T2Eagle

"The feeding could have been easily accomplished either before or after the BOR."

Schedule a newborn's feeding, I wish I had thought of that when my kids were that age.

Were you deployed overseas when your kids were newborns? Because I can assure you that breast fed, previously pumped breast milk in a bottle, or formula, whatever it was my kids wanted they were clear that when they wanted it was NOW -- not earlier, not later, NOW.

Maybe I should have tried scheduling when it came out the other end too.

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 probably wouldn't confront them directly even less call the cops, you also wouldn't leave your kids alone with them and you would discreetly make sure that your sister or sister-in-law also knew not to leave the kids alone with them.

But this basic act of protection was, for a lot of reasons none of which were very good, largely ignored when these things were handled within institutions rather than in families.

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, more inefficient, and more costly for everybody the courts, the plaintiffs, the defendants -- to have to add allegations, that is amended complaints, later. So the case starts very broadly and then narrows down over time.

In this case it is possible that the plaintiffs attorney determined all the things that should have gone into a safe dive and then alleged that they all didnt. For instance this allegation, Defendant Corbett Douglas and other defendants failed to prepare and implement an adequate dive plan"

The plaintiff believes that there should have been a good dive plan before the dive began, but until they have statements, or depositions, or other information about exactly whether and what dive plan there was they maintain the allegation that the plan wasnt adequate. Now it could turn out that in fact the plan was fine and this particular allegation will be dropped and not be talked about at trial. Or maybe this is at the heart of the dispute, in which case the other allegations will fall by the wayside and this is what the trial will turn on.

What you dont want to have happen, for everyones sake, is to not have a particular allegation made and then spend six months or a year proceeding through the case and then figure out the real issue, like the dive plan, is something not yet alleged, because then everyone court, plaintiff, defendant, starts all over again.

Hope this was helpful.

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 two winter three day weekends, we stay away from July 4th and Labor Day because attendance will be sparse.

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 rules actually are and what practices must be.

If there's any hesitation on the SM's part to change his ways AND HIS BELIEFS, pull the plug. No one person, even if his intentions are good, even if he is otherwise a great scouter, is worth the trouble this kind of thinking and acting could lead to.

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 of time and energy from their members. But I have never heard of a Technology Committee.

Our council and camp websites are put together by a DD in his "spare time". The Lodge has a volunteer do their site, the districts each have some volunteer, but there's no coordination, no strategic plan, no ongoing directed initiative. And I can't think of why not.

Does anyone out there know of a council, or national for that matter, Technology committee that has the equivalent function and focus as the committeees I named above?

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 did come from a drop down box so that was nice and saved a lot of typing. The only information I had to add was the make and vehicle model for each driver, and frankly I guessed as to the year of everyone's car. I don't know whether that information will be saved the next time I need a permit.

It doesn't seem that training is cross referenced to each registered leader although I can't think of any way to test that surmise.

One interesting thing is that it asks for activities and gives you a choice of four: HA, Watersports, Flying, or Climbing, but old fashioned vanilla hiking and camping aren't options so you have to type them in.

There doesn't seem to be any approval process, so I think if you can get it to submit then you're good to go. There was no indication that I would or should expect any response from my council.

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 trying to accurately file that much paper and I can think of a lot of things I'd rather the council spend money on than that.

Other than strict adherence to a policy, what purpose would you say it serves?

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 teach them as rules but as wisdom, because I don't want them following them just on scout activities or just because I say they have to, I want them following them when I'm not there and when they're not part of an organized activity that requires that behavior. But when we have to enforce rules, under the guise of safety, that don't make sense to us, it undermines the credibility of those other lessons. Kids, everyone really, extrapolate lessons from one thing and applies those lessons to others activities. So if I tell my scouts it's safe for a 12 year old to cut the grass at my house, or at their house, but not safe to cut the grass at Church they will logically question whether the other safety rules I'm trying to instill in them are equally silly, and we'll be undermining the wisdom we are trying hard to instill in them.

So why not try to convince us, and I don't mean just those of us on this forum but volunteers across the scouting community. We're all adults, a lot of us have college and advanced degrees, a lot of us have to make decisions of this level of difficulty and complexity in our daily lives and professional careers. We all have to make these types of decisions about our own families. So convince us. Show us the data you have: peer reviewed, journal published data that says a 13 year old can't normally be expected to safely use an electric screw driver, a wheel barrow, or a paint roller on a stick. And you can't just fall back and say OSHA says so; OSHA may have some science behind their rules, but they are applying that to a paid workforce and answering a diffefrent set of questions with different criteria then a scout project.

If you're right we should be easily convinced, but it would be the worst kind of arrogance to think we just couldn't understand what you understand.

"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 power only for the purpose of registering the vehicle and nothing else. But being Thrifty doesn't refer just to money, for myself it would need to be a pretty big cost savings to justify that much hassle and complexity.

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 scouts about impeaching the SPL. Every scout who was part of the troop then has made sure that lesson is passed down to all incoming scouts, and our SPLs have uniformly been good, very good, or excellent since then.

But if a troop elects a dud, or fails to elect a good candidate, to OA they never feel the results of their decision and so learn no lessons. I have seen this happen within the troop a couple of times.

We are a medium size troop with a strong program and good resources so we don't look to the OA to provide anything for the troop. In my time in the troop we haven't really had any scouts who actively participated in OA after their ordeal and so there is no feedback to the troop about the consequences of our selections.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this conundrum?

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 determined or you may just be seeing a disorganized troop that will look just as disorganized in the field.

Troop 1s COH could be more of a window into their soul. Again it could be that youre seeing the boys carry out the plan they conceived. But what would give me pause is that I have seen troops that behaved similarly that swear theyre boy run but when you dig deeper what you find is that the boys carry out a predetermined course of action set up by the adults. As an example, I attended a training course about Annual Program Planning and the presenter described how his planning started with knowing all the campouts the troop always does. I asked what if the boys dont want to do say the fall camporee but would rather plan their own backpacking weekend for October. Well thats not what we do that doesnt look boy-led to me. Similarly I have seen troops where their schedule on a campout is ALWAYS get up at 6:30 and have breakfast done by 8. What if they want to get up a little later? They cant, how will they get done everything they need to get done? Now sure there are times where the activities the scouts plan dictate that kind of schedule, but just as often adolescents are more comfortable with a time table that starts and ends later. The 8-5 day is an adult construct not normally the plan formulated by a bunch of teen age boys. Whose plan is it supposed to be?

The Socratic style you describe can be used with both adult led and boy led troops. To me boy run means the scouts are the planners and decision makers. You can socratically help them carry out their plan. But if the scouts are following a script predetermined by the adults this is what weve always done then youre just socratically helping them carry out your plan.

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 a very high emotional response to these kind of increases in gas prices, for most individuals they dont result in any actual changes in behavior.

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 seeing in terms of projected service center and camp closings is not making them happy and is not what they thought they were buying into. That's a very strange definition of success.

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 council district was able to veto the deal.

Similar to things at our national level the ends of the political spectrum trump the desires of the middle.

What about corporations, aren't they people now too.

Is it wrong to put up a Google logo? How about Target?