tortdog

I don't subscribe to this theory, but found it entertaining. I've seen some Christians (never a Jew or Muslim, though) argue that it was 6 24-hour periods in which the Earth was formed, and that the evidence showing billions of years in between layers of earth resulted when the Creator put a 2-billion old layer here, then a 1-billion layer on top, etc up the chain...doing the layering in a few hours or so. They even theorized that the Creator did it in this manner to test the faith of man in the written word.

Well, I found it an interesting proposition, at the least, but not much more.

>If a married couple only couns as one person, which sex is the one person?

Doesn't matter which gender you choose, because each gender equally has the same privilege (to prevent the spouse from "ratting").

>You mean a husband and wife can't take the venture crew out on an oevrnight(co-ed) because they are only one person?

In my opinion, I think the purpose behind the 2-deep leadership rule is partially frustrated because there will be no competent adult witness to any acts. However, you do still have 2 adults to supervise...meaning one bad adult would presumably have to still hide the bad act from the other adult. However, in a marriage one adult might have a greater tendency to "look the other way just this once" where a non-martial couple would not. Obviously, there's no hard/fast rule to human behavior...but...

>Is the marital status of the adult leaders addressed in any BSA publication?

[raises both hands and shrugs]

It would be interesting to see what BSA legal thinks of it (assuming the issue has been brought forward). I have a feeling we won't see anything official until (i) something bad happens or (ii) it becomes common enough that the issue is raised so many times that BSA has to lay down a firm policy.

Until then...there's speculation!

>Only in a court of law & that's only if they want it. And if it gets that far, there is a bigger problem!

I think the policy is in place to prevent the "bigger problem", and the privilege arises during criminal investigations as well.

Seems to me that a married couple should only count as one, for the reason mentioned by others that they have spousal immunity.

>So, that would make the definition of "morally straight" kind of a subjective thing, right?

Depends on who's doing the defining and asking the question. If God defines "morally straight", then it's objective because God is perfect and there is only one truth. It doesn't matter if someone disagrees.

Since God didn't author the BSA (though I think it's an inspired program), there is no moral absolute with the BSA. However, once the BSA sets its standard (that's subjective by the BSA), the standard becomes an objective standard by which we can measure the definition, just as the uniform standards are objective (as subjectively set up by the BSA).

That's my view.

I can't find wwww.scouting.org. Is this the fourth dimension internet?

Al?

Usually its the SPL that "graduates" to Varsity, at which time a PL moves up to SPL. Historian becomes PL, etc., and the positions continue to shift among the boys as the boys move up and the cycle continues. There's always continuity of leadership because everyone doesn't turn 14 on the same day.

With some of the boys hitting Eagle before Varsity, they have leadership within the troop ranks. At the Varsity/Crew level, that leadership is just more experienced. That makes sense because as you go up the Varsity/Crew ladder, the programs are designed to give the boys more authority to make decisions (Varsity youth leaders have a lot of autonomy but Crew youth leaders have even more).

Not sure if I can draw the picture, but if you had a graph you would have a line starting at 0 and going up at 45 degrees. You have another line starting at 100 and doing down 45 degrees (intersecting the other line). The first line represents the degree of youth leadership, while the second line represents the degree of adult leadership. Correspondingly, as the boys assume more authority the adults leadership decreases. At any one point on the two lines (added together), you have the same amount of leadership - just that the mix changes as the boys grow. Thus, as the boys progress in scouts, they get more authority/autonomy. The troop would be towards the left, the team in the middle (50-50 sharing) while the crew is at the right side of the graph.

That's how we view it, anyway.(This message has been edited by tortdog)

It's hard to say what the norm is, when the Varsity program is currently underutilized. However, I'd say most Varsity units I am familiar with emphasize sports and high adventure. In our program, the boys have two years in Varsity. The 2nd quarter will likely always be basketball, the 4th quarter will be high adventure (we do a survivor type event in a state/federal park where the teams compete to best each other in 6 goals over three days and two nights). That leaves us with two "free" quarters each year. One quarter will be an "art", while the other quarter is up to the boys during the summer (but likely will be another high adventure).

We were in a situation with only one team (though we had 10 teams in our district but the other nine were in form only). I and the other coach had our Woodbadge tickets to fill, and we had to do some form of competitive activity/tournament as part of the ticket. We ended up grabbing a Venturing crew and we competed against the Crew. (The Crew won, but we found out they cheated though they deny it to this day...) On another competitive event, we divided the 6-man Varsity team into 4 groups of 2 (we had two friends of the scouts). We scored each team of 2.

Later we found out there was another "active" Varsity team that enrolled in the YMCA program as a Varsity team competing against other YMCA teams.

So there is a way to do Varsity even with a limited number of teams. You just have to get creative. Now that the active Varsity teams in our Council are aware of each other, we are coordinating and competing.

