SR540Beaver

I've only seen our DE in "street clothing" twice. Both times was when I was trying to recruit a charter organization for our new troop and he accompanied me. He never misses a roundtable, camporee, summer camp or webelos woods.....and he is always in full uniform. Our scout shop staff is always in full uniform. Everyone else at the council office is in civvies usually.

I agree with fscouter. It is preferable to have more than one adult so claims can not be made against them, but having multiple boys in the room protects the boys. I needed to test a boy on Safety Afloat this week. Our meeting place does not lend itself to having the size for us to go off to a corner and work on it in sight of everyone else. Instead, I took him and a committee member to a different Sunday School room. An individual boy should never be alone with an individual adult. A mixture of the two is fine.

If you look at Ankh's profile, you'll find a webpage which leads you to his resume. His background and interests seem very close to Wheeler's. Hmmmm, you don't suppose that Wheeler and Ankh could be........nah, nothing like that has ever happened around here before.

KW, Machine breakage aside, those paper maps also come in handy for starting a fire when you get hopelessly lost!

Ouch! To coin a phrase, "I feel your pain"! We have a good DE in our district with a number of years of experience. He left professional scouting, decided he missed it and came back about a year ago. Correct me if I'm wrong, didn't you say in another thread that this guy is right out of college? Also, does he have ANY background in scouting at all? I can't remember what you said. Eamonn, do the kid a favor and have a talk with him. At least you can say you tried. I remember being that age and all the rude awakenings I went thru when I actually became a "responsible" adult. Let him know that you are trying to be a friend, look out for him and help him get his feet on the ground. Tell him that regardless of whether he likes it or not, a DE without a uniform is like a surgeon who doesn't like washing his hands. Sometimes the job requires doing things you don't personally like. If you can't handle the requirements of the job, maybe you picked the wrong job. I have a feeling that this kid wanted a job....ANY job, and this is either the first one to hire him or paid more than the others he may have been offered. Tell him you want him to succeed, but he is setting himself up for failure. Remember, offer your advice friendly and fatherly. He'll either decide to shape up or I have a feeling he'll be asked to leave or quit in frustration. Good luck buddy!

Incredibly, Wheeler wasn't one of FOG's multiple personalities. FOG is alive and well and still promoting his own skewed view of life and Scouting on another Scouting board and getting called down by the admin. It does not have near the traffic that this board does, so I'm not sure how he is getting his daily "contrarian" fix.

Welcome Mike! Like Eamonn, I'm going to Jamboree as a leader with our contingent. Our Troop number is 1715. I'm planning on meeting Eamonn while there and compare knees.

Early teen hazing. Boy does that bring back memories? Well, actually not. If I could block out any part of my life or do it over again, it would be my junior high years. I have no fond memories I can recall from then. Before and after were great, but junior high just isn't worth remembering. Once I hit 5th grade, I became an overweight kid until my senior year when I lost 80 pounds. I remember being picked on and called names. I also remember joining in on some occasional hazing because I wanted to not be the butt of the joke once in a while. I was relieved to dodge the bullet for that hour and some other poor sap got it instead of me. Kids can be vicious at that age. I look back on my actions with shame now that I'm 47 and wish I could take back some of the things we did to kids. I wish I could change the things that happened to me. As a Scouter, I've made myself a promise that hazing will never take place on my watch and see a kid go thru the bad memories I have.

Don't quote me on this, because I doubt that it is correct. At our last adult leader Jamboree meeting, one of our council professionals seemed to be under the impression that BSA IS coming out with this option soon. She was going to check into it as our boys are required to have three full uniforms for Jamboree and the topic came up that it would be great if we had convertible pants to take. I'll let you know if I hear anything else about it.

Which brings up another thought. I've met a few Troops that choose to shut down for the summer and their only activity is summer camp. Anybody else run across this?

EagleinKY, Not to mention that they meet 12 months a year instead of 9.

I'd love to see it. When winter rolls around, it is difficult to recognize a boy as a Boy Scout since they are all wearing a variety of outerwear over their uniforms.

Starwolf mentioned something that got my interest. In our old Pack, our Bear Den Leader elected to hold meetings every other week instead of weekly. I never asked him why. To his credit, he was a great leader, very gung ho for Scouting and had great attendance. He is now the Cubmaster and the Pack is going as strong as when we were there last year. How many Packs have Dens that meet every other week instead of weekly and why?

sst3rd, Your campground sounds pretty cool. I'm sure it was designed the way it was in order to teach some history, give the kids a memorable experience and to entice units to use the property. However, you can't just build it and expect it to stay in pristine condition forever. You created overhead with the campground improvements. In order to cover that overhead, you have to charge fees. Since it is going to be used the most by units in your council (the same people who donated to it and put sweat equity into it), the majority of fees are going to be paid by those same units. If you let everyone in your council use it for free and only charge the occasional out of council unit, you won't have enough revenue to maintain the camp. Our council campgrounds are free to our council units. I have never seen anything that spells out a fee for out of council units at our campgrounds. Basically what you get if you come to one of our campgrounds is a site with a latrine, water during the warm seasons, maybe a flagpole and maybe a fire ring. Some of the campgrounds use barrel halves for fires. We have camped in other council's camps and have to pay $1 or $2 per person per day. Even with basic campgrounds like ours, some of the facilities tend to begin looking neglected and run down. There never seems to be enough money to make them look like some of the campgrounds you see in the movies. If you go all out and make a top notch campground, expect to pay top dollar to use it. It won't stay that way without it. Even dedicated scouters have their limits of how many weekends they are going to spend on up keep of the council cmpgrounds. Spend a weekend a month working on them this year......will you do it for the next two, five or ten?

