BAJ

On 7/14/2023 at 7:48 AM, RememberSchiff said:

Some questions:

     Will there be patrol competitions in scoutcraft?

     How much freedom do scouts have with their time while there?

Our contingent heads out Wednesday AM at the crack of dawn — I’m the ASM1 of the girl troop from our council.  I do not believe there will be patrol competitions in scoutcraft.  From reading on various scout boards, the amount of freedom scouts will have to operate “independent” of their unit may differ from contingent to contingent.  Our unit basically said the scouts can do their own thing (with a buddy at all times, of course), so I expect our unit will be spread over Summit.  In other posts, I’ve seen Scouts say that their unit was picking activities to do as an entire unit.

It really is a lot.  My daughter is going and I am an adult leader from our council so between the two of us it was a large total cost.  It will be a different experience for her (and likely her “last big thing” in Scouting since she’s getting into other things as a high schooler now) but it did make me sad that cost was obviously going to be something that kept a lot of people from going.  I did decide that this year my donation to scouting was to the fund to help defray the cost of folks going (though the amount I could donate wasn’t going to even make a huge difference for one person, which was also a sobering thought.)

I’d looked at JST for the last jamboree that was canceled and was really surprised at how much it cost — and if memory serves it is more this time around.  I don’t know what the cost outlay per attendee is for the type of food service, etc. that they are doing, but it would seem really odd if the cost to be on JST is more than the cost to cover their ‘care and feeding.’  There have certainly been rumors that one of the reasons that this is a smaller jamboree than usual is numbers of staff (so not just the cost of attendance reducing the number of scouts with resources to go.). 

I am really hoping that it is a good and memorable experience.  In our contingent troop we’ve got a great set of leaders who I wouldn’t have had a chance to meet otherwise, and a good group of Scouts, so it seems like the most important ingredients are there.  

Working together.

I just got the news I will serve as one of the ASMs from a troop from our council — its exciting since I never had the chance to do a Jamboree when I was a scout.

Any advice from the group for a newbie?  Personal equipment to take (or not bother taking) that I might not think of?  After action insights on what the adult leader experience is like?

I hope that BSA is at least making some substantial money from the gaming companies for promoting their products.  If this event came with a substantial “contribution” that can help address some of the post-bankruptcy financial concerns…. Then….. well….. maybe.

My council (NCAC) did welding and composite materials in partnership with a local Makerspace.  That meant the scouts had access to great equipment and instructors.  There was a council person who was the MBC and a bunch of us helped supervise for multi-deep leader coverage.  It was a good program. 

As someone with a STEM degree, I considered getting involved with the program when I returned to Scouting — at least in theory, I am the sort that “should” be a NOVA/Supernova Counselor… but I had a hard time getting excited about doing it, and so never got around to it.  I wonder if that same sort of issue affects scouts.

That said, I think an approach — if the program itself is going to change, shrink, etc. — is to fold more into some of the existing merit badges.  I actually really like the point made in this thread that the distinction between some of the “trades” merit badges and STEM is sometimes not that clear.  As someone trained as a chemist, I agree.  Infusing a bit more of the science and engineering elements in some of the trades merit badges (my daughter just took Welding MB so I saw it first hand) could benefit them, and strengthening some of the STEM content in some of the other more “traditional STEM” MBs like chemistry or forestry or soil and water conservation could benefit them as well.  It would potentially make both categories of MBs a bit harder, but could benefit those that pursue them.

The unit I am associated with now actually does NSPs in an interesting way.  There is one, but its existence is time limited.  The new scouts come into that patrol, and the troop guide works directly with the NSP PL, so if there is “whispering in the ear” it is coming from a senior scout, not an adult.  The NSP gets to pick a patrol name and come up with a cheer/etc. so they get that first exercise in group decision making and consensus (that is lost if they just go directly into a permanent ‘legacy patrol.’).  But their membership in the NSP is both time and rank  — once they make Tenderfoot, they move to one of the mixed patrols and, if they aren’t advancement oriented, they move on to a mixed patrol when most of the cohort that joined when they did has moved and that incarnation of the NSP ceases to exist and when the next pulse of new scouts enters a new one starts.  That helps get the new scouts moving together on the very early scout skills (including the basic stuff for Scout rank) but gets them relatively rapidly into senior scout led patrols.  

