T2Eagle

I'm a Camping MB counselor as well as a SM, and we always camp through the winter here in Northern OH. We always do cold weather camping training before the first weekend. We train on the differences that you have to be prepared for in clothing, cooking, sleeping gear, behavior, and cold specific health and first aid. We emphasize how to dress and how to stay warm, ie wicking, insulating, and shell layers from head to toe and sleeping at night. We talk about special equipment like removable boot liners if possible, things like the importance of staying as dry as possible and the critical importance of extra dry clothing in case you get wet. We go over all the cold weather illnesses like frostbite and hypothermia. And we cover problems that might arise with different stove fuels depending on the temperature. So really, it's about planning your campout but understanding and planning for the unique features of camping below freezing or worse. As far as signing off the requirement one strange tick that might come up is that although it's going to be in the teens this weekend, we had a huge rainstorm yesterday and there is no snow and it's iffy as to whether there will actually be any this weekend. In that event if any of my scouts needed or wanted to use the weekend to satisfy the requirement I would sign it any way with a clear conscience; it's the preparation for and working in the cold that are at the heart of the requirement.

I take back many of the things I've thought and said about the requirement for Council pre-approval for fundraisers. Does anyone have a clue as to how this was supposed to end up raising money?

Our standard practices seem pretty similar to yours, including both the fact that there aren't perfectly standard practices and that we have a healthy bank account. Our big troop fundraiser goes into the troop kitty and pays for equipment and transportation. We allow/encourage scouts to sell popcorn and all those proceeds are earmarked for individual scout accounts. When we perceive our bank balance as being higher than necessary we start paying more for activities on campouts, for instance last year we went skiing but only charged for food and camping but not the price for lifts and rentals, or we'll deliberately set the price lower than we know the total trip will cost, like charging tent camping prices even though we're staying in a cabin. There are dissenting voices, there are a couple of folks who advocate that each campout should absolutely cover all its associated costs, and there are some folks who have a difficult time with not trying to always save money for later, as if there is some future college or retirement cost we need to fund. What we try to do is make sure that we have enough cash that we can easily absorb an unexpected cost like a major trailer repair or equipment need while also being able to absorb a bad year or even two of poor fundraising.

No running in camp, how in the world do you even try to enforce that with a straight face, plus, what about running as a fitness activity? We have several scouts and one or two adults (not yours truly) who get up and run several mornings during the week, does someone actually say to them nope, sorry, no exercising allowed?

Take Barry's advice. You are someone for whom scouting is a burning passion, you prioritize it over other things, and you always strive to do it as well as it can be done. In your scouting career you will find yourself surrounded by people for whom none of those things is true. As soon as you are worrying about who said what to whom when, or how accurately a person is conveying to you their own or someone else's actions or communications you are entering into territory that cannot be won. Similar to a Scoutmaster with a troop, you have to remember that only principles and safety matter, everything else can be on any given day done well or done poorly, and it won't and shouldn't have any lasting effect on the well being of the boys.

We added the outdoor code to our opening ceremony this year because it is part of the new requirements. The boys still have their hands raised in the scout sign when they make this pledge. At last night's troop meeting we were remarking that the adult side of the room got very quiet when the boys were giving the pledge, we agreed we need to put in the effort to memorize it ourselves.

Alps Mountaneering, through HikerDirect.com offers great discounts for scouts. Coleman offers a discount to all non profits.

Hmm, you're not supposed to retest skills at a BOR, and if you ask a kid to demonstrate a particular skill and he can't that's not a reason to suspend the BOR, that's a reason to look at the troop program and see why some skills are not being continuously utilized so that kids would still be able to demonstrate them. Not sure what documentation of service hours they were looking for, the requirement is six hours approved by the SM; if the SM or his designee's signature is in the book that's documentation. The POR can go either way, but again given the purpose of a BOR this is more likely an indicator about the troop program. If I had a scout who did not get past the BOR on the first try I would be having a conversation with both the scout and the BOR members to make sure everyone's expectations were in line before trying again. Maybe the scout could have been more tactful, I don't know, but being objectively right about the retesting, and having the gumption to make that argument to the board, makes me more sympathetic to him than to them. ETA BSA really does its volunteers and scouts a disservice by not providing easily accessible training on the purposes, conduct of, and rules about a good BOR. A half hour training module would do wonders to eliminate exactly this kind of misunderstanding.

There's nothing in the OP to think this could be the situation here, but the other reason a Council might want to take over a troop project is if the troop has what looks like a good idea that is being done badly, especially if it is reflecting poorly on scouting rather than positively. I do have to add that I can't imagine a Council doing something like this. Councils need to think about raising funds at the tens of thousands of dollars level which is probably not what a Christmas tree stand is going to do. Folks at the District level tend to actually be the more meddlesome bunch, and the answer to that is usually going over their heads to the Council where bigger picture viewing tends to take place.

