T2Eagle

There's nothing challenging in those requirements, and of course it may be the first day the troop existed formally, that doesn't mean it's the first time the troop met, either as Webelos or just as likely as an informal group waiting for d-day.

I don't see any reason to think this wasn't the scout on his own. I was 10 the first time I worked on a political campaign. The campaign headquarters was on my paper route and they had a sign on the window saying "volunteers needed", so I walked in and volunteered. They handed me a stapler and a stack of posters and told me to go tack them up on telephone polls, and I did things like that for the next two months. It was the candidate my parents supported, but they had nothing to do with my volunteering and weren't themselves involved in the campaign.

This one gave me pause even though I agree with the general sentiment. I think it stayed on the right side of a line, but it walked up close to it. A distinction I think worth drawing is between civic expression and partisan expression. If a scout writes a letter to the editor saying "I'm a scout who camps in the metro Parks please support the metro parks on November X" signed T Jones FCS I think that's more acceptable than saying "I'm a scout and I believe candidate X is better for our county support candidate X . " In this case the scout said "“What I did was took a knee against racial discrimination,” he said, “which is basically [when] people are mean to other people of different colors.” I think this falls onto the civic rather than partisan side of the distinction.

I have to disagree a bit. In a well run troop the scouts work this out. In our troop the default assumption is that it's the SPL's responsibility to either do it or delegate it. If there's a scout who is working on Communication and wants the role, which is often but not always the case, than that's fine. But the scout working on the badge has to step forward, and of course sometimes the SPL is working on the badge. As for giving out the badge, we tried giving out the badge the same night as BOR and then making a big deal, formal recognition at the COH. The scouts were indifferent to receiving the badge right away so we reverted to just a big attascout at the meeting and saving the badge for the COH. I view the pins as a costly non necessity, but that's not a widely shared view so we give them out at COH also. It is silly that a troop can't by them ahead of time since the myriad ways that you can buy them negate any idea that there's any real restriction on the purchase or supply.

I had a discussion with a neighboring SM a few summer camps back who was chastising me about not having those fire buckets outside each tent. His was the first troop I had seen them with since my days as a scout in the 60s-70s. I told him that ever since we stopped letting the scouts smoke in their tents we hadn't really seen the need for them. That was a really interesting week; he had some very strong ideas about there being only one right way to do scout stuff. By the end of the week, a few of my scouts, having spent time with his, said they were sorry for any complaint they had ever made about me, and were newly appreciative of the light touch I used as an SM.

Small town paper writing about a small town story, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it has nothing to do with the potential bankruptcy or selling any paintings. After some parsing it seems to say a museum that was going to try to put on an exhibition including the paintings is tabling that decision because of some uncertainty, and on of its main donors is mad about it. There was some mention about fantasizing about acquiring the paintings way down the road.

Broadly, it's easier to get applications at the first meeting than it is to chase people for paperwork later. I always do this when recruiting new cubs. I'm not sure I'd go to the trouble with people who are already scouts because they likely are more familiar with our processes and a little bit easier to squeeze paperwork out of.

Not bad. Every female leader I ever knew to comment on it, universally decried the cut and shape of female leader uniforms. I hope these are better designed in that aspect.

I've been a professional cook, and cooking well over a fire, especially with a small pot like a mess kit, is really difficult to do. Since I consider good food an important part of a good camping trip I prefer to use regular size pans, even over backpacking stoves. For patrol cooking you can probably either just solicit some donated pots and pans, pick some up at garage sales, or get some basics as a set from some place like Costco.

I had a discussion about this with my SE, who's a friend. He said there is ongoing talk about whether to run rechecks, but no one does it routinely. This came up in a discussion about our diocese requiring a renewed background check every five years. Every five years or so is probably worthwhile, but make no mistake it will be a lot of resources expended for very very little gain. The chances are, if a member of your unit was arrested, let alone convicted, of a sexual offense you would surely know about it through your own resources long before it would show up in a 5 year recheck. Background checks are just that, background, they tell you about the past. Once a person is a member of your unit you should be paying a reasonable amount of attention to who they are and what they're doing in order to protect the scouts in your unit.

