Beavah

Round these parts, doin' 75 on the highway makes yeh a hazard and a moving roadblock. I think there were some college kids in one city (Atlanta?) who went around drivin' the speed limit and filming all the near-accidents, traffic jams, and road rage they caused. Generally speakin', I reckon it's safest to go the speed of traffic. Some adults drive lots of miles a year for their professional life and have lots of experience. Others just drive da local kids carpool a couple times a week and bicycle commute the rest of the time. I think folks should do what they're comfortable with,

Yah, hmmm... If they've chosen to follow da traitor, doesn't that mean they're automatically doin' something wrong? I mean, a Scout is Loyal after all.

Nah, not overly paranoid. Drivin' is our biggest risk in Scouting. It's a risk to take seriously. I do think you're jumpin' at the wrong fly, though. Da cause of the accident in da other thread was fatigue, like as not. Fatigue is no stranger at the end of summer camp. Towin' trailers adds some handling issues, but you'd be better off tryin' to make sure that the driver is fairly experienced at towing stuff with his/her vehicle, eh? I'm not sure what sentencin' the kids to be separated from their friends does to help safety at all. If yeh want to do somethin' more product

Except da BSA no longer says no caravans, eh? That got dropped from da G2SS some years back, around the same time they dropped da prohibition on driving at night. The real issue I reckon was fatigue, eh? And the sudden correction with a trailer. Pretty easy to lose control when yeh make sudden steering moves while towin', and awfully hard for anybody who is close by to dodge yeh when yeh lose control like that. Better lesson might be to have a few extra folks come up to help drive the pickup run, so that the adults who have been subject to a week of sleep deprivation can take a b

*Facepalm*

It'd be up to da new troop about an ECOH. I expect most would say "yes". The way the Disputed Circumstances route goes is that a lad should have everything done for Eagle except the SM Conference/BOR. Then the district takes over for those things, eh? So it doesn't need to take a long time if yeh already have things in place. Your son would have to "testify" at his Board of Review, nuthin' more. A good district should push back gently, since the Disputed Circumstances route shouldn't be an easy end-run around da unit leadership, but if your son makes a good written case for it and

Yah, I hear yeh, @@fred johnson. I'm supportin' a lot of units with different adult vision, and turnover and all the rest. Yeh have to sort of roll with these things and not take 'em too seriously... while also keepin' the Vision of da program in mind. To my way of thinkin' one of da sadnesses of the modern G2A is that da mandate from above was to reduce the number of complaints and appeals, eh? That's the metric used for evaluation. By that metric it's been quite successful. So I get what you're sayin' about the way some of that document reads. I fully admit to bein' a bit mo

Yah, hmmm.... Take it from an old Council Commish, this ain't the way to go about this. Your DC really needs to step in and pull your hubby back in for re-training. He's tryin' to be the Scoutmaster, eh? Rather than bein' a friend to the unit and da SM. That's a recipe for conflict that he's puttin' your son in the middle of. Well intentioned, I'm sure, but it's not da role of a commish to take "advancements away from SM", or to insist on uniforming, or demand "formal" Courts of Honor. I'm rather fond of da informal, kid-friendly ones myself. People are human, eh? They

Yah, then that was a donation from the old troop to the new troop, eh? They're not really monies that belong to you. The new troop can use 'em to buy patrol cook gear if they want. Just depends on how they're set up. Beavah

Nah, we're always seein' things through interesting lenses, eh? The things folks post here I assure you are exactly the same sorts of things that folks in units in your area are sayin' about their unit... and sometimes what folks might be sayin' about your unit behind your back. If when yeh look around your area yeh see units that are strong, or are strugglin', or have a few refugees come in or go out but you still see fellow scouters who are tryin', then that's normal. No different here. Sometimes units struggle, eh? Sometimes they're pullin' themselves out of struggles, sometimes

Yah, or alternately da SPL can call all the boys and still run a meeting this Sunday, eh? No adults required, and it might be a lot more fun! Beavah

Yah, @@perdidochas, it depends on your local area, eh? Some councils or districts do EBORs at the unit level and send a district or council person as a representative, like what happens in your area. I confess I prefer that approach, eh? I think it shows respect for da unit and chartered partner who have put in 6-7 years with the boy, and allows 'em to fully participate in one of the Great Paychecks of Scouting. I also think it's better for the boy to have familiar faces that he knows and thinks highly of review and recognize him as a young adult. Strangers from da council just aren'

Yah, hmmm.... I don't disagree with this. Scouts should learn their skills by doing things, eh? By patrol competitions, by situations where they need to use their skills. Raising the bar involves improvin' the instruction, but mostly improvin' the program to provide a lot of active practice and fun usin' the skills. Da thing is, that's all part of Step 1: A Scout Learns. Earning rank comes after all that, eh? It comes well after learning, and after bein' tested, and after bein' reviewed. Sometimes at a review we find that we blew it somewhere along the way, eh? Maybe we did