I could definitely see the day when it would be a political liability to be affiliated with the BSA. Depending on where society goes, the BSA under its present policies could be viewed as a hate-mongering, isolationist, close-minded society of bigots.

Of course, I'd disagree, but I could see it. In fact, I think we are already seeing some of society's traditional religions being portrayed in that light, with the refusal of Catholics, Baptists, Orthodox Jews, Muslims to accept that homosexual activity or premarital sex constitute moral conduct.

My view, though, is that refusal to agree on the morality of a conduct cuts both ways.(This message has been edited by tortdog)

Someone suggested that I explain how an effective BSA Varsity team works, so here goes. I'll explain how our team works (I'm biased).

The Team Scouts

Our Varsity team is composed of boys at least 14-years old through their 16th birthday. At any given time, there will be 5-6 boys on the team. I consider that to be a minimum and the team is trying to reach out to friends of team members to increase the size.

The Team Adult Leaders

We have one coach (similar to the scoutmaster of a troop) and two assistant coaches. The coach and assistants work along with the youth leaders to keep the team moving forward. View this as the high school varsity football coaching staff relates to the HS varsity football players. We also bring in specialists who have expertise in program areas (discussed below).

The Team Youth Leaders

The team's youth leadership comprises of a captain, a co-captain (if you have enough youth) and various program managers. The captain looks after the program managers to make sure they are doing their duties. The program managers each heads one of five program areas, including: advancement, high adventure, personal development, service, and special programs and events. We assign one adult coach/parent to each program manger so that the managers do not fail the team.

The Program

Every three months, the team is trained in one general areas, e.g., canoeing, volleyball, music, theater, and basketball. Which skill do we train on? The boys decide, and we work with other Varsity teams in the council to pick a skill together. That way we can compete against each other at the end of the three months.

The team finds an adult expert to dedicate 3 months to the training of the team on the chosen 3-month skill. The permanent coaches keep the team moving and work alongside that expert coach. For example, we have done basketball and brought in an adult who played ball in college to coach our team. At the end of these 3 months, those team scouts should be able to teach others about that skill, put on a tournament around that skill, etc. Service projects are formed along the lines of the skill, e.g., clean a beach while doing the canoeing program.

At the end of each 3-month program, we have a tournament. The invited teams are other Varsity teams in the council. We compete head to head with each other using brackets or round robin, and we include in the scoring of the tournament other individual events, community activities and ethics events. For example, in the last basketball tournament they played the games but also had an individual 3-point competition, an individual free throw competition, a team presentation on Ethics in Basketball, and each team picked an NCAA tourney bracket using CBS sportsline to score each teams picks.

Following the tournament, we award T-shirts to all participants, individual awards to winners of the individual events, and a "bucket" that we pass from between each tournament to the winning team. Each winning team leaves its legacy on the bucket by marking up a slab of leather attached to the handle that usually includes the members initials and a few choice remarks (think mini Woodbadge mementos).

Intraleauge Play

We are just now getting to the point where we compete during the 3-month season with other Varsity teams. In the past, we only competed once at the end of the three months. The vision now is to compete throughout the season, with the teams assigned to play other teams and join with that team's program that week. For example, say week 1 is focused on the rules of the game of basketball. Varsity Team 1 is assigned to play Varsity Team 2, so it meets at Team 2's location for training on the rules, and plays an intramural game at the end against Team 2. That win/loss is counted and we use that record to determine a bracket for the tournament. (In the past we didn't do intramural games, but play a few games during the tournament.)

Awards and Advancements

The boys still advance in Boy Scouts, usually coming in as at least Star scouts. The advancement team manager tracks each scouts progress, and at the court of honors we give out the Varsity awards as well, such as the Varsity letter and the program pins for accomplishment of each. Our goal is that every Varsity scout earn the Denali award prior to moving up to Venturing.

The Vision?

Our goal is to provide a program that provides intramural competition to Varsity teams with intense training every quarter. It is Little League/YMCA, only run by the Boy Scouts with skills as open as you want (sports, arts, etc.). Through competition, the boys do not lose interest; we help them to Eagle while pushing them further to Venturing and the Silver Award.

So...there it is.(This message has been edited by tortdog)(This message has been edited by tortdog)(This message has been edited by tortdog)

>who gets to decide who is morally straight?

The people who make it a requirement, no?

BTW, just last week a rep from my council contacted me and informed me that a non-LDS unit was looking to form a Varsity team to compete with other Varsity teams. Frankly, I can hardly wait because I am willing to bet that Varsity team will be formed because it WANTS to be formed (with trained leaders) as opposed to so many Varsity teams that are formed only because it is LDS Church policy. For some reason the LDS packs/troops get it, and the LDS crews sometimes get it, but the LDS Varsity teams rarely get what's to be gotten.