This seems an odd decision to make since it really eliminates anyone not already going to Philmont as a potential visitor. That means no Cub Scouts, no siblings, no other family members, no one who isn't a registered scout or scouter who is actually already at the site for a different purpose. I visited the original museum in NJ when i was a kid. I visited a couple times in Irving when my kids were Cub age, my in-laws live in the area so it was a grand parent included trip, and at least as configured then that kind of multi-generation visit seemed to be what it was curated for. There are certainly a lot more potential visitors in or passing through the Dallas-Fort Worth area than will ever be near Cimmarron NM.

On the books our committee is bigger than in practice. I would say the best size for a committee is the size necessary to achieve a good consensus among all of the stakeholders (parents, experienced scouters, SM/ASMs) about what direction the troop is taking. If you don't successfully reflect the widely held views of all of them you just set yourself up for conflict and resistance.

I don't know that they worry my scouts, but they pose a challenge because they sense that truly candid answers would not be appreciated. The reverence one is pretty individual, I know that some of them are becoming less observant in their religious practices, which I think is pretty common at their age, but telling a handful of probably fairly observant adults that you don't really care about going to church or other religious practices is not going to go well. As to the continuing in scouting, again it's individual, but for some of them, seniors in high school, turned or turning eighteen, realistically they're not going to continue scouting until they have kids of their own. But again that's probably not what the scouters at an EBOR really want to hear. I try to get them a little bit ready for the scouting question by asking them to think about how they're going to continue acting as scouts or using their scout skills as they enter college. I remind them how much fun they've had as a scout, and encourage them to be sure to get involved in at least one volunteer org or activity at college because it will give them the same experience of both fun and enrichment.

Our BOR scheduling has gone from a very formal process, to a completely informal process, to now a happy medium that focuses on serving the scout. Initially, a scout had to find three committee members or parents to sit n his BOR and he had to do that at least one week in advance. The same one week ahead of time formality was required for SM conferences, and you could never do both on the same night, so when a scout finished their requirements it was a minimum two weeks before they advanced for no better reason than adults wanted to "teach them to schedule things." My son's experience, and mine as I became SM, showed me that this was an unnecessary bit of bureaucracy that served no purpose. Adults would find themselves unable to make a meeting and then we would either postpone or scramble to find a third BOR member. I changed SM conferences to as requested, a scout comes to me when they finish their last requirement, sometimes we can do it that night and sometimes we mutually agreed to do it the next meeting. Eventually BORs evolved the same way. About a year and a half ago our Advancement Chair asked that all BOR requests go through her so that she could do a better job making sure she got the required paperwork. I was skeptical and reluctantly agreed as long as it didn't end up slowing the boys down or putting up unnecessary barriers; if she wasn't available that was no reason for the scout not to be able to advance. To my surprise, that system is working well; when a scout finishes their requirements they can ask for a BOR and a SM conference, and we do both as soon as possible sometimes on the same night sometimes a week apart. The AC and she finds the adults for the boards, and occasionally, if something comes up with her, we just go ahead and find 3 adults any way, but that is rare and really only because of unavoidable situations. Both BORs and SM conferences are, or at least should be, simple straightforward conversations between a scout and troop adults about a topic that everyone involved is familiar with --- the scout's experience as a scout. There is no reason to turn it into some sort of test of bureaucratic skill or a gotcha interview.

There is also wide divergence within the US regarding age and alcohol consumption. Growing up in the mid 70s in a Pennsylvania steel town, drinking beer as a Junior or Senior in high school was widely permitted by both parents, and as exhibited by the behavior of the police, the community writ large. Even today, when legal drinking ages have been raised, almost entirely as an anti drunk driving measure as opposed to a measure of moral approbation, in many states alcohol consumption by people under the age of 21 is legal under a variety of circumstances if overseen by parents. At the same time there are of course many "dry" counties where the purchase of alcohol is illegal for everyone irrespective of age.

My advice in situations like this is find another troop. Actions this far outside the norm almost never change without a wholesale change in the leadership of the troop. I am curious what the procedure is for regaining the rank that was stripped. What do you have to do, earn more merit badges that somehow don't count towards the next rank? More time in a leadership position? Once you go this far outside the rules it's like driving on the sidealk, you just keep hitting more and more stuf because you're not on the road at all anymore.

