T2Eagle

Yes, more accurately, I don't believe there was a violation to report.

Thanks for all the replies. I wish I had done a better job of conveying the story. I do not think this was any kind of YPT violation that needed to be reported, but I did think it was an interesting example of when issues that sound black and white become more gray. As I said, he dragged his mattress out of our room and was just outside the door. I pretty much tripped over him when I got up. His presence in the far corner of a large room with six other scouts was no more nefarious than my presence would have been as I passed through to use the rest room and then made coffee in the kitchen area that was the other corner of the same room ---all before the scouts woke up. As he said, smothering Scouter Log Sawyer would probably have been a bigger violation, and more seriously and importantly he wanted to make sure he got at least a couple hours sleep so he could safely drive home later that morning. The heart of YPT is no one-on-one contact, and that was never violated, and given the real safety concern of having a competent driver (motor vehicle travel still being the biggest safety risk to scouts and scouters) I feel confident about there being no actual violation to report.

So I have a conundrum about reporting a YPT violation. Over the weekend the troop was staying in a cabin at a nearby council’s camp. There were three rooms: a main room with about six bunks, plus two separate bunk rooms. Three of us adults went to sleep in one of those bunk rooms, scouts were spread across the main room and the other bunk room. One adult (not me) was snoring to raise the roof. When I woke up the other leader had dragged a mattress onto the floor of the main room where some of the scouts were asleep in bunks. When I asked him what happened he said it was move into the room with the scouts or smother our fellow leader with a pillow. So should I report the YPT violation?

I agree with much of what Wisconsin Momma said. Don't feel bound by how past Treasurers have done things, figure out how you can do things. That said, the very first thing you should do is set expectations with your Committee Chair. Sit down with him/her and show them the state of things today, let them know what you believe you can do now and what you might be able to do in the future. If your expectations don't match, decline the position. The next step is to get a handle on the basics. Get all the deposits into the bank and figure out how much money the troop has. Find out if there are any outstanding bills and get them paid. Now you at least know whether you can pay whatever the next bill is. After that there a lot of different ways to go, if your predecessor can't help you, talk to the Treasurers in your neighboring troop and see how they do things. Best wishes.

I don't think you should override the youth decision in this case without actual evidence, either from her prior behavior or their prior judgement that the decision is necessarily a poor one. I would probably watch a little more closely and check in with her patrol mates a little more directly as to her performance, but you don't have reason to do more than that. As to her leading the patrol on an overnight, who else is in her patrol? Is she leading a patrol full of other 11 year olds? If she wasn't the PL would the make-up of the patrol change significantly. It may be true that there is a designated PL on an outing, but ultimately patrols are teams and succeed or fail based on the behavior of the team members. If she isn't up to snuff, especially the first go round, is there someone else in the patrol who will likely help her be successful anyway --- presumably the person who would be second choice, or if you override, your first choice as PL?

I'm with Stosh, our favorite cabin game is "go outside and run around." After that, Risk, some card games, and some electronic trivia/charade game who's name escapes me.

They may be scout pants, or maybe khaki convertible pants are just common in Oregon. The troop website doesn't give much indication that they're anything other than a standard Catholic Parish chartered troop. I do like this way they explain advancement to new scouts: "Advancement is an important part of scouting, but it isn’t everything. Though there are no advancement requirements to our members, we do expect Scouts to participate in the program being offered. Enjoy the experience, learn some skills, and advancement will come naturally." It's the last line I like best, I'm going to borrow that.

The first part of this statement is how we definitely do things, the second half os how we do things when we're doing them really well.

Our scouts rarely choose to attend camporees. They find them over structured, over programmed, and basically boring. I get asked at roundtable about our lack of participation and my response is always that the boys get to choose and that just isn't our thing. My own suggestion was that if they put a lot of effort into one camporee a year rather than three they might get a different result. Several years ago I attended a a Uof Scouting session on Annual Program Planning and the instructor said he starts the process by putting the District events: Spring Camporee, Fall Camporee, and Klondike on their calendar. I was appalled and spoke to him after the seesion and asked him about the boys views on that. He said yes the boys get to do the planning but they certainly don't have the option to skip those. One of the biggest changes I nade as Sm was telling the boys at the Annula Planning that they were starting with a blank slate, there were no trips they had done in the past that they had to do in the future.

I certainly don't know the number, but since everyone has to renew their YPT every two years I would say that almost every adult is a my.scouting member. Who knows how well they purge those rolls when BSA membership ends.

The WSJ is behind a pay wall. Does anyone with a subscription know whether they gave more detail on their questions. I agree with Hawkwin that unless the maintenance of single gender troops and dens is part of the question it doesn't really give much insight as to how the proposal will ultimately fare. On the other hand, if we assume that most people don't understand that this is not a proposal to have teenage boys and girls camping together that is going to be a big informational challenge for BSA to overcome. I would love to see the results on whether people think girls should be allowed to earn Eagle Scout.

We occasionally meet at the scout camp in town. When we camp there it counts as a campout. You should probably tell us more about your question. Generally when I think about a campout it means staying somewhere overnight where the scouts are responsible for providing for their own needs: things like cooking and cleaning for themselves, setting up their sleeping quarters, etc.

