Smithgall

I agree with those of you that suggest walking. Unfortunately when we a few months after starting in boyscouts after leaving weblos we really wanted to leave this troop because it just seemed disorginized and the boys didnt seem to do anything (they didnt cook at camps, they werent being taught scout skills, and again the yelling drove us crazy) but our son liked the boys and we thought that maybe we were just being new parents and wanted to give it time before we started questioning things too badly. Then after University of scouting we heard how thing were supposed to run and we took more notice. Luckily we live in a large city and there are probably 5 troops with in our middle school area so last week we started visiting.

EAGLE1982...when i read your post i laughed out loud. Something i didnt mention because its not directly tied to scouts is that he has always claimed "14 years of martial arts training". If I have heard him say that once i have heard it a thousand times. The guys seems pathalogical in his approach. I sometime wonder if he beleives it. he once told a few of us that he had 3 years of child psychology and 1 year of para psychology. The child psychology threw us all because again it just didnt jibe with his disfunction with handling kids. But after a while someone realized.. wait what is para psychology.. Look it up. Its the study of ghosts. Bill Murray was a para psychologist in Ghostbusters. Again that was one more piece of the puzzle.

I would like to get your thoughts on this. This is a very real situation but I am leaving out any details that would point to the parties involved.

We have had a husband and wife team as scoutaster and comitee chair. we joined the troop a year and a half ago and began noticing problems with the behavior of this team. Let me make it very clear THIS IS NOT SEXUAL. However there was alot of yelling at boys and just a general inability to handle stress. As new parents we were not sure if this was just the way it worked or were we just overly sensitive (we are not really yellers so our home life didnt really lend it self to this type of behavior)

What was odd was the the scoutmaster would stress out very early with just a few boys yet he would tell us all that he was a Navy Seal. I have never been in the military so my only contact with special operations people is through the movies but i just couldnt image that a man that was a navy seal couldnt take a few boys being loud without losing his cool and yelling at them. The wife was kind of a controld freak and would usually come to the beginning of each meeting and lecture the boys on all sorts of subjects. In fact we parents used to joke that the scoutmaster didnt say a word unless his wife first told him what to say and when to say it.

A few significant things happened to bring it all out. First the navy seal scoutmaster failed our troop cpr class. He and two eleven year olds failed the exam. That was kind of an eye opener. how could a seal fail CPR. then this summer he couldnt pass the boyscout lifesaving test. Again, how could a seal fail the boyscout test. When we went to our local camp for an aquatics weekend, we had teenager girls as lifeguards...Teenage girls were qualified to save the seal!!!

The next most significant event happened when we went to summer camp at camp woodruff. Two of the boys went to camp but took their extreme zone course so they left sunday night with the scoutmaster and didnt come back until friday while myself and some other parents stayed at the normal camp with the remainder of the boys. When we returned home our advancement coordinator asked the comitee chair for the boys paperwork from camp. the comitee chair said she would get them to her later. It took a month to finally get the paperwork showing all the badges earned. By sheer twist of fate at the end of a meeting one night someone happend to mention how many badges the two extreme zone boys earned. Luckily there were 4 comitee members that are all long time scouters with a total of 5 eagle children between them all over the age of 24. they immediately recognized that the badges that were supposedly earned at camp by these two boys (hiking, cycling, whitewater, backpacking, horsemanship, climbing) couldnt have been earned in a one week period and especially not more than one. None of these badges had ever been started by either boy prior to camp. Because the one boy is the son of the comitee chair (and a new 17 year old eagle) and stepson of the scoutmaster and the other boy is their close family friend it looked suspicious. One of the long timers called woodruff and they confirmed that the paperwork had been doctored and that they infact did not give any badges out during summer camp for extreme zone.

At the same time this was being investigated another father (retired navy) checked into the validity of the Navy Seal claim. It was proven the scoutmaster was not a seal. Eventually all this came out at a leadership meeting. The scoutmaster claimed he was not only a seal but that the reason he wasnt showing up in record was because he was a classified seal.

So now we have a scoutmaster that has been proven to lie about being a navy seal and the comitee chair that has forged nerit badges.

Ahh but here is the rub. The Charter orginization has refused to remove these people and the local council says their hands are tied.. WHAT!!! The local council says that the charter has the right to run their troop they way they want.. My question is what does a person have to do before council enough is enough? You have a scoutmaster lieing about something as significant as military service and you have a comitee chair forging documentation to give her son unearned merit badges.

Obviously there is a lot of other things that happened but its way too long. I am purposefully not mentioning who these people are or the troop, etc. I dont want to seem like i am trying to smear people. i am truly wondering if anyone has ever heard of such a thing. Have you ever delt with forged merit badges by a leader? I am very disapointed in the council for basically not upholding the values. If the number one law if TRUSTWORTHY how can they say hands off when these type of things happen. Incidently the badges were eventually pulled from the council roles so the boys did not benefit from the fraud. However that simply means that council did agree that the docs had been forged, removed them and still say hands off..

ok vent is over..

thanks for the responses. I guess i made my point a little blury but the answers were all good anyway. The dispute was not who can sign off specifically but rather if the swim test can be admin by a non lifeguard. The the comitee chair (former SM for this troop) did the swim test. Then When the boy brought his book to the SM, the SM told him that it had to have been conducted by a cert BSA lifeguard. So he coudlnt advance. As ASMm, i had not heard this rule and wondered why it couldnt be signed off. I worded my question poorly. But thaks for all the answers

we have a dispute regarding who can sign off on swim requirements for 2nd class.

as i read the 2nd class swin test there isnt a requirement that the test be administered by a certified lifeguard or even a swim coach. Again this is just the 2nd class requirement not a merit badge reqiurement. We have one boy that is lacking only this. In general can anyone (SM, ASM, Commiteee member) sign off on the requirements? My assumption (and you know what they say about that) is that unless its otherwise stated in the book then any official can sign off on the rank advancement requirements