they can't believe what they claim they believe undermines that dialogue.

A 10k budget ain't all that much for a large troop. And those are probably a lot of weekends to get a job done. Even in a small troop, when broken down into scout-hours, it's probably a week of work to pay for one or two big trips. Did anyone else notice scout working in full uniform? Somebody give that kid a patch!

Depends on how he/she made the money and how much it was part of the plan. As far as the troop gaining from both acquisition and deposition. In my day we collected paper and glass bottles (with the occasional contribution), bound the papers and broke the bottles down by color and arranged a truck to take them to sell to the recycling center. I'm sure other troops do similar fundraisers. Frankly as a consumer, were I foolish enough to own beachfront, I'd rather pay a scout for this than for a dozen boxes of popcorn.

Most every case that is being made against the BSA is depicting the organization as acting to perpetuate the problem. The older the case, the more likely the institution(s) refrained from taking action, often out of deference to the victims privacy or the suggestions of law enforcement or so as to avoid informing the scout executive. (Note that this article refers to the Council President -- it's possible that the abuser somehow guided his vetting process away from the SE. The notorious ones are that cleaver.) And it is in every plaintiff's interest to paint that deference as the organization's very structure is such that it perpetuates abuse. They have money until they don't. Then schools start shuttering, etc ... More than BSA? Depends on the church, and LDS probably is better than most. There's a reason why Catholic bishops were on the block first. Sure some of it does have to do with a culture of misplaced authority. But it also has to do with how few cases one would need to bring in order to achieve a large pay-out. And that, is a function size of the organization and meticulous record keeping. The better the records, the more efficient the supoena process. The smaller/more compartmentalized the organization and the worse the records, the more likely serial abusers will persist. They just don't get documented. The case is harder to prove. The overarching organization avoids being targeted OR doesn't make national news. It's perverse on multiple levels.

Unfortunately for us all, your phrase "more insidious and pernicious in LDS troops" is pure speculation. BSA's files are still undergoing analysis by a sociologist, who has not put forward an analysis to determine if troops sponsored by any particular organization or class of organization (church, school, VFD/PD, military base) were more likely to harbor serial abusers. It might take years before a full analysis is forthcoming. Even then, the results might be held in question. The very identification of a group with the highest rate of victims per membership will put them next-in-line for an ambulance chasing lawyer.

Our camp: the boy's shower was harboring our ner-do-wells. Although, your "poor English Roses" had some especially flowery speech echoing through their house. Ambient temperature water has been known to do that.

A couple of folks at WSJ made inspiring two-pole hammock rigs from a pair of the 8 the split 8' two-by-fours and spare stakes issued each troop. Some used four-poles. Same principle as shared above. However, the impacted clay of an old strip mine holds far better than beach dunes. I would suggest using 6 poles, and two half-poles for stakes. Lash two triangles, dig parallel trenches reasonably apart, bury one side if each triangle in the sand, and using a single line connecting both peaks slightly further apart than the bases and extending out sufficiently in either direction, anchor them in opposing directions. You might not need six poles per scout. With long enough line and adding mid poles, you could probably hang multiple hammocks in a line. The rig could also double as a beach volleyball net.

Yes. This was an issue that my church brought up when deciding if it should sponsor a pack. Atheists often visit for extended periods, and their their kids would no doubt participate in this activity. As much as they would want folks to convert, they utterly despise the notion of bestowing membership, honors, and awards for such conversion. This wasn't necessarily the deciding factor why they did not become a CO. But it was part of the discussion. And they take zero public funds. The school in your situation does and is rightly concerned. The CO's decision is not to the final one in determining who should be a leader or who gets awarded Eagle. BSA has revoked membership of atheists in spite of the CO's wishes. Some of the members of this forum have been directly or indirectly affected by those decisions. On account of BSA's stance, some of them have taken part in suing public organizations for sponsoring troops.

At World Jamboree, we had several conversations with leaders about "Safe from Harm" (YP by another name). One SM -- from a country particularly notorious about following rules -- asked our troop's SM and I, "We've already been away from home for two weeks. What if my scout needs a hug?" We leaned in, as if we were wearing trench coats and selling stolen watches, and said, "Hug the scout!" We had another issue about bad behavior in one of the youth shower houses, because adults were not "allowed" to enter them. One of the leaders ask me how to we could possibly address it. We made up a plan on the spot that we would pound on the walls and say, "Everybody out! Camp emergency!" Then we would go in and check for vandalism. Never had to implement it ... but the relief on his face when he knew that we were willing to work around the rules to help him was priceless.

Correction, Bill Hilcourt called SMC's personal growth conferences in his 7th edition handbook, as I referenced one year ago. (I can't seem to remember my own quotes!) Boards of Reviews were always called just that. Those with older handbooks, please expound. It's also worth noting that he called Star, Life, Eagle, and Palms awards not ranks. Again, folks with the full text of earlier and later versions may wish to give us more details.

... in my old Boy Scout Handbook, boards of review were called personal growth conferences. That should give us some sense of what is intended by the method.

Well ... I actually didn't look in the tents to see how cots were arranged. When I camped in similarly sized tents at a youth conference "just a few" years ago, we guys+1 counselor were put in similarly sized tents with next to no space between cots. The counselor was on the top of a double bunk. So, maybe my estimate was based on a warped sense of history. The GS tents also had electric outlets and a light. Sadly, I think the one camp in particular was sold in the recent consolidations.

@RememberSchiff the title of Chief Scout is honorific. It has no specific working responsibility. (Although Bear has worked quite well in it.)

Our Cubs sleep two to a tent ... either with their parent or their buddy. Do yours? The GS camps that I've visited sleep dozens to a tent.