Back Pack

1 hour ago, Hawkwin said:

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." 

It also doesn't say there isn't a relationship between those that are born with two eyes and those that commit crimes but I bet the correlation is higher than those that use drugs and commit crimes. Because the study doesn't say it doesn't exist, we might want to start poking out everyone's extra eye based on that absence of evidence. We can clearly infer that there is a correlation between having two eyes and crimes.

Good thing correlation isn't the same thing as causation.

 

Right. So the data is not definitive either way so both your argument and his is not proven by the data. 

1 hour ago, Chadamus said:

Consider involving the Scouts. The Quartermaster can give a "tour" of the Troop trailer and chuck-boxes. Scouts can explain and demonstrate how the lanterns/stoves/etc work. Have different types and styles of tents, backpacks and sleeping bags on-hand.

The parents will pick up on the passion and enthusiasm of the boys. Excitement is contagious!

We do this every year when we have new parents come in to the troop. We walk them through everything and even invite them to attend our plc meeting and the annual planning. They love to see us at work and I think it really shows them what the older scouts can do. 

1 hour ago, Hawkwin said:

To clarify, that study doesn't state what you think it does. The study did not try to determine "crime related to drug use." That study simply determined that people arrested had drugs in their system at the time of their arrest. That doesn't mean that they smoked pot and while high, decided to car-jack someone.

Correlation is not causality. As your link stated, if they tested individuals arrested for crimes for having consumed water in the last 24 hours, such would not mean that 100% of crime is related to water consumption.

More likely the study suggests that individuals with the propensity to commit crimes are also likely to use illegal drugs. Not a rather shocking discovery.

But it doesn’t say there isn’t a relationship either. 

4 hours ago, RememberSchiff said:

In school scenarios maybe,  scouting scenarios can be different.  Can't lock doors and cellphones may not work.

They are very similar. They go through closed campus and open campus scenarios when they do the training in my school. They even discuss what to do at gas stations, department stores or other types of places. The training is pretty good and covers a number of scenarios but that’s my school district. 

I know the scouts would know what to do since we have had this training in my school district for years. Students know what to do so the training should be for the parents. 

Real Den Leaders of Orange County. 

We did a local theme park in patrols as a special event one summer but I couldn’t see making a special trip to disney. That’s not really what scouts is about. My friends and I would rather be on the lake or hiking or something. We can do disney with our families. 

My campus is having an active shooter drill right now. Hunkered down in bio now. Everyone takes these things pretty seriously since I’ve been here. Even my hs did. 

10 hours ago, TAHAWK said:

Every Scout deserves his moment in the sun - alone.  It may be brief, but it's not a cattle call.  Efficiency is not a goal when we are doing recognition.  Mom and Dad should be able, at a minimum, to snap a picture or two.  Yes?

Limit the time for announcements.  Enforce the time limits, politely, to be sure.  Music? .   Suggest handouts; you can cite the need to be sure everyone gets the dates/times/details accurately.  Slides sounds great!.  Either handout or slides forces them to think about their message in advance vs. rambling on.

When we streamlined things we still had time for photo ops and such. We recorded the whole COH on hd video because several of the guys were in av club at school. We still do even after those guys graduated with me. We have the historian act as photographer and parents can get pictures like a photo op on stage after the ceremony. We had to streamline the coh because people weren’t coming. We’d get maybe 30 or 40 people there which for our troop was small. We now average 150 or more because it only takes an hour for the ceremony. Now families can stay later if they want to get pictures and mingle which most do. But two hours of awards and talking was too much and nearly killed out coh. 

We had a problem because the new scouts joined us in january right during elections so they really didn’t know anyone. The election team encouraged them not to turn in a ballot because it would make the 50% number higher than it should be. So they counted for purposes of having 50%+1 of the registered scouts there but not against the 50%+1 of the votes need to be elected. Made the most sense.  

One other school district near by arms its faculty

https://goo.gl/images/P5XC68

Got a Snapchat from friends I have still in my old high school. Seems cops are everywhere this morning. The kid who brought the gun yesterday was arrested and won’t be back but there was some chatter on social media about another possible thing today. The cops didn’t think it was serious but stepped up visibility anyway. Half my friends were kept Home by their parents. 

7 hours ago, Oldscout448 said:

Three hours!?  That's nuts!

Good lord, how many candidates do you have?

Last year we called out about 60 scouts in 40 minutes, and we thought our ceremony  was pretty elaborate. 

As to the  50 percent rule I confess I never gave it much thought but I suppose it's there so they get a decent cross section of the troop voting a bun who is Worthy. 

