shortridge

Is there something specific you're looking for? In my experience, NSPs are just like any other patrol, only operating with the help of a troop guide and/or ASM. Sometimes the TG is appointed PL for a few months; sometimes the patrol elects a PL from the start. Sometimes the patrol exists for six months to a year and then the Scouts scatter into other patrols; sometimes they stick together like glue. It varies widely. I think one important thing is that they operate as a patrol, with a full patrol identity - the Ravens or the Wolves, not "the new Scouts" or "the NSP," even in adult leader shorthand. What does the PLC think? What does it want the program to look like?

Scoutfish - Are the camp sessions you speak of weekend-long events? Or do they last longer? And are they at a council camp?

We do not have all the facts and some are passing judgement. We NEVER have all the facts here, yet people ALWAYS pass judgment. That is my point. It has nothing to do with the topic. On a side note, I'm perpetually fascinated by how one can be made boiling mad by someone in Thread A, but be nodding in rapt agreement with them in Thread B. Aren't the intertubes great?

As far as all this goes, I would not want this young man in a leadership position, simply because he he does not make the best decisions when placed in difficult positions... Sometimes people make mistakes. Adults placed in difficult decisions have made far, far worse mistakes. Yet you'd ban a young man from a position of leadership because of a single word? (What if he had used a swear word instead? That's not really being morally straight.) Where do you draw the line? And what is our responsibility to help young men and women grow and learn to make the right decisions? Let's spin this around. Let's say that Jack Smith, under the same kind of bullying, shouted out "I'm not gay, I've had sex with six girls!" Should Mr. and Mrs. Smith be OK with having their son questioned about his sex life and sexuality by five adults? The CC and COR were there, after all. Doesn't that make it all right? ========================== An aside to Seattle Pioneer, Crew21 and BadenP: You all have said, in essence, "We shouldn't be forming opinions about this because we're only getting one side of the story." That's utterly ridiculous. Not having the full story certainly doesn't stop people here from opining about how a troop thousands of miles away is being mismanaged, or how members of a camp staff six states over screwed up, or how the CSE (in far off Irving, Texas) is incompetent and should be fired. If we required statements from all sides before discussing a situation, the only threads active on this forum would be inquiries about patch placement, requests for ECOH ceremony scripts and people asking for the OA forum password.

Saying "I am _________" is misbehavior? How about the misbehavior of the boys who taunted and teased this Scout?

The BSA wrote in its brief in the Dale case: "Boy Scouting makes no effort to discover the sexual orientation of any person." This witch-hunt sure seems like such an effort. Shame on these adults.(This message has been edited by shortridge)

Except that fathers of daughters get special top-secret training in interrogating boys.

Del-Mar-Va Council just sent this announcement out (slightly edited). After careful consideration by the Scout Executive selection committee, Council President Glenn Moore is proud to announce the selection of Jason Pierce, Director of Field Service, Atlanta Area Council, as the new Scout Executive, CEO for the Del-Mar-Va Council. He will officially begin his service with the council on September 1. Jason has served the BSA for 18 years as a Scouting professional and has a strong record of success in membership growth, fundraising and community development. Scouting has been a significant part of Jason's life. He is an Eagle Scout and a recipient of the Order of the Arrow Vigil honor. We are excited about the experience and enthusiasm Jason will bring to our council. ... It is an honor and a privilege to be selected to serve this council, Jason said. The Del-Mar-Va Council is one of the most highly regarded Boy Scout councils in the nation. I look forward to partnering with volunteers, community leaders and staff members to significantly grow the Scouting program in every community we serve. Jason follows Patrick Sterrett as Scout Executive, CEO. After six great years of service Patrick accepted a promotion with the Northeast Region of the Boy Scouts of America to serve an Area Director where he will provide leadership to ten councils.

How come no one ever mentions programs like Health and Welfare, Department of Education, Department of Environmental Quality, Army corps of engineers, Department of interior, Department of agriculture, and many other federal programs that suck money out of the system just to pay those working in the programs. Why not start the cuts in the personnel department. OK. Let's stop inspecting nursing homes, making federal student loans, checking air quality, building and maintaining bridges and dams, managing water resources in the West and inspecting food quality.

Your entire argument that crews aren't Real Crews until they connect with other crews stems from the word "a"?

