FireStone

Incredible story, thanks for sharing. "Br Prepared" means a lot of things. You just never know exactly what it's going to mean, and it's why we teach these scouts to be knowledgeable in a variety of things, to be ready to act when others can't. Sometimes it means being ready to give first aid, carry a bag, direct traffic, or sometimes just be prepared to tell others what happened. I had a "Be Prepared" moment last night when I was involved in a hit-and-run car accident. While trying to follow the car that hit me I was thinking "I should have been prepared with a dash cam." And now I will be, my dash cam is going to be on my front porch in an Amazon box when I get home tonight.

Completely agree. And I've said as much in this forum when discussing the subject previously. In many other walks of life I might be more willing to say that credit for past work should be given. But Eagle Scout is a very particular award. It's extremely time-sensitive, and we've all seen or heard of Life Scouts who missed Eagle only because of poor planning/timing. All other requirements complete and yet they come up just short because they started the project too late or took a POR too late. Those scouts fulfilled the requirements in spirit, in some cases they literally did all of the work required, project included. And no exceptions were made. What Sydney is asking for is just such an exception, and it's not right. I rallied for her cause when she insisted she just wanted the same chance as her brother had. She got that chance, and now her terms have changed, she wants something different. I'm not ok with that, especially in the case of an Eagle award because of the long history of very strict requirements and standards that Eagle hopefuls have had to adhere to. What's more, she's making this request for another exception all while insisting that she is a Life Scout, wearing the rank badge in public. To me it's just added insult. Not only does she want special treatment, but she wants to just dictate to the BSA what's what. It's disrespectful.

I think she's wearing the rank because she believes it is her current rank. She (and her unit) are of the belief that she is Life with Eagle application pending. It's not true, but it's what they are saying by going about things this way. What I don't get, then, is why it even matters to them if National were to approve of her early Eagle Rank award or not. They seem ok with just doing whatever they want, regardless of what is true. Why stop at Life? Just say you're an Eagle Scout then. It's not more less true than saying you're a Life Scout. If that's how she and her unit regard rank, I see no reason for them to even bother petitioning National to award her Eagle rank at all. Clearly they don't respect the process of confirming and awarding rank according to BSA policy. So say she's the first Eagle. With Palms. And Silver Buffalo. And whatever else they want to tack on there.

I feel scammed. I really do. I backed her on this journey because she, like all of us in favor of girls in the BSA, voiced our desire for all girls to have the opportunity to do what the boys were doing. Sydney herself often said she just wanted the opportunity her brother had. Well, turns out that was a lie. She wants her own unique opportunity, to earn Eagle on her own special terms. And what the Ireland family asked us to do, supporting the movement to include girls in all levels of BSA scouting, really it was always just about supporting Sydney and her goal to do it on her terms. What a shame. I question if she's even worthy of the Eagle rank anymore. Not that it matters, obviously she has enough adults around her to push through any and all resistance to her getting signed off.

Well that's unfortunate. At least it confirms my suspicion that adults are behind this. Seems like they really do want to make her the "first". Probably will still claim she is even though National won't recognize the SM jumping the gun and signing off.

The rules on wearing the uniform at political events seem more aimed at rallies or events where a particular candidate is being endorsed. The SOTU address is a room full of politicians from various parties, no one in particular is endorsed.

Ugh.. this kind of sucks. I really dislike how this is playing out now. And pardon my speculation, but I think some adults are driving this current controversy. Sydney had my support all along. But if it really is her pushing for this exception, my support is withdrawn. However as mentioned, I have a suspicion that adults are behind this. Maybe troop leaders wanting to have bragging rights to the first female Eagle Scout. Maybe dad who's still yelling about "discrimination and harassment". Who knows. I don't know. It's all just very disappointing. She's not a Life Scout, she can't possibly be. But someone gave her that badge and so my suspicion goes back to the troop. Seems like they went rogue and signed off on her rank. If they could they'd sign off on her Eagle rank, except they need National to approve it, which would be the only reason she wasn't wearing an Eagle badge yesterday. Her dad said something interesting on twitter: "Don’t make girls wait until college to earn Eagle Rank." Is that the motivation? You want her to be able to go to college with the rank all wrapped up and done? Either way, it's all very sad. She accomplished so much and now it will be tarnished by what appears to be adults with ulterior motives.

In related news, Sydney will be in attendance tonight at the State of the Union address as a guest of Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-New York.

I supported Sydney in every effort she made to get into the BSA and have a shot at Eagle. When I wrote letters to BSA executives to urge them to consider changing the rules on allowing girls, I mentioned her by name. Even wrote one letter to Surbaugh exclusively in support of her. But this is where I have to draw the line in support of her goal. While I whole-heartedly applaud her work done so far and her incredible efforts to get this far, I can't support a rubber stamp on her Eagle application for that work. And in the end, I think she'll be glad she had to do it this way, too. Looking back, knowing she went through it as a full member and completed the requirements as prescribed (with the approved time extension), it will make it all that much greater of a success to have achieved so much and done so without any question as to whether she really earned it.