Generally the OA rep and the  scoutmaster emphasized that the election is important and strongly encouraged the scouts to attend. I can only remember one troop that didn't have 50%, needed something like four more boys and they asked us to wait while they made some quick phone calls we hung around for an extra half-hour and five of them showed up so we just had the election at the end of the meeting instead of at the beginning.

On average it’s 25 units with roughly 5-10 guys per unit. My unit usually has 4-6 guys but sometimes less. The large troops usually elect everyone on their ballot so they can have up to 20. The small troops have 1-5 usually. So we can have easily 120 guys to tap out and the ceremony team takes a long time. 

26 minutes ago, gblotter said:

Why does anyone assume that a longer journey is a higher quality journey? In much of my Scouting experience I find that when Scouts slow-walk through the ranks, it is because they are only partially engaged in Scouting and only show up sporadically. That half-commitment is our course reflected in the speed of their advancement too, of course. Where in that equation does anyone derive that he is having a higher quality Scouting experience? I see quite the opposite, in fact.

Probably because the more time you spend in disney world the more fun you have. No one likes to come home early from vacation so that’s why people equate the length of time spent with quality. 

I’ve noticed scouters seem to be just like scouts only older and with a ton of references I need to google. You guys argue and think each is more right than the other. You get in to verbal shoving matches and most shake hands when it’s over. There are bullies and geeks and average guys. Just like scouts. I don’t see much difference just older and less hair. That’s a joke so don’t ban me. 

I don’t think so. Flagg has been pretty specific and you’ve been ignoring what he says. Pretty clear to me. It is almost like your trying to provoke something. How many times did he have to say what he said. 

My old high school just had a kid bring an unloaded gun to school today. It was just posted to the news 15 mins ago. 

I think it’s pretty clear that this technology can’t do anything real time a phone can’t do. There’s nothing to disagree about because it can’t. 

With my lodge the problem is lack of information or being notified too late about stuff. Also they have way too many things and they conflict with other stuff on the calendar. Everything competes with each other and then people wonder why 3 guys show up. It used to be a place where I could hang with the guys. Now that’s going away too. So now it’s just another service organization that travels hours to do service. I can do nhs and stay in town and then hang with the guys at sonic. That appeals to guys more than what Oa offers now. 

15 minutes ago, WisconsinMomma said:

@AVTech  tell me more about the website.  I will google it.  We use Scoutlander and its OK, definitely not great. 

 

He means this company and it’s the same one my troop used. It works with troopmaster which is what the adults used to track stuff. Our youth Webmaster worked with an adult to post announcements. The demo doesn’t really show how good it is. I could send you my troops site but I don’t want to post it here  

https://www.mytroop.us/

Oh I forgot that no adults were ever on stage except the sm to give a 5 min update and those accepting awards. The spl or emcee were scouts running the show. 

My troop had this problem but we were able to fix it by revising the script. Announcements were moved to slides that showed before and after the ceremony or were posted to the website. Ranks and mbs were all awarded at the same time by name. Guys were called up and given their merit badges and ranks all at one time and brothers were called up together. This was much faster than doing ranks in groups and calling a line of guys up alphabetically to get mbs. Our biggest change was in adult announcements and awards. Those were done at the end and in bulk. Friends of scouting was limited to 5 minutes at the end with no long videos or discussions. They were given a table in the back of the hall to sit and collect money after the ceremony. We went from two hours or more down to one hour. We gave out 27 ranks and 145 mbs last summer along with several special awards for a retiring scoutmaster all in one hour. 

49 minutes ago, HelpfulTracks said:

In the true spirit of political correc........ I mean safety, it is now called Call Out, and no contact is allowed.

We still tap out but it is light and only with consent of the parents of the guys participating. Parents are invited to watch and it’s all open. 

42 minutes ago, HelpfulTracks said:

You are indeed correct sir!

Troops in my city really game the system. The scoutmasters go around encouraging the scouts to vote for everyone. The spl tries to get exactly 50%+1 to show so that the number of votes needed is low. Most of the 75+ person troops have 60% or more of their members in OA. My troop had maybe 20 at our biggest. We don’t do what these other troops do because it defeats the purpose of OA. 

19 minutes ago, .40AET said:

There's more to the vote than the requirement of having 50% of the Troop present at the election. In order to be selected, a Scout needs to get 50% of the total number who are in the room voting. We have a big troop and both parts make it hard to send more than one or two scouts a year. 

102 scouts in the Troop. Must have 51 scouts in the room for the election. A Scout who is selected needs 26 votes to be selected. 

There's nothing more frustrating than seeing 6 of your finest Scouts get 22 or 23 votes. 

 

Actually it’s 50% of ballots cast. So if you have 51 scouts show and only 40 submit ballots your magic number is 21. So it’s not scouts in the room but ballots cast.