Abel, I split this into another comment because it veers off topic. You wrote: my council may only hire 20 to 30 summer camp staff members and they only serve for 4 to 5 weeks. Those numbers caught my attention, because they seemed rather low, so I did some crunching. I'm assuming you have the standard camp setup and program areas. You need a camp director, a program director and a commissioner. The commissioner can have other duties, so let's make him the Scoutcraft director, as well. And let's say the camp director doubles as the ranger. You need a shooting sports director (who can run the rifle and shotgun ranges) and an archery instructor; a nature director and at least one instructor; a Scoutcraft instructor; a first-year camper program director and one instructor; a handicrafts director and one instructor; an aquatics director and 3-4 instructors and lifeguards (offering very limited instruction with that small of a staff); a trading post clerk; a support services/commissary/kitchen director - let's say he or she also doubles as the cook, for an 80-90-hour workweek easily - and 2-3 kitchen staffers; and a health officer. Thats about 23 people right there, for a bare-bones camp staff. If your camp offers a climbing or COPE program, if it has separate pool and waterfront areas, or if it runs specialty programs such as mountain biking or fishing or even if it offers more than two merit badges per area per time period more staffers will be needed. Does that sound like your camp? And how many people do you have attending each week? I would also point out that if your camp operates for five weeks, your staffers actually serve for six weeks at a minimum - probably more like six and a half to seven weeks. There's a week for setup and training at the start and several days for teardown, inventory and packing up at the end. And key area directors have to attend an extra week at NCS. So the senior staff is actually putting seven to eight weeks into your camps.

Yah, we don't need half of those darn police, paramedics, road repair crews, schoolteachers, bus drivers, sewer system operators, food inspectors, workplace safety investigators or criminal prosecutors that are on the public payroll right now. They're just trying to control our lives!

Abel, Please read my posts again, as my arguments are perfectly consistent. I'll recap my main points to help you out. 1. You wrote about your dislike of paying people to do what volunteers should do. I pointed out in my response that you can't run a resident camp program with only volunteers. As I said: If you don't pay people a reasonable wage, you're not going to have a summer camp. I was not saying that camp staff pay is reasonable at present. When you consider that it can work out to several dollars below minimum wage for even an experienced staffer, there's no way that can be considered reasonable. That barely counts as abysmal! 2. You wrote: How can you have any unit troop, crew or pack made up of council employees? That happens because BSA requires all employees to be registered members. That's the rule of the corporation, not mine. Take it or leave it. 3. You wrote: by the way, my council may only hire 20 to 30 summer camp staff members and they only serve for 4 to 5 weeks. You must be part of an exceptionally large council. Or perhaps you're part of an exceptionally small council. Mine serves just over 11,000 youth members in more than 360 units, spanning 14 counties. That may be large or small, I really don't know. We have two summer camps - one with an all-Boy Scout program, one split between Boy Scouts and Cubs. Both are booked fairly solid all eight or so weeks of the summer. The council is in the process of building a third camp to serve as a Cub World, allowing the second camp to offer just Boy Scout programs all summer long. 4. I am not a professional, but I do count professionals among my friends and acquaintances. You apparently see most (or all) pros as conniving, manipulative, money-grubbing people, and I feel kind of sorry for you because of that. Though I'm no expert, I worked for five years on summer camp staff and attended NCS for Scoutcraft director training, and learned a lot about the behind-the-scenes operations of a camp. As a result, I strongly dislike unwarranted, knee-jerk criticism of a camp's staff or directors from people who have never even stopped to consider the work that they do.(This message has been edited by shortridge)

we scouters have to make some efforts to teach our future citizens how things really work, and how to think, and above all how to put statesmanship and duty ahead of partisanship, no-tax pledges made to special interest lobbyists in exchange for contributions, and (gasp) even personal re-election. For some people, a no-tax pledge is statesmanship. Just depends on how you look at it. Scouters should, at the most, be teaching governmental structure and personal responsibility. Let's leave the politics and further extrapolation of what "civic duty" means to parents and families, shall we?

I would posit that those "clubs" don't become crews until they promote themselves council-wide. They look good on paper, but if they don't have even one representative show up at at least one council/area event at least once a year, they do themselves and their council a disservice. Why? Because I bet there is at least one youth out there who would be interested in that church's religious outreach, or that hobby shop's RC plane event, or what-have-you. It's the very fact that crews have radically different program foci that they should network. Please tell me on what page of any Venturing handbook or materials I can find this interpretation of the program. Either you or I have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Venturing is.

