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So, when you all get a negative recommendation, do you somehow communicate that in advance to the scout so he is prepared to address it at the BoR?

If you have a friend who re-posts a "NASA says ..." fear-mongering meme, be sure to reply with this link about what NASA actually says: https://climate.nasa.gov/ @TAHAWK and I have the dubious privilege of living on the boundary of the neutral change zone on the global climate map. There is a "tongue" of stable, if not somewhat cooler, seasonal temperatures over the years that covers the northeast US, in contrast to accelerating warming trends in the rest of the country. In other words, although not everybody has seen "worst case", the SW US has seen that 4+ degree hop ... it could be 6 degrees at some points. Thus as @Beavah worried: We are the first to be affected when Philmont has no water ... Or rather, it half burns away.

People are also more free to slander if they think that their statement won't be opposed by the accused. IMHO, if someone doesn't have the stones to say it to the scout's face, they don't deserve to be writing a letter of recommendation. I only write open letters of recommendation, and I make a point of giving the person I recommend a copy.

Okay, have any of you ever commented on scoutingwire's Chief's Corner?

@TMSM and @fred8033, if you repeat any advice of mine just be sure to preface it with "A stranger on the internet once said ..."

This has as much to do with how you want to shape the troop culture. In general, I don't want adults indulging scouts' foolishness, but I do want them responding to scouts' industry. In practical terms this means I expect them to raise a high bar for behavior and accountability, but don't turn that bar into a wall. If the Eagle coordinator is any good, then the CC just needs to read and sign. No meetings necessary. At the next meeting, the CC then reports the gist of any projects that were approved. If the EC percieves any real hurdles (e.g., scout will need 500 laborers and you all have 50), then he should talk to the CC. If the EC is still cutting teeth, the scout should feel free to let the CC know that he has a good proposal and would like to present it to the committee at the earliest possible convenience. But, if this is not your troop culture right now, your scout should get on the phone with the EC and ask if he/she thinks it can go to committee as is. If not, identify revisions, make changes, and repeat the cycle until the proposal is good to go.

First, IMHO, not every scout has to present his project to the committee. The whole committee presentation was novel to me when our troops merged. (The other troop was doing it, ours wasn't.) As far as I can tell, committee review does nothing to make the proposal any better in the eyes of the district advancement committee. On the other hand, our scouts who do present seem to like the feedback and encouragement they get. As far as scheduling things, the more you put in the scout's hands, the better. I would rather the scout arrange the meeting, then ask the coordinator if there's anything else he should refine for his presentation. I get the desire to stay in the background when your son or daughter is the candidate. However, also keep in mind the nature of the project. Son #2 felt that I would be the best adviser for his project, and he wasn't entirely wrong. If you're the best guy for the job, step up. If someone else will do just as good, send your kids their way.

They aren't qualifications, per se. They are means by which a scout can discover what his unique contribution to a troop should be. For example an SPL's election speech might be: "Hello, my name is __, I've been in troop __ for four years, and have obtained Second Class rank. Last year I took Trucking, Railroading, and American Business MB's, among others. But the reason I mentioned those, is because thanks to some counselors who offered to help us, I've come up with a great summer activity that will involve combining these activities, and if you elect me, we will plan a trip where each patrol gets some time behind some serious engines, and culminates with a contest in which the winning patrol gets to ring the opening bell at the stock exchange. I took my patrol to visit the rail yard last month, and we had so much fun that I wanted the chance to help the whole troop try this ..." We could imagine other scouts applying for a PoR to the SPL and saying that they've earned a several MBs that made them think they could do the PoR of their choice well. The one's who've earned a lot of MBs could argue "This year, I've shown that I can get things done. Please give me a chance to do more, sir." I might be biased because our best QM was an MB-grubbing scout. So much so, that he would look for idle scouts at camp and drag them along to whatever MB he was about to try to earn in a day. Yes, he tried to cut corners. Yes, he butted up against us sticklers constantly. But his variety of accomplishments was very useful to the troop. How? Well, by the time he took office, he had mastered organization and sequencing. He had a sense of what scouts would need for which activity. He also knew what we could build into our trailer and how. Then, he focused on advancement, got Eagle and JROTC sucked his time away from us. IMHO, the kid provided more for the troop when he was obsessed with MBs than when he completed (in his mind) rank advancement. Compared to what can be gained from earning about 20 MBs in a year or so, going through trail-to-first class really does not do much in terms of preparing a scout to hold a PoR. I simply think personal growth vs. leadership development is a false-dichotomy. One final thought experiment: if we reduced the number of MBs to 49, would that in any way improve our patrols? I just don't see it. Take away the time the MB-grubbing scout "wastes" on requirements, and it's unlikely you'll get it back in contributions to his/her patrol unit. That's especially true if we take away the MBs that explicitly require the scout to contribute to patrol/troop life.