I confess I'm not particularly interested in scouts followin' rules. I'm more interested in scouts havin' good character so that they do the right thing even when there aren't any rules (or sometimes, in spite of da rules). Most of our sponsors are organizations that have some version of a sabbath, eh? A day of rest, with expected participation in religious services. That's a good example of the sort of thing that's part of "fulfilling a member's obligation". As far as I know, almost all churches make exceptions. Doctors on call, family emergencies, travel far from any churc

A Scout in this case is still considered “active†if a board of review can agree that Scouting values have already taken hold and have been exhibited. This might be evidenced, for example, in how he lives his life and relates to others in his community, at school, in his religious life, or in Scouting. It is also acceptable to consider and “count†positive activities outside Scouting when they, too, contribute to his growth in character, citizenship, or personal fitness. Yah, nuthin' wrong with this, eh? If a lad has been absent enough not to meet his unit's general expectations

Yah, hmmm.... Lots of stuff here, eh? And lots of history it seems. If I'm readin' this right, the lad was a transfer late in his scoutin' career into this troop. A move perhaps (?) Troops have cultures, eh? In their own way, young folks are also pretty conservative. They want da things that have become part of their life to be stable. They've figured 'em out right? So it's often really hard for a lad to switch troops later on in his career. All he sees are the way things are different and not as good, at least for a while. We adults do this too, eh? How many times ha

Yah, hmmm... not that I can see. Shouldn't our expectations be higher for older boys who have spent more time in da program? For lads who are aspirin' to higher rank? Beavah

Yah, in my experience da "practice" BORs arise because of perceived problems with district or council BORs or (less frequently) with district/council reps at unit BORs. If yeh have a lad who gets "burned" or just plain surprised in a bad way by da behavior of your district folks, the natural thing for the unit to do is to start preparin' the boy for that sort of thing, eh? After all, it's probably not an experience the lad has had during his Scoutin' experience up to that point. Sometimes DAC members can be a particularly officious bunch. I prefer unit-level EBORs where da distr

Yah, I confess I'm personally a believer in this approach, and in @@David CO' s notion that such things should be done discreetly. Families experiencin' financial stress are typically experiencin' all kinds of other stress, eh? Parent workin' multiple low-wage / temporary / on-call jobs, strugglin' to keep an old car on the road, da personal and family stress that comes with financial stress, health issues, supportin' older relatives who also may be havin' hard times, etc. Plus lack of skills, bad habits, etc. eh? Stuff like what @@meyerc13 describes. Yeh can't solve all of these as

Yah, hmmm... Why? Will his HS athletic coach give him a Varsity letter for never showin' up for practice or games because the lad was actively involved in Scouts? Will his AP teacher give the boy an "A" in his class if he skipped out most days and never did da AP coursework, but participated in rigorous Scouting? It's amazin' how little we value our Scoutin' program. Beavah

Nope. Da BSA's Rules and Regulations are da standards that apply to the whole organization, and the ones yeh agreed to when yeh signed your adult application. What I quoted is da actual official definition. Beavah

Nah. Da actual official definition of "active" is provided by da BSA's Rules & Regulations: An active youth member is one who, with the approval of a parent or guardian if necessary, becomes a member of a unit; obligates himself or herself to attend the meetings regularly; fulfills a member’s obligation to the unit; subscribes to the Scout Oath or the code of his or her respective program; and participates in an appropriate program based on a member’s age, as promulgated from time to time by the Boy Scouts of America. In terms of using da Advancement Method to help boys lea

I thought lawyers would get kicked off the bar for saying things like that! I reckon I've been kicked out of a few bars, but mostly for other things.

Yah, not sure why yeh think da government needs to get involved in that, eh? Do yeh really expect such silliness to happen? Seems like worryin' about what happens if suddenly 500 people want to bicycle on da same 200 feet of sidewalk. Ain't likely, and sometimes I reckon citizens can just work things out on their own. Yah, because every time a lad falls out of a tree the government needs a new regulation about tree height, right? What @@Stosh posted was not modern drones, eh? It was old RC model aircraft. Like he says, those have been around for 50 years or so Despite a

Nobody's suggestin' that there aren't competin' interests. Of course there are! I reckon that's just life in a society. Not sure what safety issues we're talkin' about because there've been precious few drone accidents. It's not yet clear what da risks are, or even if there are any. Da BSA's approach to safety is not regulatory, though. It's educational. We teach folks how to do things safely, even dangerous things like watersports and cycling and startin' fires. We publish guides to inform and educate, but we're not supervisin' or regulatin' local units. If we did, then we would b