Prescribed medication is prescribed medication. It should be up to a medical professional to make such a call - NOT the average camp health officer, who is generally NOT a medical professional. If the concern here is about having one's judgment impaired, then shouldn't Scouting ban - just as a random example - Valium given to treat insomnia, because it has certain side effects? On the other hand, since it's clear SP's "concern" is about drugs and "faux state legalization," then he has the right and the ability to pull his son from a program that would approve of such activity. I'm as solid an anti-drug person as anyone on these boards. But I don't believe the BSA should be making its own rules about medical practice - leave that to the doctors. Especially not when the real "concern" has to do with politics. Washington's law covers a very small range of health issues, including cancer; HIV; multiple sclerosis; epilepsy or other seizure disorder or spasticity disorder; intractable pain unrelieved by standard medical treatments and medications; glaucoma; Chrons disease with debilitating symptoms; hepatitis C with debilitating nausea or intractable pain; diseases (including anorexia) which result in nausea, vomiting, wasting, appetite loss, cramping, seizures, muscle spasms or spasticity. By all means, let's tell the Scoutmaster suffering from glaucoma that he can't accompany his troop to summer camp because medical marijuana is the only thing that dampens the pain. You want to have that conversation, SP?

I've never seen a Soccer & Scouting troop in action, ever. But what's the difference between that and a Varsity Team? Perhaps the troop should have gone to a soccer camp rather than a Scouting camp. Also: Was the Scoutmaster the troop's regular leader? Or was he just tasked with taking them to summer camp?

Having staffed a Cub resident camp before, I can address a few of your issues, but some require a bit more information. 1. Food. In some very rare cases, I have seen food shortages - usually when a unit shows up with far more boys or parents than had been registered. However, if this happened mid-week, that should have been plenty of time to get enough food. It also could happen if there was abrupt turnover in the kitchen staff. That said, a "shortage of food" can mean different things. Did you mean they actually had no food to serve some people? Or that the portions were small? (I've heard some people complain that the camp "ran out of food" when they really meant they couldn't have seconds.) If the latter, the cubmasters should have been up in arms at the camp director's door immediately - not waiting until the end of the week to complain. 2. Event planning. I'm sorry to say that it sounds like someone fed you a line of hooey. Even if your pack was attending for the first week of the session (and you say it was near the end of the summer season), the program plans should have been finished days, if not weeks, in advance. Most times, you're recycling or modifying programs from past years. If you're the Scoutcraft director, you know you're going to be doing something with knots, firebuilding, pocketknives, cooking, etc. You shouldn't be waiting until the day before the campers arrive to be handed a list of programs from the camp director. Something smells there. If you're talking about the exact schedule of events - e.g., "Pack 123 does BB at 9, swimming at 10, handicrafts at 11" - that shouldn't matter, either. All that tells the program staff is when different packs are showing up to their areas. The staff is supposed to be there all day anyway, except when they may happen to have a rare open block of time. Not having the exact schedule should not hamper program preparation. 3. "There was also a kid that cut his finger at one of the stations. There was only one staff member there and he did not even notice. Another parent helped this kid." So what? Kids cut their fingers all the time. Did he slice it to the bone while learning knife safety because the staffer didn't go over proper handling? Or did he get a splinter running his hand over the BB range fence while the staffer was running another group through? Those details matter. Additionally, camp staff members often fly solo running program areas - they can't see everything all the time. That's what leaders and parents and den chiefs are for - to be that extra set of eyes and ears. Did the Scout *tell* the staffer something was wrong? What were the circumstances under which the staffer "did not even notice"? Was he or she trying to control a group of 15 other kids playing kickball, or lead them on a nature hike? 4. "They also neglected to include religious services for sunday morning." Not all religious faiths hold services on Sunday mornings. At my camp, we held an interfaith worship service on an evening mid-week, usually Tuesday night. If this was important to your pack, the Cubmaster or other contingent leader should have noted the lack of services mentioned in the camp leaders' guide (which is usually given to packs months in advance of camp) and asked the staff to organize something - or else you could have held a pack service on your own.

Membership ID numbers are issued by individual councils. Therefore, if you are registered in multiple councils, you have multiple ID numbers. I wish there was one universal number for each member but that is not the case. But if you are registered in three different units in the same council - for example, in two crews and a troop - you just show up once. Correct?