I have a feeling that most scout camps operate on a shoestring budget and break even at best. The gentleman who was supposed to run the first aid station at summer camp ended up getting sick himself and had to make several trips home to see his doctor. Our troop had a surgical nurse and an Air Force Battlefield Medical Technician who were pressed into service when this man had to leave. They were shocked at the lack of medical supplies available and talked to the Camp Director. He informed them that he had been budgeted $200 for supplies for 6 weeks of camp. They were running low by the middle of the first week. What I find odd is that our Council has a good number of "medical" people who could get 10 times what we had at camp donated, but no one thought to ask or coordinate it.

This sounds like a pack without much leadership or training. I'm a regular attendee of our District Roundtable. There is a wealth of information provided there and lots of program ideas during the breakout sessions. While we have a fairly good attendance, there are those Packs and Troops whose leaders never darken the door. The majority of training is free and if it doesn't meet your schedule, you can go to another district and get the same training. You are dealing with apathy. People who want to put in the least amount of effort possible and give the kids a place to play for an hour a week. May I make several suggestions. Talk to the district trainer and see if he will make a call on the Cubmaster. If enough people are involved, often the trainer will come to the Pack to provide training onsite. Find out if they have a unit commissioner who can encourage them to come to Roundtable meetings. Instead of inviting them to your functions, bring your boys to them to fire the boys up. Consider giving up your position as a Troop Committee member and become a Pack Committee member or Chairman and be an agent of change. Or better yet, be a member of both units. My experience is that enthusiasm is contagious. Often, it only takes one person fired up to get the others off of their tails and moving. Our old Cubmaster was going to serve on the Woodbadge staff last year. He ended up signing up four of us from the Pack to attend. He and I moved this year to a Troop and are fellow ASM's. But he left a legacy at the old Pack. They have had two more leaders go thru Woodbadge since we all went last year. He was the catalyst that inspired the rest of us to bleed Scouting when we are cut.

Speaking of assets generating income. How many of your council campgrounds are open to outside groups? A few months ago, our troop did their monthly outing at a scout campground outside of our council. The date we had originally wanted to use it was closed to us because they rent the whole campground to one of the Indian tribes in our area for two weekends each summer. This same campground also rents the camp out to the Assembly of God Royal Rangers for summer camp. Do any of your councils consider allowing outside use rather than letting it sit idle or hosting an individual troop now and then on their monthly outing.

nldscout, So far, I have not been "blessed" with the message cut off demon. What might help you is to type your post in something like Notepad, then copy it and paste it into the message box here. I don't know if it would cut off a block of text like that or not. It is worth a try. Or are you just trying to keep us in suspense?

Wouldn't want adults flipping over it or Cub Scouts choking on it, would we? Oh, I don't know.....sometimes camp can get a little boring after the sun goes down.

No worry mate......we'll just pull out all of our electronic devices to keep us occupied while we wait.

cajun, Don't be alarmed. Most kids grow up in t-shirts and dislike button ups. My Boy Scout son insists on putting his uniform shirt on the same way.

E, You just made my head hurt. Maybe that is why I let "her who must be obeyed" do the laundry. She doesn't like the way I do it anyway. I won't mention if the way I do it is intentional or not. "Mom" usually does the bed sheets and bath towels seperate. That is the lint I scramble for.

One note on using dryer lint. Only use lint from drying cotton articles. Synthetic lent is basically plastic and it melts instead of burning. Your firestarters will work much better with cotton lint than synthetic lint.

I bite the holes out of the middle of the donuts down at the donut factory. It is a sweet job.

We don't really ban anything. Electronic devices are discouraged. They can use them in the vehicle. I think some may use them at night when they go to bed. We had one kid who complained about the frogs one night. I thought to myself, "man, that is why I'm out here". I find the sounds of nature soothing. I have an idea that this kid probably goes to sleep with the sounds of his Xbox at night. We have banned pop. Powdered mixes are fine. Raiman noodles are out. There was one kid who was too lazy to even heat the water and ate them dry. Sorry guys, you have to cook. I don't have a problem with books during down time. Magazines, hmmmm. Games are fine. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. I'd rather see them engrossed in a book or using their brains engaged in logic and strategy with a game than being bored and coming up with stunts to pull. One rule we have recently established is no more than two to a tent.....ever....period. I won't go into details, but we had about 6 boys in a cabin tent a scout brought and they ended up playing truth or dare. We didn't find out what happened until about a week after the campout. The SM said we have dining flies with tables for you to congregate at if you want to play or visit during down time. Tents are meant for sleeping and shelter. The only people who need to be in them are the people bunking in them and they only need to be in them when we are not doing program activities.