That article is full of straw men, ignorance, inaccuracies and pure b.s. He doesn't describe the scouts I experienced half a century ago, and he doesn't describe the program as I see it run most places today.

If you're looking for a policy going forward make it simple: equipment is either owned by the troop or owned by an individual boy. If it's owned by a boy then he takes it home with him, if it's owned by the troop it stays at the troop. Patrols are a perfect organizing structure for boys to have fun, but they have a short shelf life and cannot and will not exist outside the troop. If you don't have this simple a structure you will inevitably have either conflicts or just administrative headaches about how to pass along gear. Even if the dads, or scouts, were willing to do all this amicably you would have ridiculous questions about how much is gear worth: what would it cost to "buy into" a patrol's gear, what is a scout owed when they leave, what if no one wants to buy into the used gear, of the three to five guys who helped buy it who gets to keep it at home, who has to keep it at home. Sometimes, especially when parents are acting foolishly, you just have to put your foot down and say this is the way it is.

This type of restructuring was talked about when the great Michigan centralization was being constructed. I don't know whether they ever went to that model because our council opted out. But I see some logic to it. The Cub program needs very different types and amounts of resources than do most scout troops, so I could see specialization working there. As to round tables and other district functions, I've never found round table particularly helpful --- a larger time commitment than what I get out of it. Most of the information could be just as well transmitted via other communications techniques. And again, what I got out of it as a cub leader was much more than I get now as a scout leader. As to the centralization of EBORs and such. My district doesn't do them that way now, so there are probably many models for that which could wrk without them being more cumbersome.

That scenario would almost certainly mean that the CO has no ownership, and therefore no liability, regarding the trailer. The murkier situation would be if the troop used its (therefore the CO's) money to purchase the trailer, but titled and registered it in a scouter's name.

In my state, and I know for sure in several others, there is no requirement that a trailer be insured just because it's registered. One question I don't know the answer to is whether a trailer is even worth insuring against loss. Typically insurance covers the fair market value(FMV) of the insured item. What is the FMV of a bunch of used tents, dining flies, and stoves? Probably not much if anything. Our trailer is coming up on 15 years old, our best guess is we could get $1000 for it. I would be surprised if our trailer and everything in it was worth $3000. It would cost us much more than that to replace it, but that's likely what an insurance company would value it at. With any kind of reasonable deductible I'm not sure buying insurance against theft or loss would even be worth it.

The answer depends a lot on who's asking and why. The simplest answer is that for most purposes the individual would be considered the owner and could do with the trailer whatever he or she wants, including sell it for their own profit, and they would be liable for any damage caused by the trailer. It's possible that if the trailer was the proximate cause of an injury to someone that then that person could demonstrate in a law suit that the CO was the effective or "equitable" owner of the trailer and therefore liable for the damage caused. Similarly a CO could make a case that they were the equitable owner of the trailer and reclaim it or prevent the sale of it by the individual holding the title. Both scenarios would depend a lot on specific facts and evidence and individual state laws. (edited because without automatic spell check my poor typing makes my posts almost gibberish.)

I don't think Scout was ever recorded prior to its becoming a rank. I'm not even sure it could have been. When you say new guys, do you mean guys earning the new Scout rank or just guys who came in under he old regime?

It isn't the cost that bothers me so much, it's the disdain for the members demonstrated by a complete lack of transparency. Show us some respect by just honestly answering your own first two FAQs: "1. Why are you increasing the membership fee? 2. What is directly contributing to the need for this increase?" The need to do this cannot be some small change or just across the board cost increases. This is nowhere near any kind of inflation rate. Just tell us honestly: here are the big cost increases that have occurred, and/or here are the big revenue decreases --- even and especially if these changes may seem a little embarrassing or off message. If the costs of lawsuits and insuring against them has gone up (as I've heard) then tell us. If the LDS membership changes are going to result in big revenue declines, tell us. If it's just been bad forecasting and there are cost overruns for things like the Summit or technology tell us that. But simply being opaque solves none of those problems, does nothing to reassure the members of the quality of stewardship, and frankly strikes me as violating the Scout Law to be Trustworthy. Courteous, and Brave. Probably especially violative of Brave.

That seems like a recipe for communication breaking down. Any rule laid down should have as it goal communicating being successful not placing barriers to it.

Nothing to do with any programming change. YPT was required for Jamboree at least as far back as 2010. Our NYLT training has also included it at least that long ago.

I have exactly this scenario in my troop. I've talked to all the boys who took the MB at camp, and told them they still need to do the meal planning and cooking requirements. They know they didn't do those requirements, they never claimed they did them. The camp staff member who was in charge of the class (likely) just didn't understand the requirements, asked the kids if they cooked at home and on campouts, and in his mind accepted that as fulfilling the requirements. None of the scouts mind that they still have to cook, they've been eating everybody else's MB or advancement required cooking for the past couple years and understand that's what they need to do now too. The key, I think, is not to place any blame on the scouts or imply that they did something wrong. Especially at camp they aren't following along with the list of requirements and making sure they check each requirement and sub requirement, they're just doing what the camp staff tell them to do. The smaller a deal you make of this, the better off everyone will be.

We've helped chop back multiflora rose in one of our metro parks, seems to have been useful as the area cleared has stayed cleared.