T2Eagle

I don't have time for the length of post I'd like to make. But the idea that "times were different" justified the terrible actions of some of our institutions back then seems disingenuous to me. Even absent all we know now about the terrible effects of abuse on people's future lives, the basics were always understood: these things were terrible, they shouldn't be allowed to happen, and we should protect children from them happening. So even back then if you had a creepy uncle in the family, or grandma's new husband was a little over friendly with the granddaughters, although you pro

Scoutfish, A lot of the answer to your question has to do with how lawsuits proceed in our system and where the suit is at the time this article is being written. The reporter is probably summarizing the plaintiffs initial Complaint. Briefly, in your initial Complaint you try to list all the allegations that you reasonably believe could be true. You dont yet have all the information you will have because there hasnt been much or any Discovery process yet so there hasnt been much exchange of information between the parties. Part of the reason you start so broadly is that it is harder,

Have the PLC check with their parents for a reaction. People can have very widely varying views on holidays, including what even constitutes a holiday. My wife is completely indifferent as to whether we celebrate Mother's Day. But in terms of a present for the occasion she would probably welcome a weekend without anyone else in the house. On the other hand I know families where Mother's Day rivals or exceeds Christmas or Thanksgiving in terms of size and importance of celebration. In our troop we almost always plan a trip over Memorial Day and occasionally will schedule one of the

Agree or disagree with his position, whatever role we as an organization had in his development as a citizen we should be proud of. The sad, if understandable, part from the article is that the Cub Scout seems to no longer be part of scouting. I wonder whether Mr. Wahls would advise him to stay in the program despite its policies in order to garner all the benefits that clearly accrued to him through participation.

If these are not hypothetical but actual events, all of which have happened, you should be very concerned. You should be concerned because something bad may be going on, or at a minimum you have a leader who has absolutely the wrong ideas about Youth Protection rules and actually PROTECTING YOUTH, and so even if he has no bad intentions himself, allowing these actions allows someone else with bad intentions to succeed. I am somewhat torn between call the SE immediately and call the CC and COR and put a stop to this immediately, but immediate action is needed. Make it very clear what the

I thought of a couple different responses to BD's post about the need for money, mostly along the lines of how much is wasted in terms of time by professionals, office staff, camp staff, and US, that would justify spending the money. But my final response is that he's right --- volunteers. The question is how well do councils, or national, utilize them when it comes to technology. In my council we have a Camping committee, and a Training committee, and Risk Management, and Finance, and Advancement, and Membership, and several other committees. All of which get substantive commitments o

DLChris71, That's the problem with you tree-hugging, pinko, socialist, commie, nazis. You have no respect for traditional values and think that if it feels good you should just do it. If you don't like the weight of dead batteries in your backpack maybe you should just join an organization that agrees with your values. (This message has been edited by t2eagle)

Interesting how times have changed "given the requirements of a full season of participation in two different sports, I can't imagine a lot of Scouts giving up that many camping trips to get it." When I was a kid this was an easy mb to get and didn't involve much conflict if any. I played CYO basketball and Little League baseball and I don't remember there being any conflict between either of them and scouting or either of them and each other. But today all three of them overlap and can run into schedule conflicts.

E69, I and at least one other person in my unit had the same problems with multiple user names. Ultimately I called Irving, and though I can't say the problem was entirely corrected, eventually I did get a working user name linked to all the proper information: training, unit, member ID, etc. As to the OP, I just completed one for a trip next week, it worked pretty well. Entering the destination was a little klugey and I had to try several times to get it to accept it -- and each time you then had to go through all the screens after that all over again. The registered adults d

BD, This could almost be a thread of its own, but the phenomenon you describe amazes me too. Now personally my hierarchy is 1) a flushy, 2) kybo, 3) cat hole (although high summer in a crowded camp can make me want to switch 2 and 3). But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Yet I have several scouts who have been camping for years who will hold it in all weekedn or more. I simply don't understand how fastidiousness can be worth that kind of discomfort.

For young scouts on their first or second backpack jaunt you might be able to cache some of the equipment at the evening's campsite. Maybe deliver tents and water to the evening's campsite and just have them hump in their bedrolls and food.