1 hour ago, Oldscout448 said:

Permit me to add that not everyone elected even attempts to complete the ordeal.

I think this is a really important observation, and I would take it one step further — scouts who are eligible don’t want to stand for election. Both represent part of OA’s “membership market” that are opting out.

As someone who came back to Scouting after a long absence, I think the main issue is OA actually articulating what it is and why Scouts would want to join.  I was elected very late in my youth Scouting career, so I didn’t actually have much calendar time to do much more than go through the Ordeal.  So when I came back to Scouting, I didn’t think of OA as much more than “Scouting’s Honor Society.”  

As a result, when an another adult leader asked me (when we were talking about Scouts not wanting to stand for election) “Why would they want to become a member of OA?” I had no ready answer.  The communications I’ve gotten from the Lodge have focused on (1) service opportunities, often with somewhat short lead times and (2) invitations to register for things like Conclave and NOAC because they will be “great” and “fun.”  So nothing that I could readily deploy in any convincing way… and really it made me realize I didn’t have any answer to that question.  

For the first category of activities, the service opportunities actually seem to be hurt by being limited to OA, and don’t increase the cache of being in the Order. … if the camp needs lots of maintenance, it seems like outreach to units more broadly would actually be helpful… “come camp this weekend with no camping fees, and help get your camp ready for summer.”  For the latter category of events, I don’t know what I’d expect if I did go to one of the OA events… beyond vague promises of “fun and fellowship.”  Given that, it doesn’t surprise me that OA isn’t something scouts jump at joining (and the potential scouts aren’t even getting that much information about what being in OA actually involves.)

I really think OA needs to rethink what the goals of its program are, and figure out how to (for lack of a better term) “market” that to its potential members.  It doesn’t seem like “honor society” is enough to sell itself to them, and while lots of Scouts are open to the idea of cheerful service, ideally the service that OA is involved in should be more than just opportunities to be free labor to Council or camps.  

Maybe through OA you get trained in ways that let you do service in more arduous circumstances (e.g., think doing more after a natural event in your area than just handing out water bottles?).

Opportunities to serve in different places (requires coming up with funding to support that, since I expect even the multi hour drive to our Council camp is going to be a barrier for many Arrowmen and women to come help with the cleanup effort in a few weeks, etc.)

It really has to start with thinking about the OA not as something that needs no explanation because “every scout should be honored to be elected” but something that we have to explain to them why they should want to be a part of.

7 hours ago, PACAN said:

Solution:  Ebay sellers have fully completed sashes for $25.  Doesn't matter which badges since the sash and uniform are not required items. 

While it looks like this is intended to be humor, it’s actually a practical strategy.  When my Scout lost her well populate sash, we did find an EBay seller that had a sash with a significant percentage of the badges she needed replacements for.  Took them off and resewed to a new sash in the order she’d earned them.  It was a more cost effective approach than re-buying them all new.  She found the original sash about a week after we’d finally replaced it (so even better that we hadn’t paid full price for the replacement).  😐

10 hours ago, GrammaScout said:

Is the umbrella liability insurance from the BSA sufficient?   There is no end to the questions and with this being so unusual we can find no answers. 

The troops I have been associated with have all had traditional chartering organization structures, but in the course of a Wood Badge project I did some interviews with other troops focusing on how they were managing COVID risk early in the pandemic. One was a troop that was a “self chartered” troop with a “Parents of Troop X” organization (had been for many years and indicated it wasn’t an option in their council currently).  They were very concerned about insurance coverage, and coverage that included provisions to defend against suits against both the organization and the adult volunteers, not just that would pay out if there was a judgment.  The concern was that even an allegation that was later found to be spurious could bankrupt an adult leader named as a result of the defense costs.

I too have struggled with this issue — and didn’t think that there is an “answer” … i.e., some Scouts will become engaged and committed to the point where Scouts became top of the list but many just won’t.  

