qwazse

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.

Any other point allocation is sub-prime. Patterns deserve to be broken. I was toying with allocating points via Fibonacci sequence. Anything that messes with those 100 point increments suits me.

So, let's give points for things that they may care about. For example, during the year, to each score, add: +3 points for each scout who attended any district camporee +5 points for each scout who attended a council camporee +1 point for scouts who attended one camporee in his own district/council +7 points for each scout who attended a area/regional camporee +11 points for each scout who attended a area/regional/national/international jamboree/camporee +13 points for each scout who staffed a summer camp +17 points for each (established, not ad hoc) patrol that competed in district/regional/area camporees +19 points for each established patrol that placed first in a summer camp uniform inspection +23 points for each established patrol that placed first in a summer camp scout-craft competition +29 points for each third place award by any established patrol in any district/council/regional camporee +31 points for each second place award by any established patrol in any district/council/regional camporee +37 points for each first place award by any established patrol in any district/council/regional camporee +41 points for each patrol contributing to another scout's project +43 points for any scout found helping a little old lady cross the street +47 points if aforementioned scout never bragged about it +53 points for each game organized and lead by an established patrol at any summer camp or district/council/regional camporee +59 points for each song organized and lead by an established patrol at any summer camp or district/council/regional camporee +61 points for any cool hike or campout or project by an established patrol, as recorded by the troop historian +67 points if the historian's article makes it into a district newsletter +71 points if the historian's article makes it into a council newsletter +73 points if the historian's article makes it into Boy's Life or Scouting Magazine. +79 points if the historian's article makes it into the WOSM's page. +83 points for each patrol that carries on its name, flag, and cheer from the previous year. Divide total score by number of established patrols. Best score in the district earns silver exclamation point to sew after the troop #s.

That's neither the parents' nor the churches' fault. If a council with large number of LDS CO's is not aggressively marketing to those parents or scouts by introducing them to their neighboring troops -- especially those started by LDS leaders to continue scouting -- then they are doing their scouts a disservice. Also, there are a leaders out their wondering how to handle the influx of older LDS boys to their troop. BSA should highlight scouters who've successfully done that. Because recruiting older LDS scouts and blending them into your troop is not unlike making sure boys feel welcome even if they weren't with you since they crossed over from a pack. The message should be: "Sure, we're financially tight. Girls are scouting with us now. Liability's high. But boys still want to camp with us!"

Based on what this Pitt Alumni saw at World Scout Jamboree, SBR might as well have been a WVU campus.

Things not to like about JTE? Well my pet peeve is high score gets gold instead of silver. I guess the other is: everybody gets a trophy. Instead, lets take a que from Sea Scouts and have a National Flagtroop every month. Heck, we could even have regional, area, council, and district flagtroops.

Also interesting from that article, the anecdote of a scouter and his wife who ... Moves like this could account for @Cburkhardt's noting an uptick in new units.

I never cared answer that question, all I know is what I make draws regular sub-camp duty officers to my site.

Considering that my barista has also been my cookie supplier (and I'm hoping that now that she's graduating, her little sister will take over both in the shop and in her troop), this is almost a perfect pairing. I do like my coffee like I like my thin mints: strong as love, black as death. And DD really comes close to that on the coffee side of things. But, the two in the same cup nullify one another, IMHO. It's a matter vs. anti-matter sort of thing.

Disney Circle may drag your wireless network -- and that of others. I had a freind whose mobile was being recognized as the router gateway while he was at work. All traffic was being routed through his phone. The harsh truth is we need to battle-harden our kids. Tell them that they ought notta gawk at someone else's spouse. Tell them that some things can't be unseen. But tell them it's worth fighting tooth and nail to stay out of the swamp that's tempting you and climb out of the one your in.