Scouter99

These kids today, huh?

Not at all, they're the product of adults who believe the same thing beginnign in the 1960s and culminating in the 1980s. 

I'm assuming that the professor skeptic quoted works in a small and/or private school where multi-culturalism hasn't subverted the curriculum, or he's a basically-lone voice on his campus with job security or no regard to job security

Multiculturalism/post-modernism has redefined truth as personal and also demands that no one is right and no one is wrong, while making a challenge to a person's ideas a huge affront to the individual which must always be rooted in prejudice, hate, fear, or privilege.

As an older student on campus, challenging Millennials' eggshell egos was a favorite pass-time. They have no concept of learning or of knowledge because they've been told by their self-esteem-craven teachers and relativist society that truth is intuitive and internal, so there is no seeking knowledge because whatever they think is true "for them" and that's as far as they think truth goes.

But how can you prevent Bobby's mom from tagging kids in photos? It gets very hard to manage that.

 

Our unit's policy goes a bit further than BSA. When we post photos we do group shots or action photos. We have told our parents never to tag or discuss their kids on FB. If THEY want to share on their page that's okay, BUT we as that they not use the "share" feature, but rather to download the photo and paste on their own page.

 

It is tough enough to manage the page itself, making sure parents (who may not know better) don't violate BSA policy is a huge job on FB. We avoid individual or small group pictures and take down any if we find they were shared in the wrong manner.

I give Bobby's mom supremacy in what's best for Bobby.  If she wants to tag her son on FB, she's the parent.  Just like if Bobby's mom calls and asks me to give Bobby a ride, I explain that it's a gray area, but she's Bobby's mom.

 

As far as tagging in general, if a Scout is on FB, his full name and photo are already on FB, tagging him doesn't change that or broaden it. BSA's brand guide (p 28) does state don't "give out" scouts' identifying information, but in tagging a photo one is not giving out anything that the Scout/family has not already given out.  If he's not on FB, then I don't tag him at all (because what's the point?). 

I also recommend that you buy a copy of this book, Troop Activities, or the other version, Patrol and Troop Activities (I think they're basically the same except the dimensions of the book) keeping in mind that some of the activities are no longer approved.

 

Also get your hands on the Boys' Life "Patrol Activities" and "Patrol Ideas" reprints.  (http://www.scoutstuff4sale.com/boys-life-reprints-1/?sort=bestselling&page=2)

You can sometimes get reprints for free by sending a self-address stamped envelope (business size) to Boy Scout Division, Boy Scouts of America; 1325 West Walnut Hill Lane PO Box 152079; Irving, TX 75015-2079. A few months ago, I tried writing for free pioneering plans advertised in a 1980s BL, and got a copy of the pioneering reprint with a handwritten note that said "Hope this is what you were looking for." I wasn't aware they still printed/stocked BL reprints

You should call Troopmaster.

Have a Group.  Set it to Closed.  Only allow parents/scouts in of the Troop.  Have a webpage for publicity and other features.  Abide by the BSA Social Media guidelines.

It's not possible to abide by BSA social media guidelines and have a closed group.

 

Scouter99,

 

For your Private Group do you have to monitor or, heaven forfend, "moderate" the posts your parents make?

 

The last thing I want is either political messages or cat videos showing up in the troop feed.

I have never had that issue, it's mostly me posting photos and links to news articles and getting 9-25 views from a group of 100.

If I do run into it, I'll simply remove it and remind the person tat I appreciate they wanted to share something funny or that they feel is important, but that the group is for Scouting things and that Scouting is apolitical.

 

Facebook just isn't a good platform, anyway, it's a bit of a ghost town, and young people don't use it.

If you do use FB, remind people to check "get notifications" so that they are alerted whenever something is posted, rather than relying on them to maybe see it in their newsfeed based on the algorithms.

@@perdidochas he already answered that question

As owner of a couple pages, I can also add that the utility is limited by your friends; that is, say you get a notification of a new like, but it's not someone you're personally friends with. There’s no good way to find out who it is. Your page says you have 100 followers, you pull up the list and you can only see 73. Next week you try to pull up the list, but Facebook has changed how to get to the list, so now you spend 30 minutes trying to figure out the new way.