But, the seriousness of the problems for the troop of participation being a low priority is related to the size of the troop.  In a troop made up of single digit numbers of Scouts, having a handful that “only Scout when it is convenient” mean outings (or even meetings) could suddenly become 2 Scouts at the last minute, which is extremely frustrating for an SPL that worked hard to plan something they thought would be a good event (and, frankly for the troop committee folks supporting logistics… and cost implications if the campout had fixed costs that are now divided over fewer Scouts, etc.). But, in a troop of 25, the absence of that same handful of Scouts might be noticed but won’t torpedo an event.   If I was at the District or Council level, this would be a reason I would try to facilitate small troops merging to get to numbers where the program could better tolerate variable participation at the individual level.  

I strongly agree with @Armymutt that there shouldn’t be an effort to make Scouting such that it tries to fit in around all the other conflicts… e.g., meeting less often, shorter campouts to try to miss when sports happen, etc. … since that waters the experience down to the point where the Scouts who are engaged and want an intense and active program and do prioritize it to bail out.

Interestingly, my WB scoutmaster actually discouraged doing beadings at a Scout COH just because it added time to the program and his view was that Scout attention spans were such that it would be a net negative to do it there.  He and my troop guide really left it up to me how to do it — I (and actually quite a few others in my class) went out to the camp where WB was held for our beading.  But as other posters have suggested too, I’ve seen headings at Roundtable as well.

27 minutes ago, elitts said:

I read this to mean that you thought it would be unacceptable to just have a scout sit out of an event if they didn't wish to participate because of the clothing requirements and so the event just shouldn't happen.

Partially — if the activity was rock climbing and the scout didn’t want to wear the safety harness, I am right there with you.  No problem — and I agree that hopefully group identification and the support of a healthy and functioning patrol might give a kid whose discomfort with the safety equipment was really because they were scared of rock climbing the impetus to try something they might not otherwise.  

But… if the situation is a partially clothed initiation to an honor society (i.e, the part it looks like we agree on), that’s different since that’s a case where the scout’s discomfort shouldn’t push them to sit out of an event.  And then it isn’t event that the event shouldn’t happen… just that ‘half naked’ shouldn’t be a requirement.  

It actually sounds like we agree more than disagree:

52 minutes ago, elitts said:

I wouldn't support a membership requirement for OA (or anything else) that was based upon a willingness to be shirtless in public

3 hours ago, BAJ said:

it is a situation where the removal of clothing or some state of semi-undress is a requirement for participation in an “honor society” or access to privileges that they couldn’t get otherwise

The key issue is what is what is required.  I agree that “shirtlessness as a state of being” shouldn’t be prohibited because not all scouts are always comfortable shirtless… only that there shouldn’t be power dynamics that push them to be shirtless when they aren’t comfortable with it (@PeterHopkin’s “Adults must refrain from requesting or demanding that youth remove any articles of clothing”).

So I do disagree with your first sentence that this is seeking to set a bar at a point where no one is ever uncomfortable ever…

5 hours ago, PeterHopkins said:

The modesty of youth members must be respected by adults at all times. Adults must refrain from requesting or demanding that youth remove any articles of clothing resulting in the youth's modesty being compromised for superfluous reasons, including participating in ceremonies or skits

From my perspective @PeterHopkins proposed language addresses the key concern (though I would add “and other Scouts” after “respected by adults.”)

It isn’t that scouts are sometimes shirtless while cutting trail on a hot day or sometimes wear swim shorts or a swimsuit when they aren’t swimming, it is a situation where the removal of clothing or some state of semi-undress is a requirement for participation in an “honor society” or access to privileges that they couldn’t get otherwise. Doing that models sets an example that such a requirement or transaction is acceptable, and that it is ok to exclude people who aren’t comfortable doing it.  “Oh, ok, if you don’t want to do the ceremony in the loincloth that’s fine, you just will be part of the out group…. Don’t worry about the fact that the rest of your patrol are doing it.”

Take the analogy is to a professional environment where there isn’t even the more serious issue of youth involvement — if in a company, employees could join the “Acme Corporation Honor Society” (which meant they could get an extra day of vacation a year and access to a special coffee machine in the office lounge) and the requirement for induction was a ceremony where everyone had to be semi-clothed… I don’t think there would be much debate about whether it was appropriate or not, no matter what statements were made about the ceremony being “steeped in the traditions of the Company going back to its founding” or “effective in building Company esprit de corps and engagement.”