Richard, it's true that the program hasn't changed in years, and I admitted to being chagrined at being surprised because I pride myself on knowing the fine details within the regs even when i disagree with them. In my particular case it's likely that we were doing something that only happened once or maybe twice within the council throughout the year, and this particular rule is not intuitive so it's not surprising that no one picked up that we were falling afoul of it. I've been certified as a Rangemaster for BB and Archery for almost a decade, I suspect that like most people I did it initially because I was volunteering at some Cub events. Since I wasn't ever running the range at a strictly Pack event that point of the training didn't stick with me. The event my original post referred to was a Troop event where we treat the Pack as our guests. Since we're a Troop renting the range no one would have picked up on it, and since BBs are in fact a well known age appropriate activity for Cubs there just wasn't an intuitive reason to question the wisdom of what we're doing. I wonder if you'd care to address the final question in my original post: why two activities with the same people, same rules, and at the same BSA owned property aren't both either safe enough to conduct or too dangerous to conduct. I don't believe rules are self justifying, so I'm curious what, outside of the existence of the rule, makes it make sense.

Manilla over Sisal for anything you really care about. I don't have it in front of me, but I believe the pioneering Merit Badge pamphlet has a list for what would constitute a good standing Pioneering kit including number, size, and lengths of both rope and poles.

That one is mostly true. From the G2SS "The drivers must be currently licensed and at least 18 years of age. Youth member exception: When traveling to and from an area, regional, or national Boy Scout activity or any Venturing event under the leadership of an adult (at least 21 years of age) tour leader, a youth member at least 16 years of age may be a driver, subject to the following conditions: a. Six months’ driving experience as a licensed driver (time on a learner’s permit or equivalent is not to be counted) b. No record of accidents or moving violations c. Parental permission granted to the leader, driver, and riders

I'm chagrined to say I did just look back and found it in old G2SS. I know we never covered it in the Range Safety training, which I've taken every two years for about a decade, either it was glossed over or it didn't make the syllabus. So I have some hoops to jump through this afternoon to become a council event. I'm not as spry as I used to be, but I think I can get through them.

I just found out that BB Guns, Archery, etc., are no longer allowed as a unit activity for Cubs. http://www.scouting.org/filestore/Outdoor%20Program/pdf/510-322_WEB.pdf Archery, BB gun shooting, and slingshot shooting are not approved unit activities. Cub Scout shooting sports programs may be conducted only on a district or council level. Archery, BB gun shooting, and slingshot shooting are restricted to day camps, Cub Scout/Webelos Scout resident camps, council-managed family camping programs, or council activities where there are properly trained supervisors and where all standards for BSA shooting sports are enforced. My troop puts on a weekend for our Pack every fall. One of the activities we offer is BB shooting. Several of our adults are certified to run the range and this all takes place at out council camp. So if I can call it a council event it would be fine, but if I call it a unit event suddenly it's a no go. If anyone can explain to me why two activities with the same people, same rules, and at the same BSA owned property aren't both either safe enough to conduct or too dangerous to conduct I'd love to hear it.

There is no rule against this, my troop has done it. You may find that people like or dislike certain businesses for whatever reason they like or dislike something, often extraneous reasons will be brought into a discussion about working with a business, like it not being appropriate for service hours, but really people are free to like/dislike businesses and it wouldn't be a troop's place to try to persuade them otherwise. The bit about service hours has at least some arguable merit. Drop the idea of service hours and see if that changes any views --- it likely won't, but it's worth dropping that point to focus on the question of yes or no to do the flag raising. The most critical takeaway on this is one I've learned the hard way: don't say yes to any request for this type of activity until you have the actual commitment from people to do it. I get a number of requests like this both for businesses, non profits, and community organizations. It is more distressing (and puts both unit and BSA in a bad light) to say yes and then back out, than to just say no or let me check as a first response.

This kind of thing usually is the result of a previous bad incident. For instance, our camp, for summer camp not weekends, requires that we use their propane tanks because they had an problem (property damage but no injuries) when someone used a defective tank. Their tanks are all hydro statically checked on a regular basis. This is actually a small benefit since it's one last thing we have to plan and pack for in our preparation.

Isn't the purpose of a Camporee to have fun, share some fellowship with other scouts, and generally just be off playing the game of scouting? How was anything on the line?

In our troop scouts 1st Class and above sign off on T21, but that gets a countersignature from an adult. I will spot check the skills that an older scout has signed off, if I think it's not up to snuff I have both older and younger scout go back and work on it some more.

I can't speak for any of the other professions, but again, Mrs./Dr. Eagle has a medical license, which hangs in a frame in her office (this is mandated by the state), she has a photo ID issued by the Hospital system which she wears when she is in one of their hospitals. If she's not at work, or on the way to or from, the chances are her hospital ID is not with her. The two times that I've been with her when she had to render serious aid we were out to dinner for one and across the country on vacation for the other. No reason she would have her work ID with her at either time. The people who are really interested in whether she is a doctor --- the victim she may be helping --- would be entirely unconcerned with asking for ID. As to Good Samaritan laws, they vary by state, but generally they are designed specifically to encourage medical professionals to render aid in emergency situations by protecting them from any liability that would arise under those circumstances. In the very unlikely event that a person could get past those protections your med mal insurance would kick in, and that would mean an even steeper mountain to climb to find that you had breached the standard of care under those circumstances.