What is a scout's obligation to his/her patrol? To fulfill the pinnacle scouting experience of hiking and camping independently with his/her mates. New scouts do this by obtaining first class skills. Patrol leaders do this by qualifying (i.e., mastering 1st Class skills) to take their patrol hiking and camping. First class scouts (the concept, not the patch) do this by availing themselves of the MB program according to their needs and interests. What is a scout's obligation to his/her troop? To develop leadership through responsibility based on present skills. Where do those skills come from? Well in general, there is a huge difference between ... a Bugler who's earned Bugling and Music MB's vs. one who's not, a Historian or Scribe who's earned Journalism vs. one who's not, a Librarian who's earned Reading and Scholarship vs. one who's not, a QM who's earned Backpacking, Woodwork, and Welding vs. one who's not, a PL who's earned Signs Signals and Codes vs. one whose not, an SPL who's earned Orienteering and Hiking and one who's not, a JASM who's earned Wilderness Survival and Search and Rescue and one who's not. Thinking along those lines, maybe a scout should not be assigned a PoR or a Star/Life service project until he or she has rightly earned a dozen elective MBs and has some hint of how they could best serve their troop or patrol. It would not look great as a requirement, but I would admire the SM and SPL who announce that scouts who've earned the most MBs in the past year will have first choice of PoR.

As was once said to me: you might be crazy, but you're also right. There are a lot of things that GS brought to my venturing crew, a good sense of costs and payments was one of them.

Maybe I'm sentimental, but my experience is that it worked best in my troop growing up where the youth was the treasurer. He collected dues at every meeting. (I used my Christmas and Birthday money to "pay ahead" in dues.) He also checked and collected funds for all fundraisers. Sometimes an adult would help by manning the ticket booth at our pancake breakfast. And the scoutmaster would deposit those funds in the troop bank account. He would then report to the PLC and the troop committee on how those funds were spent. Sometimes he would let the troop as a whole know about specific expenses (summer camp, rechartering, etc ...). I rarely see this happen in a modern troop. From my experience with venturing, I believe any unit is best served with a youth treasurer who bears primary responsibility for receiving funds and accounting for expenses. The adult treasurer serves as an auditor. Most banks require an adult to cut checks. So, there's that. But otherwise, @Treflienne, I would maximize the hand that youth have in all fiscal matters. This makes sure accountability is a two-way street. Think of it. If your older scouts can't understand what your treasurer is doing, there's a good chance something is being done wrongly. The committee should make general recommendations as to the ideal size of the unit's balance, who should be given a discretionary account, and what items should be in the budget. That's the benefit of adult association. But, the PLC (or crew officers) should set the budget. Honestly, I would see some benefit in Webelos doing this at the pack level to a degree. Wise is the committee who asks their tenured scouts of any age if they should expand or scale back certain activities. Some boys might rather have a high-tech PWD track, others might rather use scrap lumber for a track and have a live act (magician? music group?) at their B&G. Did anybody ever ask your Webelo's what's important to them?

@dkurtenbach while we're in the holidays, we would do well to consider the words of one who urged against straining at gnats only to swallow a camel. You assert that in earning two MBs a month, an ambitious scout undermines his/her troop and patrol. But, in the same reply you say ... In other words, by your own admission, the merit badge program enhances the life of many units. In other words, some MBs include a service requirement. Therefore, in the process of earning all badges, the scout will necessarily perform some service. I would argue that in the process of earning all MB's a scout could discover skills that enable him/her to perform a wide variety of service. Furthermore, in earning all MBs, a scout must show leadership in a variety of ways: e.g., meeting other scouts earning MBs, contacting scouts around the world (Cit. World, req 7c), leading a court of honor (Comm, req 8), teaching scouts in his/her "patrol, troop or crew" (Orienteering, 8), etc ... In other words MBs contribute to the uniforming method. I've seen scouts look at each other's sashes for the badge they don't recognize. They ask questions like "What's that one?" "How hard was it?" "Who was the counselor?" Arguing that a program is self-promoting via scouts with loaded sashes is not an argument against that program. You go on about scouts working independently, as if dangerous to his patrol is the scout who might go off and, say, draw butterflies with maps of fortresses in their scales. If such is your rant, don't use arguments that disprove your points. But let's grant your assumption and assume scouts who earn 2 MBs a month are no asset, but rather a detriment, to their patrol, their troop, and their nation. What is magnitude of the problem? Folks who are interested in counting such things, say that 450 scouts have earned every MB -- not yearly ... over the past century! That means across the nation this year maybe 5 to 10 scouts have achieved this goal. Multiply that by 7 years, that's up to 70 scouts earning on average 2 MB's a month. Let's quadruple that to account for all those scouts who are trying to do that, but eventually back off. So out there in the scouterverse there might be 480 scouts on track to earn every MB. There's a 1 in 100 chance that an MB-grubbing scout is wrecking your troop at this very moment. And how many of those scouts are holding at Scout rank and refusing to hold any position of responsibility? How many of them are going camping exactly 20 nights and making sure their troop only backpacks and hikes the requisite miles and learns to canoe but never takes his/her crew on a canoe trip? What? I bet there are fewer than two such Shylocks exacting their pound of flesh! Now there are certainly program where one person doing things wrongly could derail the thing in spite of a million other people doing it rightly. (Nuclear power plants come to mind.) In such cases maybe dismantling the whole industry is a good idea. I find no evidence that the MB "industry" -- even badly regulated as it is -- is such a program. The best solution for the MB program: do it rightly and do it frequently.