 

Also, adults need to keep in mind that Facebook is dead for the 13-25 set, they don't use it precisely because it's not a place where they can get away from us, anymore.

 

Facebook and other social media are also bad choices for troop coordination in the first place, because their terms of use limit users to a minimum age of 13. That leaves out a large chunk of your troop unless you're promoting them breaking the ToS.

My thoughts are that a Facebook group is better in terms of privacy. I think BSA has put out some guidelines concerning social media. I'm thinking that they would go with the closed (admin. approved membership) model.

The opposite is true: BSA policy requires that unit social media be public.

 

http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Marketing/Resources/SocialMedia.aspx

"To help ensure that all communication on social media channels remains positive and safe, these channels must be public, and all communication on or through them must be public. This enables administrators to monitor all communication and help ensure there is no inappropriate communication between adult leaders and Scouts or between Scouts themselves. Therefore, no private channels (e.g., private Facebook groups or invite-only YouTube channels) are acceptable in helping to administer the Scouting program. Private channels and private communication put both the youth and you at risk. If you feel the information you seek to share via social media channels should not be shared in public, you should not share that information via social media."

 

We had a public page for about 2 hours.  As soon as I started tagging Scouts in the photos, friends of theirs started making crass comments about Scouts being fags in addition to your basic 4-letter words. 

Now we're in violation of policy because I scrapped the public page and made a private group.

 

One big issue with BSA's social media policy is that whoever wrote it doesn't understand BSA's Youth Protection Policy, specifically, they do not understand that 2-deep refers only to overnight camping trips, and that no-one-on-one applies to all situations.  So, the social media policy constantly refers to "two-deep" leadership when talking about PMs, email, IMs, etc.  Specifically, the policy requires a second person is copied in on any electronic communication because "two deep" is required. 

 

This position—whether its grounded in two-deep or no 1-on-1—also shows a basic ignorance about the nature of online communication.  A Facebook PM, an Instagram PM, Twitter DM, email, etc never go away.  Ever.  Never, ever.  If Joe Molester is going to mess with a Scout, his online messages and text messages are there forever, and he knows that.  Yes, there are dumb criminals and they do use social media, but sending a direct message to a Scout does not endanger the Scout and the evidence is there forever.

Making those messages forbidden does not protect Dudley Doright from false accusation, either.  Because those messages never, ever go away, they are false accusation proof.  Mama Moneygrubber cannot falsely accuse Dudley because the innocent messages are there exonerating him forever.

 

Superfluous CCs annoy parents.  There is no reason to copy mom on a text message that reads "don't forget your compass."

 

That snarky line at the end of the quote is stupid, too.  The decision to go private had nothing to do with the content we were posting, it had to do with the response of teenagers and 20-somethings.  I "feel" that the information should not be shared in public because the public are jerkwads, not because the content I was sharing (photos of camping trips) was some shady grey area content that I wanted to hide.

Has anyone seen a list of council sizes in one location? I am surprised that MA only has a council with 13,000+ youths. Seems small for such a compact area.

There isn't even a map of councils or even a good list of councils that I can find.

No list of camps, either, at least not until Scouting Magazine keeps adding any camp in the country to its fluff list of best camps in the country.  And you get a trophy, and you get a trophy, and you get a trophy

asdf

As has always been the case for all of us. The rules of decorum have always existed but perhaps were not very clear and perhaps not applied as stringently as they needed to be applied. As was made clear to me by Bob White a long, long time ago when I was out of line, a person is not welcome to write or post anything they want. They are welcome to write or post what they want within limits. And in response to recent posts, Terry just made the limits clearer for all of us.

You're being intellectually dishonest.  What does "harm" mean, it doesn't mean anything.  It means a certain type of user is free to spout off about "conservative Christians" (of which I'm not one) and their bigotry—painting, as NJ put it, an entire group of people (and the largest sponsors of the organization) with one stroke—or to pooh-pooh groping, or to accuse their opponents of being gay, while the other is villified for their equally contentious views.

