T2Eagle

They have some really weird traditions there. I'm told that instead of Blue and Gold banquets they have Red and Gray celebrations.

My troop has spent weekends at a couple of their camps. They seemed to be well run, and I got the impression that at least superficially the Council is competently run.

I'm in the just go camping camp. We have plenty of trips where we are camping and doing something else: a planned hike, a canoe trip, a couple hours at the rifle range, etc. But some of our trips the agenda is "run around in the woods and have fun." For most of our scouts their normal time is all planned and scheduled, what they most need is an opportunity to get out and be creative. They never end up sitting around and saying "I'm bored", rather they take a spontaneous hike for a couple hours, or take on a pioneering project, or go swimming, or just do a bunch of different made up games (strange combinations of frisbee with capture the flag with you name it). And they then have the best opportunity to work on their scout skills.

My observation is that it's adults who equate unplanned time with idleness and sloth, but the two are not the same at all.

In a strictly hierarchical sense I suppose the Committee, or at least the Committee Chair, can remove a boy from his post since a SM can dismiss a scout from the POR and the CC can determine who is SM, but really all that is beside the point. As almost everyone here agrees this is not the Committee's proper role. Decisions like these are best made by the SM working with the ASMs, If other folks want to express an opinion that's great, take it under advisement.

The real question is whether to have the battle about the by-laws or wait and see if you have the battle about them actually trying to do it. After all, how would this work in practice? Would they then appoint a new SPL? Call for elections? What if the SM doesn't like who they pick? What about the Librarian, what's their opinon on him, how about the Chaplain's Aide, is he doing his job? The best response to all this is to smile and nod, assure everybody that the SM has everything under control and is working closely with the scout to make everything work. Then go spend time with the boys.

Have there been any meaningful changes in the policies recently? What would be the argument for doing it annually?

We like to have scouts crossover early in the spring. Usually they go to B&G and then we do crossover sometime in the weeks following. One of the reasons we advocate using this schedule is that a new scout can get a couple of weekend camping trips in before summer camp so that the first or at best second time away isn't for a week.

We usually do a cabin camp in March, there's not enough snow to have a fun winter campout and it's usually too cold and muddy for a really pleasant spring campout, and that's an easy first trip. Then we do a Tenderfoot weekend in April where they're really introduced to full patrol based tent camping, another weekend in May, and by summer camp they're used to the program, being away, being responsible for themselves and their gear, etc.

If you crossover in May, depending on your troop's schedule, first time away is a week, and that can be a shock to all concerned.

As to boys who might be a little young and still in fifth grade, we just leave them technically registered as Webelos who are invited to camp with our troop until they meet the paperwork requirement.

I just checked, and we don't carry theft insurance on the trailer. This is going to prompt me to look at that. Like Packsaddle our CO is a church and well insured; we keep the trailer parked there so I'm sure we share whatever coverage they have. I have no idea what kind of deductibles or limits we might face.

You should have a talk with your DE or other professional about how the BSA insurance works. For there to be a liability there has to be negligence on someone's part; an inanimate object cannot be negligent. So for instance if the trailer blows up because of a propane tank unsafely secured inside it that should be covered by the BSA policy.

A few cautions: many BSA professionals I've known didn't really understand the way insurance worked, so be prepared to have to ask several times and have several follow up questions before you get the full picture. Also make sure you have someone on your side who understands insurance in on the conversations so you know what questions to ask. On the CO side, they often don't like talking about this issue, most don't really understand how much they've taken on and generally don't like to share what they might consider private information about their coverage.

​Finally, the $900 quote you received sounds high, that's about what I just started paying for my 16 year old son to drive, and your trailer couldn't possible pose as much danger to the public as a sixteen year old male behind the wheel of a car.

How does your son like the rest of the program this troop puts on? What I wouldn't like, as either a scout or leader, about this part of their program, makes me doubt I'd like the rest of their program very much. You and/or your son can try to bring some enlightenment to these folks by trying to show them where what they're doing is different from the program materials, but it sounds like they have a strong idea about just what scouts should be.