Interesting article, leaves a lot of questions unanswered, first and foremost why did the Council background check not turn up what the parent's web search did. If someone came to me and said they'd spent 8 years in prison I certainly would have done my own googling, AND made sure that the Council knew there was reason to look closely at the background, AND made sure my CO knew what was going on and had a chance to weigh in in a well informed manner, and questioned council again when the membership card first came through. Frankly based on the first information I doubt I would have gone so far as to accept the application; we don't need volunteers that desperately, and this wasn't even a case of the parent of a scout, but rather just the relative of a fellow leader. I'm all for second chances and you can't just ban someone from society, but that doesn't mean that your opportunities for non necessity are not going to be curtailed.

Adding to my previous comment. I took the time to go back one link to a previous column referenced by professor Carter in the piece Skeptic listed. It is a great short description of the values that can be gained from even a brief stint as a scout and a 1965 handbook. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-16/don-t-let-the-boy-scouts-go-bankrupt

I had the pleasure of meeting and dining with the author, Stephen Carter. He is brilliant and delightful. I would recommend any of his writings: fiction, nonfiction, and opinion.

"Results indicate that adults with documented histories of childhood abuse and/or neglect have lower levels of education, employment, earnings, and fewer assets as adults, compared to matched control children. There is a 14% gap between individuals with histories of abuse/neglect and controls in the probability of employment in middle age, controlling for background characteristics. ... These new findings demonstrate that abused and neglected children experience large and enduring economic consequences." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3571659/

Also from the article : "The Boy Scouts’ potential bankruptcy is an administrative issue and not a financial one, Dumas [plaintifs' attorney] said." “They have more than $1 billion in assets and an estimated at least $100 million in insurance money available,” Dumas explained. Bankruptcy would be “a tool to put the assets all in one place, figure out who has claims and an organized way to compensate the victims.”

i'm going to disagree slightly with some of the posters. This sounds like a situation isn't a situation where the normal incentives/disincentives will work. The scout can survive without food if he's stubborn enough, or he knows adult will feed him, or he'll just leave dishes dirty whether it hurts his patrol or not. This is where adult association comes in, and it has to start before the campout. However the patrol makes the duty roster, this scout;s name appears in a place for doing dishes. Assuming like most troops this is probably the meeting before campout, then at that meeting, once the roster is set,the SM pulls the scout aside and shows him the roster and talks to him about what this means, and gets the scout to lay out and understand what the expectations are going to be on the campout. Then, at the campout, when the time comes, the SM goes over to the scout, reminds him of their discussion and proceeds to coach the scout through meeting the necessary expectations. You can't wait and see if this time it will be different, it won't be. This is about breaking one habit in the scout and beginning a new one. Human brains reward doing the same thing as they did before, even if it ended up badly before, this is a matter of breaking one cycle and starting a new one. This isn't a one time fix, it will take a few tries, and may not end perfectly, but this is why we get paid the big bucks. This is going to take an investment of time, disproportionate time, but if you're not willing to do it then you might as well scream at the kid and threaten to not let him go on trips --- or just put up with him --- because there's no fix that doesn't take a lot of extra effort.

That doesn't make any sense. First, the vast majority of BSA units are also part of non profit orgs so that would have to somehow apply to BSA units also. Additionally, non profit organizations operate continuously just like all other organizations. There's no requirement that a non profit "start from scratch" every year; other than having an arbitrary date for financial reporting there is no start or stop necessary for any ongoing financial practice.