The idea of "harm" as the test for whether the moderators are to shut people up is designed not to create a guideline for debate, but to stop all debate.  Is it "harmful" to point out these facts: Gay men use meth at a rate 20 times the general population, gay men contract HIV/AIDS at a rate 14 times their share of the population, a study of San Francisco gay men found that 20% had more than 1000 sexual partners, that the suicide rate for post-op transexuals is the same as pre-op transexuals. 

 

Can there even be a real space left for religious opposition?  After all, isn't it harmful to note that as far as homosexuals, the Torrah says "their blood is upon them"?

 

The off-the-cuff addition to Terry's restrictions that discussion of the issue must not discuss homosexuals as a group is also nothing more than a barrier to discusion at all.  If we are to discuss whether left-handed Arabian midgets should be allowed to be Scout leaders, then we cannot discus that issue based on John the left-handed Arabian midget, it must be done on terms of left-handed Arabian midgets as a group.  Just as the plural of anecdote is not "data," the opposite is true.

 

No debate can be had on the already-occuring results of this debate.  There can be no debate about why Scouts shouldn't be at a gay pride parade, or why gay scouts should be separated from the sex of their attraction just as men and women are separated, etc. 

 

There is no aspect of this debate that speech-controlling leftists do not find "harmful" to homosexuals, because to discuss the negative aspects of homosexuality or the morality of homosexuality is to insult you and homosexuals.  And that proscription is by design, don't patronize us and pretend otherwise.

I understand how you feel. I've been there. So have others. I offer you, once again, words that were NEVER offered to me during those times. You ARE welcome here. And I hope you can feel that way in the future.

As long as he only says certain things or doesn't say certain things.  And that's not a "welcome."  He's been made crystal clear he's welcome to shut up or get out regardless of how friendly you want to try and paste it up in 500 words or more, or wrap it in illiberal, authoritarian Left "safe space" language.

 

Is it time to name an ad hoc virtual committee to design/arrange/plan for a virtual campfire celebration of the founding of this website (20 years? Only seems like 30... )

Which ones of us are allowed to come?

Yes, @, and how many summer camps do you know where one counselor is teaching more than X badges in a time configuration that would also allow for one boy to earn so many from him?  What's the limit from one counselor—3?  now if Johnny goes to camp 2 or more years, he can't learn from the expert nature greyhair that teaches several nature MBs because his SM has made an ideological decision without practical thought.

Quotation isn't necessarily insight, this passage doesn't apply to what MattR is suggesting.

 

I am just as annoyed by crummy summer camp MB programs as anyone else, but I also recognize that the program is set up in a certain way to achieve certain results.  In my "chaotic good" outlook, this makes for some sticky messes; personal freedom has to reign.  The SM's job is to counsel in a way that the boys understand that some things are best done another way, and let the boy decide, and if needsbe to take the counselor and camp to task over shortcomings in the program.

Really?

 

Like only within meetings? W/o special certifications?

They are not approved for any program level.  Manual is online at http://www.scouting.org/filestore/Outdoor%20Program/pdf/30931_WB.pdf

 

Chapter 12: Other Shooting Sports for All Program Levels

Ammunition (slingshots)

For water balloons, use small, biodegradable balloons, and fill them no larger than a ping pong ball. When using a catapult or other shooting device, use a soft object no larger than the opening of a small juice can. The use of pumpkins is not approved.

Ammunition (catapults)

 

It appears that the editors accidentally put the pumpkin note in the slingshot section, but it doesn't much matter because BSA defines slingshots as catapults, and gives the catapult caveat in the slingshot section.

 

In getting the citation for you, I noticed my own troop accidentally broke the rules a few weeks ago in two ways: we used objects larger than "small juice can openings" and we didn't get approval.

I ran across this little website a few years ago, and it has a good outline for a pioneering competition weekend. The site is DanKohn.info, the direct link to the pioneering weekend is http://dankohn.info/~scouts/resources/pioneer_weekend.pdf

 

Be aware that the Shooting Sports Manual outlawed firing pumpkins (or anything larger than "a juice cup cap") out of catapults and trebuchets this year.

