Pack18Alex

Just a thought... it's not that the uniform now is less functional/quality than in the 1970s, it's just that the rest of clothing has gotten cheaper and more functional over the past 40 years, and the scouting uniform has stayed the same. My son, as a Tiger, had the uniform down to the socks. He hated the socks and rarely wore them (I didn't buy him the wolf socks), and he tried the pants a few times and hated them. At Roundtable, the consensus in our district was: wear the shirt/belt, wear a school uniform navy pants, whatever socks you want. Do keep in mind we're in South Florida

I just did two weeks across two camps (our District and a neighboring one). One program had a tot lot (run by a Girl Scout Volunteer), the other just had the volunteers bring their other children around. The tot lot approach was better, the girls did arts and crafts primarily, joined us for lunch, and during lunch/den time, they went over and did Archery/Slingshots/etc. The second time, they tagged along with me, got chances to do stuff (after the boys of course), and generally had a blast. If you told me I had to pay for child care for those two weeks for my other children so I could

One of the dads stood over the finish line with a phone in video camera mode this past race. We all laughed at him, and only had one or two races that close... That said, when they were closish, the boys LOVED seeing the video of their cars crossing the finish line!

Just to go out there on this... Are we referring to gay orientation (attracted to the same sex), or sodomy (engaged in sex with someone of the same gender)? I mean, a 14 year old attracted to boys comes out as gay, he hasn't acted on it, he's an "avowed homosexual," but hasn't engaged in prohibited sexual acts. Under Jewish Law, no sin has been committed, being attracted to someone is not a sin. Indeed, one of the basics for Judaism is to overcome the evil inclination. Jewish Law prohibits stealing. If you have no desire to steal, that's no big deal. If you have a compulsi

Does the opportunity for rank advancement in Sea Scouts as opposed to Venturing make a difference? In a community where there is a focus on college application resume padding, might a Ship that let's you earn both Venturing Awards AND Sea Scout Ranks/Awards help you with parental support for their kids involvement?

For what it's worth, I think that penalizes someone for same sex attraction is wrong and violates our Pack's religious orientation. Regarding sexual activity, what are we defining that? Boy admits he's attracted to boys, that's not a sin. Boy admits he's attracted to girls, that's not a sin. Boy kisses another boy, that's not a sin. Boy kisses a girl, arguably that is a sin (since we're quoting Midrashim and Rashi, can we bring up Shomer Negiah, observing the separation of the sexes). Boy has sex with another boy, that's a sinful violation. Boy has sex with a girl, that's deb

I wear my little Cub Service year from my two years as a cub Scout, the boys asked about it in the beginning of the year, no one in our Pack leadership ever wore won. I earned my Tiger Knot (now the lame Den Leader knot instead of the cool orange one, boo), which is the first leader award in our Pack History. I think if we had more adults in uniform and with uniform bling it would be good... I put a few random things I qualified for on mine... my wife teases me about it, but my son is proud.

Without advancement, it's an outdoor club, and nothing more. Nothing wrong with that, and BSA provides cheap insurance in return for lots of paperwork, but it would cease being scouting.

We use Quickbooks for tracking our Pack finances. Each Scout Family is setup as a Customer Account, when they have multiple sons, we create a Job within the Customer Account for each one. (This works for us so that when a Parent wants to pay dues via one check, we can handle it). If Scout Accounts are a bigger deal for you than family payments, track each Scout as a Customer and ask the parents to pay separately when needed. You can process a joint payment if need be, receive the check as a deposit and create a Suspense Account, then use it's register to split it across Accounts Receiv

We meet weekly. We historically just did it all as a pack and interest waned with the older kids and rank advancement was more or less granted regardless of meeting all the specific requirements. This meant that activities were generally at the Wolf level and the Tigers loved being with the older boys and the older boys dropped out out of boredom. Parents didn't know when meetings were and attendance was haphazard. We now meet weekly, with 1 Pack Meeting, 1 Pack Activity, and 2-3 Den Meetings/month. Sometimes the Pack Activity is a Tiger Go See It if it seems fun for everyone, sometim

If I recall from the story, the BSA bought the land, built the building, then out of patriotism, "donated" it to the city in return for a perpetual lease for $1 or something similar. So while it's nice that the City was forced to pay the legal bills of their nonsense, they did get to terminate the lease and steal a building that was never theirs and was only deeded to them on paper as part of the BSA being a civic organization. A far better result would have been for the city to have to turn the property back over to the council since they didn't want to live by the original agreement, i