I've been seeing the same. Emails are too easy to just not respond to. I hate to use the term "put someone on the spot" but if we're being realistic about it, sometimes that's what it takes to fill a job.

Thank you for this. Good to see the forum taking this stance.

I was really hands-on with my Den this year for PWD, with half of my den being new scouts. So I talked to every parent, new and returning, and really made sure everyone was sticking to the rules. In those conversations I found out a parent had bought a complete pre-made car, which is against our Pack rules. I let them know that they'd likely be disqualified on the day of inspection, so they went and built a new car with their scout. Problem avoided. Sometimes sending around the rules in an email isn't enough. It should be, everyone should read them. But we all know how that goes. My Pack also does inspections/weigh-ins several days before the derby. All scouts must turn in their cars on that night, and the Pack keeps all cars until race day. This drastically speeds up things on the day of the race, and also gives us more of a chance to potentially deal with any rules issues. It also gives scouts the chance to fix any issues if a car is disqualified. We don't accept late entries, except in the case of a disqualification and a scout has the opportunity to re-submit the car on race day for a one-time re-inspection (if it fails again, no racing).

The BSA did go after the BPSA a bunch of years ago over the use of the word "Scout" in the name. They had to change from "Baden-Powell Scout Association" to "Baden-Powell Service Association." But that wasn't just about selling goods, that was about a new organization forming. Still raises an interesting point, though. If the BSA successfully won that case to protect their rights to "Scout" in a name, wouldn't that mean they were determined to have such rights in the first place? Wonder if that case could in any way be brought into consideration in the GSUSA case.

I'm constantly amazed that in this day and age of having a computer with a built-in video camera in the pocket of so many Americans, complete with the ability to actually EDIT those videos immediately after they're shot, that the media takes any video immediately at face value. Even when this technology was accessible in the home, the learning curve still made it prohibitive for most average folks to use it. But on a phone? Clipping a video, cutting out what you don't want people to see if it hurts the angle you're trying to show, it's easy. Take the tech phenomenon and pair that with the mad rush to get things published, posted, and on-air one millisecond before your competing news organization, and you get the predicament we're in today. Sloppy reporting, rush to judgement, irreparable damage done to reputations based on a minute of editing in a phone. The media is so sloppy. There was a screenshot of a text message that was going around with this video that was a supposed eye-witness account to back up what the video was trying to show, with the boy as the aggressor. But the supposedly "received" text message showed in the screenshot as a "sent" message. It was faked just to further the fake story. And yet the media runs with it. They won't take 2 seconds to look at something and think about whether it even seems legit. Modern journalism is "shoot first, ask questions later, maybe."

What a mess. Sorry you're going through all of this after such efforts to resurrect a Pack. In reading through the thread, all I keep coming back to is the application and background check. Is that still not resolved? Any other point is moot. And how anyone at the district level can approve of this happening is absurd. There is failure up and down the chain here. More than one person should be removed from their position here if you ask me.

Actually there is a change: https://www.scoutshop.org/catalog/product/view/id/10182

If this sticks and the SM gets his way, make sure to remind him when it's time for a Court of Honor that the troop doesn't group things together, and he needs to be present at three different CoHs on 3 different dates/times/places. 😏

I think we, as Scouters, are generally a fairly humble bunch. We don't do it for the recognition, and when things are going well we tend to just privately be happy about things going well and try to maintain the positives in our programs. When things go badly, that's when we turn to others for help, and on an Internet forum looking for help means shining a big old spotlight on the negatives. I think we do mention the positives, but we often don't start new threads about them. I'm pretty sure I mentioned our wildly successful recruiting effort in my Pack this year, doubling the Pack size since June. Which is great, but again, I'm not going to start a thread about it. When I look at what's on my desk at the moment and I've got that stat about Pack membership alongside an ongoing issue of bullying in the Pack, you know which item I'm more likely to bring to this forum. There is a lot of good going on, and it does often get overlooked here. But not because we're a negative group, we're all doing what we can to improve our units, and that means asking for help with problems far more often than it means pointing out the good things we see happening.

Is it? If we already have evidence of atheists re-writing the Oath and Law to suit their beliefs, is it really so speculative to suggest that they'd push for broader changes if given a nod from the BSA that the organization is flexible on the religious requirement for membership? When the posted speed limit is 55 mph, people do 65. When it's 65 mph, people do 75.