Zscout, Our council doesn't require that we ever turn in blue cards. We do turn in advancement reports or do internet advancement, and these days they strongly encourage internet advancement. When and if it comes time for Eagle the council checks scoutnet. As a troop we make this part of our process for Eagle also, occasionally we find hiccups we have to correct. The scout never has to bring blue cards, photocopies, etc. to an EBOR. I'm curious, what do you do with all the paper? Someone else did the math and came up with over 18,000 blue cards a year. I can't imagine tryin

RichardB, I find it hard to believe that anything but a small minority of scouters would see the wisdom in many of these restrictions -- little red wagons and paint rollers? You put us in a difficult position, scouts are going to want to undertake these activities, we believe they can safely conduct them, but we will be forced to tell scouts they cannot conduct them -- not because we think they're dangerous but because a bureaucracy has provided that dictate to us. When I teach my scouts rules about safety, like the buddy system, safe swim, safety afloat, etc. I don't teac

"Somebody" not "one of the boys" forgot to bring lunch, and "Dinner was a fish fry where freinds and families are invited with a price. No french fries for the scouts, the SM didnt want to get more poatoes" doesn't sound like the scouts had much to do with the planning. Should you complain? You certainly could ask some questions about the processes, including "why not let the scouts hike a mile into town to get some grub". I'll predict the answer to that was there was a schedule or agenda (adult planned) that HAD to be met.

There is more to the trailer than just the registration; you need to understand the ownership and insurance and how all three affect each other. For us the troop owns the trailer and carries insurance on it. I don't entirely understand it, but in OH you don't need to be a formally incorporated entity to own, register, and insure vehicles. As to being a NY troop registering in ME --- if it all works, it's all legal, and you can proudly say you're being trustworthy than I don't see any kind of ethical problem. You can draft a Power of Attorney very narrowly so that it grants the p

Qwazse asked: "Did the "duds" pass their ordeal? Did they cause harm to the chapter?" A couple I've seen didn't bother going to ordeal. As to whether others caused harm to the chapter -- I don't know. And more to the point: what if they did? It wouldn't have any negative consequences to the scouts who elected them, it wouldn't necessarily result in any of them looking at the election process differently. That's why I say it's a head scratcher to me --- an election with no impact on the electors.

There is one problem specific to OA elections that I've scratched my head over for a few years but without coming up with any solution to: they are elections without consequences for the electors. If a troop elects the wrong person to be SPL, that is picks maybe the most popular but not the most capable or even a not at all capable scout, the troop suffers for it, and the scouts learn a lesson. The election cycle ends and the next election usually has a very different flavor. In my troop a few years ago the selection was so bad that during summer camp there was discussion among the scou

The first thing I would say is that a COH is not a good place to judge how boy led a troop is. If 80% of scouting is outing a COH is a small part of the other 20%. If you really want to see who runs a troop go visit them at meal time on a camping trip, since thats not easy to do, the next best time is to go to a PLC, the next best after that is the troop meeting before a campout. You should be looking for is who is actually making decisions. From your description I dont think you can draw much inference about troop 2, it may be that youre seeing a troop enacting what the scouts determi

I have to add Papadaddy that the reason I drive like that on the PA turnpike is because the faster I go the less time I actually have to spend on that wretched road. Since learning to drive on it 30 some years ago it remains the highway I most hate to drive on -- narrow lanes, tight turns, interminable construction, and for some really weird reason it's always either raining or snowing while I'm on it.

I dont see it having a big impact on our plans. I just ran some numbers to see what its financial impact really is. Our average outing is about 50 miles each way. Pretty standard transportation model for us is one leader and 4 scouts per car. My minivan gets about 17.5 mpg, so on a typical weekend the price of gas going from $3.50 to $4 a gallon increases the per person cost of the trip by 60 cents. Thats probably no more volatility in cost than the difference between feeding 5 instead of 6 scouts in a patrol. Ive read some press reports showing that although we all have

Beav, When you say National sees the "apparent success of the Michigan effort" to what are they referring? Just their ability to ram it through the council exec boards? Because it was being sold to us in Ohio as all about a way to increase membership not about cost savings, so they can't see it as a success unless and until they can point to real increases in membership over previous expectations --- and they had some very specific projections they were convinced would result from the new structure. On the ground, I've heard from friends in the mitten state that what they're se

I can't say for sure that the feature is still part of the package, but Packmaster and presumably Troopmaster had the ability to print the equivalent of the white cards as part of their report printing. It's one of the options similar to printing the labels. They'll also conveniently sell you the perforated stock sized to their templates. I used to use these for the Pack and they were very nice.

What's not made clear in this report is that the city and Cradle of Liberty had worked out a deal after the trial as RememberSchiff described where the City would sell the property to the scouts for $500,000 and forgiveness of the legal fees. That deal had the support of both the Mayor and reportedly a majority of the council. The problem was that in order to sell a piece of city property the council member whose district it's in has to sponsor the legislation making the sale. That council district also has probaly the largest bloc of LGBT voters in the city. So effectively one cou

What about corporations, aren't they people now too. Is it wrong to put up a Google logo? How about Target?

There is no easy answer to this, but I have found some approaches work better than others. If you stand up at a parent meeting and say "we need volunteers to go camping" everyone hopes someone else will volunteer. If you walk up and say "Joe, can you go with us to xyz state park 3 weeks from now, and if you can't we probably can't go" it is much harder for Joe to say no.