Maybe if the leaders in those teams actually got trained...

I think the reason the LDS Church pushed hard for a Varsity program was because the Church divides the youth into three groups: 12-13; 14-15 and 16-18. The Church handbook emphasizes that those groups (or quorums) maintain its quorum identity as much as possible, i.e., no mixing 12-year olds with 16-year olds as a standard practice.

When there wasn't a Varsity program, the 16+ went into Venturing, but the 14-15 group was left in the middle wondering what to do (separate troop?? and in the LDS Church every young man must register for Boy Scouts). I understand that the Church approached the BSA with the problem, and together they realized that 14-15s had different needs/desires than the younger scouts. Wah-lah...Varsity was born. It gave the BSA a tool to use for older scouts tired of tying knots, while giving the LDS Church a BSA unit it could put its 14-15 year olds in.

However...the LDS units stunk at supporting it and when it was rolled out no one really knew what it did. (I remember well.) So Varsity has kind of just floundered (don't get me started on the failure of LDS units to push their BSA leaders to get trained).

Now, there are some councils that are running it right, principally where the LDS Church is actually doing what it's supposed to in regard to Varsity, and in those councils it really works. SHAC is just getting it together with three active Varsity teams that compete against each other as of this year (out of a total or probably 40-45 Varsity teams). Our goal is to grow the SHAC Varsity to a YMCA-type group...with intramural play. Not just limited to sports, but you can have music (band competitions), theater (competing plays with Oscar-type awards) and even mechanics (give each team a broken vehicle and see which teams identify and solve the problems the fastest). If you catch the vision of the program, it's great and frankly the boys at that age group LOVE the competition (as long as they are trained during the 3-month program).

Finally, I've seen first hand that mixing youth of one age group is not necessarily the best practice. 16-year olds have different wants/abilities than most 14-year olds (e.g., girls, jobs and cars). When we have mixed our Varsity with our Venturing, we inevitably find the younger boys "out of their element" as the Venturing youth (all 16+ in our unit) talk about the dates, cars, etc. that we'd really rather the Varsity (14-15) not focus on.

Sooo...it's convenient to keep the youth age groups separated.

Last words and how it has begun to really work with our units. We have a killer troop. The Cubs/Webelos look forward to crossing over and becoming Boy Scouts. For the last year, we have had a killer Varsity troop, with quarterly tournaments and skilled coaches that teach the boys how to really master a skill. At this point, the Boy Scouts look FORWARD to graduating from the troop and joining the Varsity team. Unfortunately for our Varsity team members, our Venturing crew is weak. By the time the boys hit 16, they are wondering why our Crew isn't doing the cool things that the Varsity was.

So for us, Varsity keeps the youth in intense scouting through at least 15. We just need to get our Crew to give them even better things at 16+.(This message has been edited by tortdog)

>Being somewhat unfamiliar with Varsity Scouting, can someone explain to me what a Team offers that a Venturing Crew does not? From what I can tell, Varsity Teams sound like Crews for 14+ boys but just with a sports focus, instead of high adventure (or whatever). Like troops, crews are not coed and membership teminates at 18. Do teams have their own methods? Given the choice, why would a 14+ boy want to join a Team or a Crew?

I see a Varsity team as a mix between a troop and a crew. Troops are led by the adults (heavily), while crews are led by the youth (heavily). With a team, you have an adult coach who leads, but a youth captain beside him.

As Bob said, Varsity is not just about sports, it's about outdoors, service, and personal development as well.

The main difference I see between Varsity and Venturing is that Varsity focuses on one skill every 3 months (like Venturing) but then turns into a competitive tournament where those skills are used by the boys (like a high school varsity team). Also...Varsity is for boys only (as opposed to Venturing).

We are pushing our Varsity teams to a format similar to high school or YMCA teams. In fact, one Varsity team in our council competes in a YMCA league. Our goal is to provide a Varsity league that provides Varsity teams with the "format" and "program" so that it can compete against other Varsity teams on a regular basis (just like the YMCA offers).

>I don't even think there are any Varsity Teams in our district - is Varsity Scouting some 1980s program experiment that didn't really gel?

I don't think the Varsity program is kicking hard in many councils across the nation.

[nods head in complete agreement]

Something about the Scout law comes to mind...kind.

At a church conference this month, one of our church leaders spoke about how being Christian means being kind. He spoke of an instance in which he was a bishop of a church unit, and he reached out to an "in-active" member who had not been to church in a long time. He found out that the member had stopped going to church 40 years ago when a church youth leader pulled the youth out of a church meeting due to his bad behavior and told him to leave and never come back. Well, that youth did leave...and never came back. The bishop offered an apology on behalf of the church and asked him to return (along with his family), which he did.

