tramthum@gmail.com

thanks to all of you for all of your feedback on this subject. to clear up a few things, i never said i did not support the SM, i did and i do, i just said i could not believe it was ok for them to do what they did and i will stick by my belief that integrity did not play a big issue in this incident. this is not the first Issue with this same group of parents but i am glad it is the last at least for our troop. as the AC paperpusher parent that i am i do not believe i would be doing my job corretly as teh AC or as a parent if i just turned a blind eye and allowed a scout to receive something he did not earn. Not to many years back, if you earned the rank of Eagle you were special and everyone that knew anything about the scouting program knew you were special. they knew how hard you had worked for that rank. Today, it is handed out way to easy and it starts with practices like pushing it through and not ruffling feathers. i totally agree with the no more no less rule but also agree with the rule of show, demonstrate, tell. the general practice in our troop is that the Troop Guide will sign off on advancement for the scouts in the patrol he is working with for several reasons so our general practice was not followed. in teaching boys to be boy led they should be BOY led and having adults signing off isnt showing the boys that concept. in our troop, one of the jobs of the ASM's is to be an advisor for a patrol, they are there for the troop guide or the PL if they have any questions or issues to include signing off of advancement requirements. again, this clearly was not done. I have the support of the SM and he has my support. I have the support of the CC and he has my support. we, along with the rest of the committee are a team. the SM called me aside and told me to just take their initials and dates and i did. now, the boys that were at our annual scout lock-in instead of this family campout were not afforded the opportunity to earn initials on these requirements so they did the right thing and lost while these three families did the wrong thing and won. before you respond, this lock in is an annual event following a long 4 day winter campout. it was on our yearly calendar with final plans being decided by the PLC over a month earlier. these families chose to go on this family campout instead of supporting an already planned troop event because they were upset over an earlier issue of MB requirements. one of their group was signing off on requirements that had not been met, adding to requirements and deleting other requirements. after i told this mb counselor (with the support of the SM and CC) that this was not acceptable is when this group decided to go off on their own. this counselor had been thru the yearly MB counselor training and had actually been re-trained because of earlier issues but still refused to follow guidelines and policy so now you have the rest of the story. I have a very close relationship with the SM and supporting him was never an issue.

Shortidge you are correct i am the Adv Ch and your answer does not offend me but i am far from being a 'paper pusher'. i am part of a team and i take my current job as the Adv Ch seriously. I believe i have a responsibility to each and every scout and parent that walks thru our unit. that responsibility includes helping our troop run a good, fair, honest program with integrity and pride. I don't believe I have ever thought of myself as having power over the scout but i do believe i and every adult in our program should be the guardian of not only advancement standards but of standards in general. if we do not expect these high standards from our boys then who will.

@scoutnut

no problem here with the no adding or subtracting of the requirements, just more talk on integerity. the no adding or subtracting is actually what might have started this situation. i had to stand firm on MB requirements with the counselor spouse of one of these ASM's when they decided they could not only re-write requirements but requiring scouts to do specific requirements when clearly they had choices to choose from, well this has been an interesting experience and i have most certaintly learned from the experience, i wish them well at their next unit and hope they to have learned.

what i really hate about this whole situation is to me it smacks of common sense. to bring a quality program to the boys integerity has to play a part and i am not seeing it in this situation. did i also mention that this 'family camping event' happened on the same weekend of our annual lock in.

The situation was getting tense so while i did not agree with it i know why we made it. i just kinda feel like we were strong armed. you can bet our policy will be crystal clear from this point forward. this is the first time we have had an issue of this type, i hope it is our last. i just have a hard time believing it is permissible for rank advancement to be signed off on in this manner, to think of all the family non scout events we have attended and all this time i could have had my SPL son signing off on his younger brothers.

i cant say about YPT but i know there were a total of 6 adults at the campout. no they did not fill out paperwork for permit becuase it was not an official scout event. that is the rub, they are saying it does not have to be an official scout event to work on rank advancement, i say it does but cant find anything to back me up. according to one of the dads the district advancement chair agrees with him. i have not heard back from him yet so cant say what his answer is.

we recently had 3 families leave our troop. prior to leaving they brought in their scout books so we could marry up their advancment records. rank for T, 2nd and 1st on two of the boys raised some issues. a few weeks before leaving these three families went on a family camping trip and signed off on several rank advancement requirements for the boys (dads were ASM) i told them these requirements would not be added to their official record because they had not be completed at a scout meeting, event etc. i also reminded them that we had Troop Guides to sign off on these requiements. the situation got tense, our SM told me to go ahead and accept initials and dates. i did but have not added them to TM yet. i could not find anything to support my position except those that say specifically 'at a campout' etc but i cant imagine it is ok to go on a family campout and start knocking out rank requirements. any thoughts?