14 hours ago, qwazse said:

Has anybody taken their scouts on a tour of an underwriters laboratory? There’s one near a favorite camp of our scouts. This conversation is inspiring me to add this to a list of potential activities.

That is a really cool idea — I had the opportunity through work to go to one of the standards certification/testing laboratories for emergency responder safety equipment and it was a really interesting.  I think as a Scout trip it would have a great mix of wow factor (e.g., tests where things might get set on fire, see if safety features work when the device is shorted out, etc.) but would convey a lot of good knowledge through the wow elements.

Since Mic-o-say isn’t a thing in my council, all I have learned about it is from posts like this one (and there was a substantial post on the BSA subreddit board recently) — 

From the perspective of a more recent returnee to Scouting than many on this board, I would add that I honestly find some of the elements of what I have read worrisome, and - as described - counter to YPT training.  Specifically, the requirements for new initiates to be partially clothed as part of joining (while others are not) and the in group/out group dynamics that have been described by some.  Both are reminiscent, at least to me, of things that create power dynamics — particularly between adults and scouts, though potentially among scouts — that the YPT training suggests could be used to facilitate abuse.  

Because of my involvement with a girls troop, the question also comes to mind how the organizations’ activities could be more problematic now with girls in BSA — which for me always puts arguments that have been made here that this is essentially “the same as a swimsuit even though they aren’t swimming” in a different light.  And puts additional emphasis why it might be seen as problematic for leaders (adult or youth) in such a group setting requirements about how “unclothed prospective female members have to be” to join.  

More broadly, however, if things about members having more privileges at camp, there being closed areas to all but members, etc. that I have read in some of the posts about the group are true, I think it is also worth asking how the existence of this kind of “semi-sorta-secret society” at a Scout camp… even if organizationally it is only “Scouting adjacent” versus being an official BSA program… could affect views of scouting and people’s willingness to participate.  Even having been an Eagle Scout as a youth and someone who was eager to return to Scouting with my daughter, if our first experience at camp had been “and here’s this extra super fun group that the cool kids join that gives you extra perks but you have to semi-strip down to join,” I think my reaction would have been “If this is what Scouting is now, it isn’t something I want anything to do with.”

7 hours ago, RememberSchiff said:

Good thing to be able to laugh oneself.

While this is true, and is something that is indeed related to leadership, you don’t teach someone to laugh at themself by putting them in a situation where everyone else is laughing at them and they are pressed to laugh too to save face.  

You teach them to laugh at themselves by creating a situation where everyone is laughing at themselves, and so joining in is a positive thing.  The best of Scout campfire skits are great ways to teach that lesson, since often everyone in the patrol looks ridiculous in the process and that is truly part of the fun.  Sending scouts on hunts for nonexistent things where they get to feel like everyone else — including leaders that are supposed to be trusted mentors to them — are in on a joke at their expense is definitively not.

24 minutes ago, skeptic said:

a pocket device he made to hang from the right pocket nd keeps them on there.

A new product idea for your local Scout Store.  At the reasonable price of $6.50.  

<Uniform and insignia are not discounted under this week’s sale price reductions..>

One caution to add to this discussion — at this point, we don’t know how many total cases there were at either of the camps where COVID was reported (this and the other thread), nor do we know all the BSA affiliated camps where COVID cases have been detected.  Our troop was at a camp last week and we received notification that there were scouts who tested positive immediately after they returned home and so had been potential sources of spread while they were at camp.  I don’t have a link or citation to give you since it looks like there hasn’t been any public report of the events.  

Beyond potentially knowing whether anyone in our unit tests positive this week or next, I don’t know if we will ever know whether there was transmission that occurred at camp or what the real total numbers were.  As the state involved had relaxed its pandemic safety requirements, there had been substantial relaxation of the requirements for things like masking and gathering by attendees before we arrived for our week at camp. Since there were first year scouts there, there was a population of attendees who couldn’t be vaccinated even if they and their families would have wanted them to be (and who knows what fraction of the vaccine-eligible population there had actually had the shot. The camp did not even ask about vaccine status, so they don’t know either). And this during the period when the Delta variant is becoming dominant because of its transmissibility. 