qwazse - A crew in this respect is just like a pack or a troop. There is no requirement, rule or even basic program assumption that a crew connect with other crews. They can be as independent or interconnected as their COs and members want them to be. It's certainly true that crew-to-crew links are encouraged through VOAs and the Corps of Discovery, etc., but in no way are they a benchmark of a quality crew program. Let's say that there's a church-chartered crew that has as its focus religious outreach, education and programming - or a hobby store-chartered crew whose members are really into RC airplane-flying - or a fitness-center-chartered crew that really gets into long-distance running. There are no other crews like them in the council. Under your way of thinking, none of those crews are real because they don't connect with other crews ... crews which have a completely different program focus and have utterly no reason to interact with them. I don't know from where you got your extremely interesting point of view about Venturing, but it's just plain incorrect. ==================== "I am a volunteer. This is supposed to be a volunteer program. Paying people to be volunteers to me means that people do not want to volunteer. But volunteering is the heart of our program is it not?" Abel - Go ahead and try getting 80 people to volunteer 8 to 10 weeks of their summer. Good luck with that. If you don't pay people a reasonable wage, you're not going to have a summer camp. We read on these boards regularly about the problems getting enough volunteers for Cub day camp, for crying out loud. You can't stitch together a multi-week resident Boy Scout program with volunteers. It's impossible. As for your comment about uniforming - I can only speak from my experience, but we wore a staff t-shirt and shorts during the day, and the field uniform in the evening and other formal occasions. The field uniform was a staff uniform - silver loops, rank insignia, personal awards, council shoulder patch, but no troop or patrol insignia. We were Council employees, and represented the Council, not our home units. If a person was registered primarily in the camp staff post/crew, he or she wore the Exploring/Venturing uniform. Simple enough. We were proud to be in our home troops, but we were also proud to serve our camp. Additionally, this whole argument about inflating numbers and pros cheating at the numbers game is ridiculous. How many people does your local camp have on summer staff? Mine has about 80. Are everybody's councils and districts so darn tiny and pathetic that a DE's or SE's job is going to be saved by the addition of 80 warm bodies to the rolls? If so, then your local area has far bigger problems to worry about.(This message has been edited by shortridge)

Hmm. I must have missed the 13th point of the Scout Law where it says "A Scout is a complete waste of time."(This message has been edited by shortridge)

Now - back to the summer camp issue. I would really like to look at what the cost impact would be if we required every MB class at a camp to be taught by a paid adult, and we limited the class sizes to a reasonable number (max 10 in my opinion). This would also eliminate the CIT position, and the summer job for a lot of young Scouts once those jobs evaporated. I don't see why it would eliminate CITs. They shouldn't be teaching MBs anyway - their role is to learn the way camp works, instructional techniques, specific subjects, rotate among program areas weekly or bi-weekly and be coached and trained along the way. Nor would it necessarily eliminate camp employees in the 15-17 age range. They can still assist with instruction, just not be the primary counselor. My camp requires about 30 MBCs (one per badge per program period, with extra aquatics staffers for lifeguards and lookouts). With class size limits, it would realistically require about 50-60 18+ MBCs. There are only about 80 people on staff now. The math is pretty simple to me. I've said it before and I'll say it again until my lungs give out: To attract a high quantity of qualified 18+ staff members, camps need to pay more. $250 a week gross pay is $6.25 an hour for a 40-hour week - already sub-minimum wage in my state. When you consider that most staffers work 10 or 12-hour days, six days a week, they're earning between $4.10 and $3.50 an hour. Even with room and board (a tent or tiny cabin and dining hall grub), that's sad. To accomplish that, camp is going to cost more - a lot more. Be prepared to pay.(This message has been edited by shortridge)

I'd consider the LNT patch more a part of the uniform than a Klingon interpreter strip or an Old Fart Patrol patch. They aren't part of the uniform, either, but plenty of people wear them. Just sayin'.

Ea - Shouldn't she just have one membership number, and thus count as one person? I've never been registered in more than one council, so I don't speak from experience, but I thought that was how it worked. Otherwise there would be far more of a push to double-register people, to boost a DE's membership numbers. Now we hear from qwasze that "real" crews are those that interact with other crews in the council. Does that definition apply to packs and troops as well? Is the troop that does its own thing while not attending camporees or sending people to roundtables thus not a real troop? Why the standard for crews? Many (most? all?) councils do require that you be registered as a member in that particular council - not in the council next door - in order to be on camp staff. Not sure why that's such a problem for so many people, or why folks here insist that only people who have DEMONSTRATED COMMITTMENT TO THE PROGRAM [sound the trumpets! dah-dah!] should serve on staff. I guess that leaves out the high school science teacher running the nature lodge, the retired river guide overseeing your waterfront, the part-time EMT staffing the health lodge or the college students galore who go off to NCS and run different program areas, putting their expertise and experience to work. I guess since they can only devote eight 80-hour weeks, instead of volunteering year-round, they're not REAL Scouters. Oh, and for folks who complain that camp staff members also are not REAL Scouters because they're on the "council payroll" - camp staff pay is abysmal, even for those at the top. It's sub-sub-sub-minimum wage in many cases. People work camp because they love doing so, not because of the gigantic paycheck. They don't take their checks and live high on the hog year-round.

There are two separate round Trainer patches. One is produced by the BSA - a standard circular POR patch. (See http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/OutdoorProgram/OutdoorEthics/LeaveNoTraceTrainer.aspx) That's clearly not for adult wear. The other is a black oval patch produced by the Leave No Trace organization, at the link referenced above.