Look around, try another troop; you can find solid boy led programs that are active, develop good scout skills and more importantly good citizenship, without what looks to me like a lot of chicken-stuff.

RS,

It's not really that hard as a legal matter to make conditional gifts. In this particular case the tenants speculate that there was some condition placed on the gift, a half hour spent in the Registry of Deeds would provide an answer to that question.

On the other hand, as much as no one likes to see camps closed or property sold, the world isn't static. How well do we think we can predict what will be the best course of action for any organization or any individual two generations into the future.

I recently received an e-mail from our DE passing on a request for a help building a wheelchair ramp for an elderly individual. I think it would make a good Eagle project, and one of my scouts may be interested, but generally eagle projects are meant to serve the community rather than an individual.

Has anyone ever come across this, is there a way this can be qualified as an Eagle project?

Has anyone ever had knife throwing as an activity? Any suggestions as to what would constitute a safe range, a good target? My PLC came up with the idea, and I was surprised at just how many scouts in the troop had sets of throwing knives. I volunteered to do the initial research on the safety and rules. The GTSS says it's a permitted activity as long as you follow the Sweet Sixteen, but that's all I could find. Any suggestions or experience would be appreciated.

I would go with the loose schedule, lots of free and fun time program. For the skills to practice go with the ones they probably don't get anywhere else -- lots of fire building and sharp objects.

I disagree with JBlake, set the hook with this campout, and if it's an annual event it just becomes the best weekend on the calendar for everyone. After all, if you had the chance would you order up perfect weather or a cold dreary weekend as a first campout?

Stick to your guns Evil, as I think everyone here is urging.

Your CC's issue seems to be primarily scouts tenting with their parents and to a lesser degree the problem of people bringing low end tents to a campout.

On the first he's just flat wrong in his statement. "What is the purpose of scouting? Are we supposed to be challenging young men to expand their horizons, comfort zones, minds, and provide opportunity go grow and learn critical life skills?"

The Scouting program has three specific objectives, commonly referred to as the "Aims of Scouting." They are character development, citizenship training, and personal fitness. If sleeping in the same tent as your parent is bad for your character then I've been developing bad character in my sons since they were born. I rarely tent with them on scout outings, but there are a couple of exceptions where it just made more sense than any alternative. You would like scouts to grow out of their need to stay with a parent, but as you said, better they keep camping until that happens than that they stay home.

On the quality of tents, it's true that a cheap tent from a big box store won't hold up like a good Alps, REI, or Timberline. You can educate people about this, but sometimes only mother nature can convince them. And your CC is no expert so I wouldn't put him in charge of the educating. When he says "good equipment is needed to ... retain heat during cold weather..." he's demonstrating his lack of knowledge. Unless you're talking about $500 true 4 season models the tent doesn't function as a heat retainer. Just like in clothing the tent is the outer shell that keeps out the wind and wet, heat retention comes from the insulating properties of your sleeping bag and your tent will have almost no effect on that.

For how many scouts in a tent, leave that to the patrols with the caveat that they can't exceed the manufacturer's specs and all decisions and behaviors need to be scout-like, i.e. if too many scouts means too much noise then it has to change.

I think your conflating two things: recruiting and what outings the Troop goes on.

If the Camporee isn't fun or adventurous for the Troop what is the benefit of inviting Webelos to attend it? It sounds like the boys have put together a decent plan for the fall so no there's no real reason to intervene and change it.

Now the scouts have to be challenged to figure out how best to recruit Webelos into the Troop. A joint outing is a good way, but there are others. The best recruitment, I believe, is having personal connections between the scouts and the webelos. Whatever first connection or activity you have together is not as important as the follow up. Do a local campout, make sure it's fun, but then make sure your scouts are making an individual outreach as a follow up. Have the boys call and encourage the Webelos to come out to a meeting that you know is going to be fun, have them call and just check on the Webelos progress towards AOL. Invite the Webelos to have their meetings concurrent with the Troop so the older and younger boys make more of a personal connection. And then when it's time for crossover make sure the scouts have personally invited the Webelos, as individuals, to join the Troop.