In the discussions of youth protection and CSA on this board, one thread in the discussions here has been transparency — the need for statistics to know the extent of problems and whether efforts to protect scouts are improving or not.  I would argue there is a transparency need here as well.  Are the percentages really as low as @Jameson76calculates above?  They could be, since outdoor activities are lower risk than indoors and much of summer camp even in normal years happens outdoors.  It may not matter if a scout is sitting across a picnic table from an infected scout at a merit badge class if a stiff breeze is blowing through.  But the percentages may not be that low, and while I haven’t attempted to update the census of the safety measures camps are using to limit COVID risk that I did last year, it is clear that there are major differences in approach with some doing things like pre-camp testing discussed above and others going back to “near normal” to even include dining hall operations that could significantly increase risk. Just like one can’t assess what parts of YPT are effective without data, it’s difficult to say which of the decisions to relax or maintain tighter COVID protocols were good or bad without less anecdotal information on outcomes.

9 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

My experience has been that I rarely see a scout with a phone.

We just got back from camp and there were some scouts with phones, some in our troop.  Mostly used them for taking snapshots the way one might have used a camera in my youth to take photo memories of camp (and the quality of cameras on phones is killing the point and shoot camera market, so your troop historian might not have many other choices about recording camp if they are doing their duties) and some for contact with family back home (mixed blessing in some cases).  When we had buddy groups of scouts spread about camp when severe weather rolled through, their ability to check in with leaders because they had comms capability and let us know they were safely sheltered (and in some cases get advice on the closest place to do so) was useful.

[Deleted]

I have a scout-daughter who has earned a lot of merit badges in a short time — nowhere close to all of them at this point, but more than 50.  She (and by saying she I am revealing the timeframe over which it occurred) has done them in all of the available ways: one on one with a counselor, a virtual one on one with a counselor during COVID, in person MBUs, camporees that had merit badge programs, summer camps, virtual summer camps with small class sizes (similar to in person camps), and virtual merit badge classes with large numbers of participants in the class (the 100+ example mentioned.)  I observed a sample of all of them in my leader capacity (or wandering through the room for the virtual ones in my parental one).

I don’t think I ever saw a good implementation at 100+ people, but it was my scout who said they were awful and that she wasn’t interested in taking anything from that Council ever again.  But for the rest there were good and bad, based entirely on the quality of the volunteer who was running them.  I have seen MBU classes that were extremely well thought out and covered badges well.  I have seen terrible ones, and ones done for MBs that were simply incompatible with doing in a couple hour class session.  I have seen ones with more contact time (the 5 hours or so of summer camp sessions or at a Camporee) that used that time to go in depth on some things in really productive ways (supported by real pre-req requirements that the scouts truly had to do or would end with a partial).  And I have seen ones that essentially had the scouts sitting around for a lot of that time because the class was so badly thought out.  And yes, I have seen amazing one-on-one MB counseling sessions and ones were so-so at best.

As a result, I think there is some categorical criticism that is valid — there may be merit badges that can be successfully and productively taught in an online class of 100+, but there aren’t many of them (only fingerprinting, perhaps?).  But for the other venues and class sizes up to a a point, it comes down to how much work went into actually doing it… 

And I also bristle a little bit about categorical criticism of scouts who “earned so many MBs during COVID.”  Sure, if they just stacked up sitting through 100+ person classes and now can’t remember the names of the badges they earned during that period that are on their sash, that is legitimate as an extension of criticism of that model.  But there were scouts (mine among them) for whom focusing on working on merit badges during COVID was part of what gave them a goal and mission during very tough time in their lives (which seems like a very good thing for Scouting as an activity to do).  And so if someone who had “something else they did during COVID” just looks at the number of badges they earned and decides there must be something fishy since they didn’t earn as many, that seems…. A bit off to me.

I successfully printed a bunch on the Scout Shop preprinted/preperforated forms this afternoon out of Scoutbook.  (I bought out their entire remaining stock from our local Scout Shop today… who would have guessed lots of people would have been printing lots of blue cards right before summer camp season.  I should have been more prepared and bought them a month ago).

I had to print my last couple out of Troopmaster — I didn’t have their special stock so printed them on blue card stock and cut them out the old fashioned way.