So how do we, at the troop level, deemphasize poorly done MBs and emphasize just having fun doing cool stuff at camp? I can't audit 30 merit badges to see how they're done. I'd rather just say no MBs will be signed off from camp but learn what you can, we will accept anything you made (including score sheets and photos) but the rest will have to be done at home with a counselor on your own time. Rather than sit through a boring fishing MB class the scouts can just go to the lake, fish, take a picture, and go do something else fun.

 

I would much rather see summer camp have a lot more "just check it out" and if they want to complete the mb then they can do the paperwork at home but get their hands dirty cleaning guns and making bow strings at camp under the guidance of someone that knows this stuff.

 

As skeptic covered, it's not possible for you to implement a process like this without breaking the rules yourself ("who guards the guardian?")

Until the last updates to the Guide to Advancement, the counselor's signature was the end of the line.  Now, you have the "limited recourse" option for obvious cases where it's not possible that the badge was actually earned.  The recourse is not for "poorly done" MBs and it doesn't allow you to create a two-tiered system.

MBs are separate from the troop program precisely because they are an individual pursuit.  Turning a boy into a Scout is the troop's job, and they do that by First Class (or not at all); the ranks after that are the Scout's business, it's all individual stuff: service, MBs, responsibility.

 

It's also not your place to put a limit on how many badges a Scout can take at camp.  If you have an opinion on they way camp should be, then you need to sit down with your Scouts and talk it out with them.  If your vision sounds good to them, they'll follow you, if not, it's not your authoritarian right to strongarm them.

In our troop we had the opposite, some checkmark-driven patch hound who informed the boys/parents each year that they were not allowed to have more than 1 free period during the day.  He was as convicted that his vision was right as you are that yours is.

 

Taking your example, I took Fishing MB at camp and it was one of the best experiences I had.  We went to a lake one day, river the next, trout stream the next, fly fishing another.  The "boring class" part was the backbone of what we were doing: learning how to cast differently in different situations, where fish lay, what fish look for, how to tie flies, how to clean a fish, etc.

If you had been my SM, you would have robbed me of that experience because you know better, but you don't.

 I can't think of a single one of you that I wouldn't want to meet at a real campfire, so I would be able to shake your hand and say "thank you friend".

Likewise, though I doubt we'd recognize half of each other.

 

A Boy Scouts of America representative didn’t immediately respond after regular business hours to an e-mail seeking comment on the lawsuit.

 

"We didn't do our due diligence before running this story."

 

 

I hope a decent paragraph about neckers without field uniforms makes its way into the handbooks.

Mike Walton (the "Black Eagle", curator of the uniform site) is in the middle of several updates to the official uniform and insignia guide if you want to put a bug in his ear. His contact info is on his site (just Google him).

The new SM is the helicopter mothership, so I don't do anything program-related anymore, and simply focus on boys as I can.  I go to the committee meetings so I can tell the boys why their program decisions were overridden and by which adults; focus on pioneering, knots, first aid, and cooking; counsel Scouting Heritage; get hold of PLs' and influential boys' ears to talk to them about how they can guide their own program via patrol activities; encourage peer recruiting; and just spend time being enough of a bloke to get the unadulterated version of their lives so that I can be well-positioned to give counseling that is relevant/personal and meaningful without being preachy.

 

We're shrinking, and the good ones are headed for the exits 5 minutes after Eagle, so I'm just trying to make an impact on individuals rather than fight a program turned Barney and Friends.

Is this really the way the insurance works?

@@packsaddle See T2E's elaboration, but, essentially, yes.  However, the only time I ever filed a claim, the "mound" of paperwork consisted of just 1 sheet of paper.

EDITED/DELETED by SCOUTER-Terry.

When this adult breaks his ankle on next September's hike and you guys send in the claim to BSA insurance and they send back the rejection letter citing their specific directive that he not be involved with Scouting, are you ready to foot the bill for the defense lawyer, bills, and deal with the backlash from National?