The problem is that when you open the door, even with the stated goal of not changing anything or making accommodations, people make their own changes and accommodations and then call it their right to do so. People did it throughout the "girls in the BSA" debate, going rogue and putting girls in uniform. And although I fully support the new program for girls, I was always opposed to changing things without it being made part of the program officially. I'm not a fan of forcing change by going rogue. I advocated for change by talking about the issue, voicing my support for girls in the BSA, etc. I have to listen to an atheist DL in my pack make a point of omitting "God" in the oath. He can't just silently pause at the God part, he (I think very deliberately) skips right over saying "God" so that he's saying "my country" when everyone else is saying "God". So we all clearly hear him and the very noticeable skip in cadence. I wish we could just open the doors and welcome everyone, but not everyone will just go with the program. Everyone wants accommodations. We have another DL (not the guy mentioned above, actually) who opposes prayer at scouting activities. We often close campfires and other activities with a non-sectarian prayer. This DL argues that we should stop doing that, that it offends people. (Yeah, I know, I can't roll my eyes up into my head far enough either). The other 9 DLs in the Pack want the prayer to remain in the program. But again, 1 person wants accommodations made for the group because of how they personally feel. This is what I see right now, while the rule is still firmly in favor of Duty to God being very much a part of Scouting. If the BSA took an official stance that atheists would be welcome, it wouldn't be with them just signing up and not participating in the faith-based components of the program. They'd want things changed for them. They would use any shift in stance by the BSA as leverage to argue for further change. Open that door a crack and it will be flung wide open in no time and God will be out of the BSA.

I hate these planes, I really do. Too many people flying them who won't make the necessary sacrifice and endanger the public by putting them down in crowded areas. Not necessarily the case in this story, I'm just making a probably unfair generalization. A few years back a pilot crashed a similar plane on the property of my daughter's school. He was trying to make it back to the airport and wasn't going to make it, and rather than veering away from the school, he flew over it and crashed 200 feet away from the building. Had he gone left he would have had a shot at a corporate parking lot. But it was further and supposedly he knew he wouldn't make it. Go right, and he had a golf course nearby, but again, probably too far to make it. He kept it pointed towards the airport thinking that was his best chance to survive, maybe aiming for the field behind the school if he came up short, and he nearly took out the school in the process. I had this opinion of these planes and their pilots before, but that incident didn't help brighten my opinion any. Makes me cringe any time I see photos like that now. A couple years before that, a pilot made a landing on a local highway. He took out an SUV and killed a family of 4. It's all laughs and fun when it works out, like in this story about the scouts on the beach. But it often doesn't work out so well for those on the ground. Thank God no one was injured this time.

I suspect this issue won't get the same support for change as other recent ones. It certainly won't from me, and I supported the changes to allow gay scouts, transgender scouts, and girls. I know there are many in my Pack who feel the same, having supported the previous changes but not willing to budge on the faith component. Personally I don't see the issues as the same. I believe people can choose faith, but not gender or sexual orientation. And I include transgenderism in that, I don't think it's a choice, and sometimes what's between the ears and what's between the legs aren't aligned in the traditional sense. So I wouldn't kick a kid out for something that they can't choose to be differently. I also don't think the BSA religious requirements are all that much of a burden. Just believe in something bigger than yourself. That's it. Specifics don't really matter, to fulfill the requirement just believe in something. There is something deeply spiritual about Scouting, even without explicitly saying it. I had spiritual moments as a Boy Scout that were not part of any effort to be reverent. I remember being out at Resica Falls, sitting out in the woods alone quietly observing my surroundings (something to do with Envi Sci, not sure if that requirement is still in there), and there was a very real sense of something spiritual in that. I had found a comfortable boulder to perch on, lay back and stare up into the trees, listening to the sounds around me. It wasn't just nature. Maybe it was the combination of being in a Scouting environment, being a recent OA inductee, and being someone who believes in God, it all combined into something that felt like a lot more than just observing nature in the scientific sense. And it was an experience that obviously made a lasting impact on me. It was something that I think would be very different in a setting that stripped out any sense of spirituality. Not to say it couldn't happen, but I'm glad it happened the way that it did, and I'm glad that we still strive to keep spirituality in the mix. We're not just a camping club, and this is something that ensures we remain more than just a camping club.

What were they "yelling and screaming" at you about? If it was because you said that The Princess Bride is a bad movie, then they were entirely justified in yelling at you. That film is a cinematic treasure. However if it was something to do with Cub Scouts, as I suspect it likely was, then they maybe should have had more tact in dealing with whatever issue they had with you. It would be helpful to know what they were so upset about, certainly as it relates to determining whether or not they are suited to continued leadership in your Pack.

I'm good with differing viewpoints. But that's not what you're offering. You're mocking people of a specific political persuasion that you clearly dislike, plain and simple. What, the comment about the clinking wine coolers was supposed to be constructive commentary? Should I take that as a compliment? I read it for exactly what you intended. You were mocking liberals and some imagined celebratory response to negative news about the BSA. It's mockery wrapped in a stereotype, but you just call it "humor" and a differing viewpoint. I have a sense of humor. What I don't have is any more patience for the stereotypes and mockery I get for being a liberal. I sort of expect it where I live, in a town that has historically been largely Republican. Earlier this week in a conversation with a local resident I was told that liberals hate the military. He didn't know my political views, and did the, "well, not you, I know you don't hate the military," back-peddling when he found out. I expect it to some degree in my town, although I wish things were different. I guess I had higher expectations for fellow Scouters. Clearly, I'm wrong about that.