Well, if my family needs to have tents and cooking gear for both our Girls site and our Boys site, that's not Pack gear, that's just my family. If they are all on separate weekends, well Cubs weekend is family camping, and GSUSA weekend is just the girls. In terms of your question: Problem One: we have a few dedicated families, they're slowly stepping up, my focus has been on recruiting and motivating active families. Some of the problem is a legacy problem that will take time to fix. But I committed this year and wanted my son to have a stellar program. I've been very open with m

The girls want the BSA Cub program because it's a stellar program. The GSUSA program is simply not the outdoors and activity oriented program that cubs is. If you compare the Daisy/Brownie Program to the Tiger/Wolf/Bear programs (same age range), the GSUSA program is adorable and girly, but way more talking and less doing. In the BSA program, built around young boys, we're there to teach values, we do it with action, while the GSUSA is teaching their values, but in a more classroom style program. Both programs are heavy on crafts and light on scout craft, which changes as they get older. I

Because a belief that the "manly arts" are dying, and Scouting is a way of preserving them. Our boys live in a world where "boy things" are discouraged at school, etc., which is part of the "crisis of boys," scouting counteracts that. I didn't say they can't be interested in sports, my cousin was a state championship competitive team as a freshman (they got damned close), my sister-in-law was a NCAA recruited athlete. Those are great things, I have lots of sports-oriented women in my family, both playing and spectators. Just like boys into sewing, tailoring, cooking, etc., are all good

Despite all the cookie sales and cookie revenue, they are dysfunctional. Too many service units, all run by volunteers. I don't know what they do with cookie money, but they don't run a quality organization. People bitch about BSA national and high salaries, but you underestimate what having a high quality leadership behind the scenes does for the program. If all you do is activities with your Den/Pack, you don't get much, but if you are in a great district/council (like we are), you really see the benefits.

One, Cub Scouting is something like 65% of BSA's Youth Members. Once you've crossed over it's easy to focus on the flagship Boy Scouts program, but when 95% of Boy Scouts are former Cubs in some regard, so Cub Scouts is the core of BSA's membership, even if the least focused on by the leadership. Two, I think that integrating Cub Scouts is more straightforward than Boy Scouts because of the family orientation. I think that a Tigress program would be nearly identical to the Tiger program, swap the Achievement/Elective for Go See It: Sporting with Elective: Performance and you pretty much h

Really? How about some examples? At a Camp Out, my wife was freaking out at the rough housing and the getting dirty. I pulled her aside and said, "this is a boy scout event, they will be boys, they will get messy, they will rough house, and it will be okay." She backed off and all the kids, boys and girls, had fun.

My Pack is also male led... to our detriment, active mothers don't think that they should step up and take a role, it's seen as a fathers activity. That's fine for the involved fathers, but leaves me short of man power. My understanding is about 65% of Cub Scout volunteers are women. My Den Leader as a child was my mom, and never made it to Webelos when they couldn't get a male Den Leader. Practically speaking, allowing women into all leadership positions has saved Scouting.

I think the biggest limitation would be confusion with GSUSA. That said, I think GSUSA would close up and die pretty fast of BSA went co-ed. The fact is, having dealt with both organizations, BSA is better run, more professional, and better organized. GSUSA survives mostly because BSA doesn't offer a program at the age that GSUSA really operates in. However, beyond that, the goals of the organization are totally different. GSUSA is totally about girl empowerment. While they nominal accept male leaders, it isn't real, and absolutely pushed back. Looking at our local programing, other

As a father with one son and two younger daughters... There is a difference. If my wife has a meeting, I'll often have my younger girls with me. The boys still rough house, but it's different when the girls are there, even at this totally non sexual age. So in an ideal world, I'd say keep them separate. That said, I am my Pack Committee Chair, with no real Pack Committee to speak of, and it's a ton of work. The fact that my wife is out right now at a meeting for the new GSUSA troop we're starting up for the girls is why I'd like to see it co-ed. The fact is, GSUSA is a totally diffe

I am going to say the CM is handling this properly. The boy is registered, entitled to Rank Advance, and if parent, as Akela, signs off on the achievement, well, the boy is entitled to his Bear Badge. As far as the CM presenting it and not you? Well, he's not in your Den, is he? I mean, he's basically a lone scout working on requirements with his parents and not coming to stuff. Clearly the CM wants the boy in Scouting and hopes he'll return (or figures he'll disappear after this and never be seen again), so who cares. I get the hurt feels, I'm a Den Leader, I sink a ton of time into