HashTagScouts

There's nothing stopping anyone from going to the scout store and buying any patch or rank badge, except for eagle.

 

To be honest, I'd be interested in a modified venturing. Ranks up to first class, 11-21 (but split into two age ranges) and more emphasis on outdoors and leadership/teamwork and less on advancement. Call it retro scouts.

Not entirely true- you need to have a valid Advancement Report to purchase merit Badges and Rank patches.  It's often subverted, but there is supposed to be that valid check and balance from the local Council.

Not really.  I have quite a few BSA units I drive by to get to my unit.  Why?  Because the council saw a need for a unit in a large part of town that wasn't covered geographically.  3 units of Cubs an no Troops. I said yes and that was that.

 

So if BSA goes co-ed, it becomes generically the same dynamics of any other co-ed group.    To answer your other post by blw2 it does make a difference to me whether or not the program is all-boy or co-ed.  I guess I wouldn't be half upset as I could be, Venturing was co-ed and I had a crew for 13 years.  But with Cub and Boy, the program has not just going co-ed, it's just a half step to Family Scouting and I work just with youth.  Helicopter parents officially in the program don't really appeal to me at all.

 

By the way, boys really won't mature and build character with the parents hanging around interfering with their progress to adult independence.

Stosh, appreciate your feelings.  I am struggling with the same thing with my sons troop now, even before the BSA gives a bona fide blessing on this.  The troop has always done summer trips that are 99% adult run and open to families, a Thanksgiving campout that is the same, and now making two other campouts in the coming year "family campouts".  It takes the boys out of leadership learning and makes the concept of registered adult leaders irrelevant.

 

EDIT: From my daughter...who is in our Venturing Crew..."Why don't they just lower the Venturing age? Who wants to be in the same unit as their BROTHER?!?!?"

 

If only BSA listened to their members and their potential members, they might actually meet people's expectations and needs.

Agreed- why not do this? I hear many of the arguments about not wanting Eagle to become something that both boys and girls can earn, to which my reply is that the BSA has dropped the ball in a major way of promoting that the Venturing Summit Award (and even more so when it was the Silver Award) is every bit as significant of an achievement as Eagle. This is what the BSA needs to be focused on is putting far more energy into building up the reputation of Venturing.  Stop the nonsense of putting resources to Varsity and Explorer.   

Within the council i am in, Crews are by and large just 'older boy patrols' of BSA troops.  They do little to capture anyone outside of the boys already in Scouting, and when they do go outside that circle it is really only to siblings of the Scouts.  I can think of only two Crews in the whole council that didn't start from the efforts of the troop or from a splinter from a troop. 

As to the OA suddenly being supportive of the measure of coed- REALLY?!?! Then why have then been so mute on allowing Venturers into the OA for so many years?! Today, only those boys dual registered in a Crew and Troop are eligible for election, so female Venturers are excluded entirely.  Only when a female turns 21 can they be nominated as an adult for OA.  How about fixing that issue first? 

My sons troop goes to a camp outside of our council for summer camp (he also works staff for that camp), so I am on their newsletter feed.  I received the same type of invitation from that council SE, though it was more overt and mentions ongoing discussion and studies about the addition of girls to the non-Venturing programs.

I am not in favor of making the whole program coed, simply as I believe that both boys and girls need to have time to be with other boys or other girls.  It has nothing to do with limiting the activities that girls can be involved in.  Honestly, it is a crying shame that the Girl Scouts have allowed their program to become so awful, and I totally understand the perspective of girls from our area that "want to do the same things the boys get to".  To me, it doesn't mean they have to do in one group- though I don't have a problem with there being opportunities for both BSa and GSA troops to do shared events such as hikes or even campouts.  I've had boys in my sons troop talk to me on this topic, and they don't favor their sisters tagging along, and want their time away from their family dynamic.  My fear is that for all the "additions", we are also going to see losses and will have sacrificed the very institution.  Looking at other countries that are coed, I think my concerns are founded in reality.

Let's say, as an example, a professional Landscaper gets paid handsomely to do yard work for a client.

 

He asks for troops to help in a "conservation project" of raking leaves and removing them 

This, to me, does not qualify as a 'service project'.  if I was asked to do this for my unit, I'd ask for a share of the $$$ and consider it a fundraiser, but not a service project.  I also don't consider fundraising hours as service hours, but I can say that not every other troop out there thinks the same as I do.