The moral? How was that a kind thing to do...to tell someone to get out. And what if the church leader had been "kind"...this man would never have left.

I see that as the same situation. When someone breaks a rule, there's a kind way to correct it. In the instant case, the rule wasn't even formalized (but was one's personal viewpoint)...so it is even worse in my book.

A scout (and a scout leader) is kind.

In Varsity, we divide our program into quarterly intervals, usually topped off with a competitive tournament where Varsity teams compete against each other. We use the 3-volume program resources, but they don't lay out the "program" for those 3-months, so I feel like I am reinventing the wheel every quarter. Granted, that gives the team freedom, but it sure would be handy to have a program schedule for each program.

For example...we just finished basketball. It would be nice if there were a suggested schedule for the three months similar to this:

Week1: Introduction of Coach; Explain rules of the game

Week2: Drills: dribbling/passing

Week3: Drills: layups/scrimmage

...

Week15-16: Varsity basketball tournament including 3-point contest, free throw contest, dribbling/layup relay, bracket/round robin.

There would be far more detail for each week, but hopefully you see where I am going. As we do our programs with Varsity, we are developing our own but how much better we would get (and faster) by sharing resources with other teams who are going the same place (or have beent here before). Additionally, as an example of non-Varsity resources, getting a suggested program from canoe experts on what to teach a team in 12 weeks of a canoeing program would be a tremendous resource.

Are there any resources out there?

I sewed velcro to my right pocket, and when I get a "temporary" patch, I sew the opposing velcro to the patch (easy since it's off the shirt) and then stick it to the shirt. I usually carry around a couple temporary patches in my right pocket so that I can switch them for something to do as soon as people in our roundtable start arguing about which knot goes where on the shirt.

Since when did schools ask BSA councils for BSA eagle documentation?

This sounds absurd.

I am in the camp, however, that believes those who receive eagle at 12-13 years likely lack the appreciate/maturity of those who earn it at 16-17. Some 12-year olds will be more mature than the 17-year old.

Would I hold a youth back? No. Would that 12-year Eagle appreciate his eagle more if he had earned at at 16? Probably.

It is what it is. However, they still have a lot more to earn beyond Eagle (and palms). They have the Denali award and Varsity letter. They have the bronze, gold and silver awards in Venturing...not to mention that cool Ranger award that they didn't offer when I was a youth. So get the Eagle young and move up the program to get the other awards too...in my opinion.

Who is the big dog in determining the uniform standards? The offical materials do not really layout the standards (other than the field uniform). There is no contact at the national headquarters on the website, pointing people to the local councils instead.

So is the authority the local councils? For example, the Sam Houston Area Council (located in God's country) has put forward advice on what is an appropriate activity uniform for Varsity scouts, but you will never find that in writing in any BSA materials (that I'm aware of anyway).

BTW...good enough for me because the SHAC has rules that are easy to work with in Varsity scouts.

>Legislating your personal morality is bending your will around other people's necks and leading your people back into slavery.

In this country (and every state), there is no such thing as the legislation of personal morality. There is the legislation of society's morality, which is imposed by the legislature as executed by the executive.

Laws are inherently judgments on morality. That's just reality, so I'm not sure what the above comment means (except in a tyrannical form of government).

I think that's an accurate description of the Varsity field uniform.

I think they piggy-backed on each other.

http://www.troop97.net/bsahist3.htm

http://www.pattersontroop440.org/Content/BSA-History.htm

This reference also notes brown shorts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Scouts

We're going with black athletic shorts with short drawstrings...

Our CO prohibits the boys from wearing earrings, nose jewelry, etc. Were this our unit, I think the situation should have been handled differently, but this would apply regardless of whether the boy were in uniform or not.

The Sam Houston Area Council just informed me that the Varsity units can elect to make their own activity uniform, using any designed T-shirt and any suitable shorts, with white socks appropriate.

I knew we could on the T-shirts, but did not know it included the shorts. SHAC also had never heard the "non-official" brown requirement for the shorts.

Thanks for the input.

I understand that Varsity scouts can design their own T-shirts and wear them as an activity uniform (with the field uniform worn as appropriate).

For some time we have done this, and each team has its own T-shirt with team logo. My question is regarding the shorts. We want to "standardize" on the uniform all the way to the shorts (with white athletic socks). I see no guidance from the BSA, other than a few unofficial sites stating the shorts should be "non-uniform" brown. Certainly the official BSA shorts are not an option for most of our activities, which include canoeing, basketball and swimming. (Can you imagine a those pockets and belt in a swimming or basketball tournament?)

Can anyone point me to something "official", or otherwise what other teams have done? We are leaning to standardizing our teams to all-black athletic shorts with drawstrings that reach to the knees (similar to the NBA) and could be worn with any of our activities (including swimming or basketball).