Lots of COs already do. If you're sponsored by a Catholic Church or school for instance, you almost certainly are being asked to agree to a background check conducted on behalf of the diocese. I'm not sure there's any extra value to having a second background check, there's no real reason to think it would turn up anything new or different from what the BSA does. It's important to understand what a "background check" is; first, it's not really any sort of investigation the way say a security clearance might be, rather, there are a number of companies who take the information provided, like name, ss#, birth date, address, etc. and run it against a series of databases which contain compiled information about public records of criminal convictions and maybe civil lawsuits. What level of detail and thoroughness you get depends a lot on how much you pay. The chances are that your CO could easily be using the same company as BSA or even the same company used by your employer when you were hired. Nothing about a background check is going to turn up any time someone was accused but not arrested and at least tried. Certainly there's not going to be anything about when someone was dismissed from another organization when there was suspicious or untoward behavior but no involvement of law enforcement. Background checks will cull out the most notorious cases, and with the ubiquitiousness of data available today almost any of them will be pretty good about that. But they're probably the bluntest and most basic of protections, and would not now or then have prevented most of the abuse that happens --- that's up to us to be both vigilant and rational in understanding the dangers the children in our care face.

We've had a number of scouts over the years who were not US citizens. We generally left it up to them how to handle the Pledge. Most of them just salute and say it in rote without thought just like the rest of the scouts. A few would salute but stay silent because that called the least attention to themselves. A couple more just stood respectfully. Requiring the citizen of another country to pledge allegiance to the US seems silly at best. Requiring a scout to enunciate an oath or prayer that is actually in violation of their religion seems like a compete break with the 12th point of the Scout law. When I attend religious services other than my own I act respectfully, but I don't recite any prayers that are in contradiction with my own beliefs, and I can't imagine that anyone would expect me to. Jehovah Witnesses are no less American and no less patriotic just because they refrain from taking oaths.

I can't read the CSE response as anything other than confirmation of the WSJ report. Several Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy under similar circumstances. here's a great article explaining what happens. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/01/16/explaining-archdiocese-bankruptcy Broadly, assets that aren't strictly needed for continuing operations are set aside to pay creditors, including plaintiffs who have filed suit. In addition, the court oversees operations of the organization in order to protect the claims of creditors.

My model for linked would be linked infrastructure: CO, committee, equipment, and fundraising; and separate activities: meetings, PLCs, campouts. Our troop's greatest strength is probably the support we receive from our CO, a Catholic parish. They are generous in direct support like funds and space, and the parishioners are generous in supporting the troop when we do things like fundraising and frankly in having their kids join. I think leveraging that support would be critical to a new troop's success, but I don't see any reason why the new troop would need to hold meetings or campouts with the existing troop. The essence of scouting is a group of friends who get together and become better citizens and better individuals by planning and carrying out their own program. Let the girls do that. Tell them how it should work with them making decisions and carrying them out, and then let them do just that. I personally wold not be very enthusiastic about an essentially co-ed situation, and I don't think the kids are either, especially at the ages you will primarily have: 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. The most successful Venture crews I have seen are primarily juniors, seniors, and beyond; at that age they have figured out a lot more about who they themselves are and so are better equipped to understand who the other other gender is and how to interact with them. Let the new troop be its own troop, let the old troop be its own troop, share the external resources they each have: the adults and CO, and let them keep their internal resources, which is themselves.

Get as large a group of current parents as you can to contact the CC and express just how bad an idea you collectively think this is. I would also get in touch with the COR and do the dame thing. Frankly, if the COR is as uninterested as you say than he may be MORE willing to intervene in something like this just because he doesn't want to start being bothered with issues. As to your question, we invite any parent who is interested to come to our committee meetings and if we vote on something then they vote.

Bank accounts are not a requirement for being a troop although most troops --- and packs --- end up having them, so there's probably not going to be any blanket guidance as to whether a set of linked troops would or would not have one bank account. Like many aspects of linked troops it is going to be up to the COR for how they want to handle it. If you are going to have one Troop Committee for the two linked troops it certainly could make sense, especially early on.

A beautiful story from a national disgrace. I've always thought very highly of Simpson as a result of it. It showed real courage on the part of Simpson, his troop, and especially his SM to accept that initial invitation.

Anyone getting up at 6a.m. in our troop better be very quiet and be making me coffee for when I get up at 7:30 or 8. We have a couple leaders who are used to getting up that early for work and so they do get up because it's their habit. The troop gets up at the time the PLC decides, and since they're mostly teenagers none of them are voting for 6.