Just as importantly, all of this personal outreach should be mirrored the adults of the Troop getting to now and following up with The Webelos' parents.

I thought I’d weigh in as someone who lives near a border crossing, has been across many times, takes scouts across, and has some legal experience with border issues.

Probably the most important thing for anyone to understand about crossing the border is that it is constitutionally different from any other circumstance. Courts have long held, since the 1800s at least, that rules concerning searches, seizures, interrogations, documentation, and identity are different at the border compared to any place else in the country. So all the rules we think we understand about what constitutes legal or reasonable searches and seizures are probably not applicable when you are entering the country. As to whether it’s illegal to film an agent at a crossing, the ACLU is suing over whether you can do that from a public thoroughfare away from the crossing, but they’re not pursuing cases where the photographer was still on government property at the crossing. I think the ACLU has it right in this and a bunch of other filming of police cases, but the border has always been fundamentally different. Think how the rules change if you’re on a military base, then imagine orders of magnitude more.

I don’t have any problem believing that a border agent, or any law officer, overstep their bounds in the course of any given day, and so can believe that what was described happened as described and was wrong. But parsing the scout leader’s statements I can also see another side to the story.

As he describes it the chain of events is

1. His car goes through no problem.
   
2. While the second car is at the window a scout snaps a picture and so all the folks in that car are pulled over into what is often referred to as “secondary†and all the people in that vehicle are taken inside. The camera was confiscated, the driver was told to pull up and remove all scouts and the himself from the vehicle and they were detained inside.
   
3. While the scouts from the detained vehicle are inside the other scouts get out of their cars “I returned to the second vehicle while it was being searched and the other boys had left their vehicles and were standing around themâ€Â
   
4. The officer tells Fox he can’t observe the search, and TELLS THE OTHER SCOUTS NOT TO LEAVE THEIR VEHICLES “then he stood up and went to the vehicles to inform the scouts that the next one to leave the van would be handcuffed and detained.â€Â
   
5. The leader goes inside where he watches an officer reviewing the pictures on the camera
   
6. While the leader is inside, DESPITE HAVING BEEN TOLD NOT TO, one of the other scouts gets out of his car to get something out of a bag. “the officer proceeded to retrieve the scout's luggage and one of our scouts went to retrieve the bag from the roof carrier and hears a click,â€Â
   
7. It’s this scout, who got out of the car after being instructed not to, who may have had a gun pulled on him.
   

When I take my scouts, or just my own kids, across the border, I tell them this is just like airport security but even more serious. It is a no joking, no fooling around space. Sit quietly while we go through, be polite, and answer any question they ask you. Because there is also always the possibility going either way on the border that you’ll be randomly signaled into secondary, we have a plan where if one of the cars gets pulled over everybody gets off at the next exit and waits. I would not have allowed my scouts to take a picture of the officer, and I would not have allowed any scout to get out of the vehicles at any time.

I am skeptical about the gun part, but absent that I think the scouts had as much responsibility for this incident as the CBP did.

I am having a hard time imagining anyone actually coming up to me to talk about how I'm wearing the uniform. Who actually does this? What positions do the hold?

My first response would be to laugh and assume they were joking with me. If I found they were serious I think I'd contiue to laugh and just walk away so as not to say something un-scout like.

I slept in one for two weeks, but I didn't buy one because although the design was good -- it kept me dry despite a lot of rain and storms -- the materials were on the very low side and I don't think they were designed to last long. One night, throwing a Frisbee we put a hole in one of the flys with an errant toss.

My Lodge is not great at holding elections. They have an internet sign up process, every year I put in my request, if they show up great, if not I hold my own and notify them of the results.

One suggestion I am going to make for my own Lodge, and would suggest to others, is to hold elections the first or second day of summer camp. You have the manpower (staff), troops have the time, and troops that are unsure of the value of OA can get feedback from other scouters.