Point of order: there is a mathematics badge. It's called Orienteering. Or maybe it's Woodwork. Or maybe one of dozens of other badges that throw down constant mathematical challenges. Carry on.

I think your assumption that the elective MB #9 etc ... serve "the individual Scout only" is flawed. They are the specific tool that I use to guide the PLC in bringing the most enjoyable program to a troop. I routinely ask them to think back on the year and determine what their favorite merit MB was. Then I ask them how they can incorporate it into troop activities. They might also have a favorite MBC, and I suggest they invite him/her to come speak at a meeting or visit at a campout. They also inspire Eagle projects, new locations to camp, etc ... If scouts aren't working on elective MBs -- even when they don't need them for rank advancement -- those ideas aren't being given thorough consideration, and meetings become rather dull.

MBs are fun. The benefit of lots of MBs is not learning more stuff. It's the practicing of association with more adults. An MB Pow Wow should indeed be more like a college class (in fact ours was on the local college campus ... loved walking through the halls of the science building ... with all those displays). This interaction with adults enables a scout to confidently and clearly communicate so as to freely exchange knowledge and skills. That was of immediate benefit to me in college. I knew how much more I could gain from classes if I met professors during their office hours -- even if only one or two problems were tripping me up. Other students preferred to live in ignorance and only associate with their peers. One-on-one contact .... for all it's risks, the benefits are huge.

Congress stopped issuing new charters. This brings into question the relevance of the old ones. Someone with standing could sue on the basis of BSA's current by-laws. What's questionable is if they could appeal to congress to sue on the public's behalf on the basis of corporate definitions of the last century.

Since 1992 Title 36 seems to have no application at all. If no new organization can vie for a charter, it seems like having one is just a mark that the nation's representatives liked you once upon a time. Organizations do Congress the courtesy of sending it a report. But I'm not entirely sure that they'd loose sleep if they didn't get one.

Got a moment to read it at my coffee shop today. Left it there. The editors buried the lead. The more useful articles for most scouters, IMHO, were about Madcap family and Powderhorn. I don't grudge BSA selling big tickets to PTC and the extended HA opportunities. But there was more to the mag than that.

We could sling a little more mud ....

Because brutal honesty is so unseemly these days.

How would you know that you're the largest, most active troop? Are you all the only gold unit? Suppose we divided your existing JTE score by the number of patrols in your troop ... could there be some smaller troop with a higher JTE per patrol ratio? If the argument is there is too much in JTE that's out of the control of a patrol, then I think that's my answer to the OP. But, adding to @dkurtenbach's point, JTE is just not something anyone wants to brag about. It's dimensions are not quirky enough for scouts to push them. With some of the data now track-able electronically, you can almost see the basis of your score in real time. But, it's not gonna answer one question: how many of your scouts are truly epic? Let's be clear. I'm not saying JTE is a waste of time. But I go to orienteering club courses because they do the courtesy of posting my (abysmal) scores and times along with all of the other racers.

This is akin' to the argument for making all scouters take YPT every year. Some scouters -- maybe some in every unit -- will let it lapse over the two year requirement. But unless you can prove that scouters are a drag on a troop's YP if they lapse a couple of months prior to charter, or that this year has an abundance of new and useful material ... you're putting a drain on program for no good reason. Some scouters (at whatever level) will game a system like JTE, and that is really frustrating to everyone. But, that's a poor reason for drawing everyone's attention away from those truly inspiring units.

The DFS fielded calls of non-actionable offenses of this nature on behalf of our SE when there were YPT issues but no evidence or accusations of abuse. As to PA's definition : I do not believe this is an exhaustive list. But as you can see, the definition of serious physical injury was left undefined. Bottom line, YPT violations are not abuse per se. But, they are the means by which predators may take advantage of children.

For YPT problems, I've called the director of field service. For suspicions of abuse, we're all mandatory reporters in PA, so state police get the first call, then the SE gets a call.

Dino the brontosaurus is the Sinclair mascot ... chosen by ad men back when it was cool to brag about extracting fossil fuels from PA substrate.