We have parents/leaders drive. Most of our leaders are also parents so we don't really have that dichotomy. Most of the leaders/parents who drive stay for the trip. This works out OK, one leader for about every five scouts. We do a decent job managing ourselves so that we stay out of the scouts way. For nearby trips some of the the parents, leaders or not, will drop off and then we try to share the work by having a different group pick up.

We reimburse for gas and build that into the budget for the trip. Every time I've looked in to renting a large van the economics just didn't work.

I used to feel differently about this, but last summer when I was getting ready for summer camp and Jamboree I pulled out all my uniform shorts at once. I had five pares, between fabric changes, sun bleaching, wear and tear from use, style changes, etc. they were uniformly different. The closest I had to two matching was a pare of the swim/shorts and an additional pare of khaki green shorts from Columbia. So I decided the heck with it and threw the Columbias into the rotation with the five official BSA pants.

I would much rather see someone wear a pare of shorts or pants that is very close to the uniform than to see jeans or other absolutely not close pants.

I have to disagree with AZMike on two key points. First, the deference that prevented BSA and similar groups, the Catholic Church in particular, to not report these incidents wasn't a deference to the family's interests it was a deference to the institution's reputation. The institutions didn't want people to know that this kind of thing could happen to their children in their organization. They wanted to maintain the myth that Scoutmasters and priests just wouldn't do this type of thing. The institutional response was always to quietly get rid of the offender and then keep quiet. If it was otherwise there would have been substantially more reporting of these incidents, but there wasn't. Very very few of these files contain any evidence that they wanted to or tried to do anything more with regard to notifying actual authorities.

As to prosecutors, they are not bound to only bring cases they can win, they are bound to only bring cases that are supported by some evidence. A victim's statement is virtually always enough evidence to support the charging of a crime.

The other thing to remember is that we have had this information in our files since 1986 AND WE DIDN"T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT UNTIL THE COURTS FORCED US TO.

Even if 1986 was too long ago how about 1996, 2006? It took court orders to reveal the contents before we would let anyone look at these files. The information to stop this rapist sat in our possession for decades and we refused to share it with anyone. When should we have helped stop this predator? The answer is long before we actually did.

This isn't about cheap hindsight, this is admitting that the organization we love and that many of us were probably a part of even back then acted poorly and ignobly and we should admit that, especially to ourselves.

Rereading the post, Schiff, are you talking about a bunch of individual pictures of each scout like a school picture or just a quick group shot?

Our camp takes a photo at check-in. It's part of the process and the Troop gets an 8x10 at the end of the week. You can pay them for more if you want, a nominal fee not really a profit maker. They do sell a CD that they try to make a few bucks on.

I'm sure we could opt out if we wanted to but I don't think it would get us to the site any faster, maybe a few minutes, it's the last thing that is done before the site guide hikes back with us.

I suppose it also provides, if necessary in an emergency, a head shot photo of virtually every scout in camp.

There was nothing that would have prohibited us from doing more in 1986. We should have, we didn't, we should be ashamed of ourselves for not doing more, and we shouldn't excuse ourselves by saying oh it was different then. We're supposed to be the ones who are exemplary citizens, not run of the mill.

I was a full fledged adult in 1986, I hope I would have been Brave enough to pick up a phone and call the police and say hey, there's a guy named X who was a scoutmaster for us and he raped a boy named Y. I don't know that I would have been brave enough, but I'd be deeply ashamed today if I hadn't.

That said, I'm glad we're doing something now. Does anyone know if all Councils or the BSA as a whole are reviewing their files for this type of thing, and if so what expertise do we have to do it?

mmmmm..., spam

There are other kinds of guardians besides legal ones, and I think that's exactly the distinction that BSA is making. The instance where the poster said a grandfather is fine is exactly that kind of guardian. I've also had 19 year old brothers camp with their little brother when I was a Cubmaster.

TAHAWK said his problem with BEAVAH's interpretation was that it ignored the plain meaning of the word, but it didn't. The dictionary definition of guardian is "someone or something that watches or protects something". So yes the definition BSA and the BEAV are using is exactly in line with what the word means.

What the BSA is pretty clearly saying is they want the parent to pick someone else who is responsible for their child if they themselves aren't on that trip.