KublaiKen

Most Ivy League schools and top employers, including the upper-echelon law firms and wealth management services, won't even consider you if you don't have Arrow of Light on your resume.

Cub Scouts is about doing your best. I'm with @fred8033.

If you click on the link above, you will see that the unit's funds are owned by the Chartered Organization or by Council, depending on how the unit is chartered.

Adding to the confusion is that not all tribal lands were uncontested. Rather than weighing in on who WE think owned the land, I believe it is just another reason we need to get out of the AIA business.

Weren't they talking about Scouting in Africa, not the BSA? Specifically with regard to Baden-Powell's influence there? ETA: I just checked and they were. @johnsch322was replying to specifically to a comment by @skepticabout Scouting being open to blacks in Africa.

Well, I think that by definition cultural appropriation doesn't work both ways.

We're like the dinosaurs, but we have the advantage of seeing the comet coming. Please keep me apprised of how hiding your head in the sand works out.

@Mrjeff, if you Google "order of the arrow national committee," here is the very first thing that pops up: https://oa-bsa.org/about/leadership/national-committee It is, as you might imagine, a link to the names and positions of the members of the Order of the Arrow's National Committee. If you go the Order of the Arrow's web page, this is also linked through the home page. It isn't mystical, and "whoever they are" is easily and readily available information to anyone who even has the slightest jot of curiosity and iota of resourcefulness. I point this out because who they are is

Congratulations!

A surplus water buffalo? When I was a kid someone had one in our District and brought it to Camporees.

What an incredible person! Requiescet in pace, Mrs. Hesselbein.

You seem to be saying that CIS being different from other required merit badges is disqualifying criteria for it being required. I'll wait for the irony to hit.

If the Oath can require duty to country and physical strength, and then we can require Citizenship in the Nation and Personal Fitness, the template has been cast for the overarching things to tell us what to do, and the merit badges to serve as demonstrations of how. Given that BSA allowed segregation until 1974, meaning over half of its existence, I'd argue that perhaps the Oath and Law are insufficient tools to govern good behavior in our shared space. Sometimes we might need some prompting on what good citizenship looks like.

Perhaps its a side note to your story, and perhaps not, but in truth, you probably should have been talking to the Webelos parents and letting the Scouts run the lashings. One of our standards of success is if the Scouts don't hear me speak until the Scoutmaster's Minute.

What happened this past week? Where is Part 2?

Ah, then I would say which weekend to go camping might be the secondary issue: that should be planned by the Scouts in the PLC at an annual planning meeting, not by old men on a message board. Youth-led is on the same level as outdoors in the hierarchy of Scouting, both are methods, right? Solve the problems by solving them together: dump the calendar dilemma on the PLC and let them solve it.

I would maintain that the saddest part of this issue is and will remain the victimization of our youth, and the loss of innocence and mental well-being they suffered and continue to suffer. While I love Scouting, our worst case is that we lose entirely a fantastic youth organization, and that is not likely. And if it happens I am certain the void will be filled. The victims are already facing their worst case scenario. I don't mean to diminish your view of the legal system; tort reform is a conversation to be had. But in this situation, for me, all other pain takes a backseat to the victims.

What did the PLC decide?

Right? Same here. What happened to achievable goals?

I was my Lodge's Unit Elections Committee Chair in my sordid youth, among other offices, and I am more and more agnostic on the whole OA thing, including the selection process. So I won't weigh in on your dilemma, as I fluctuate between a purist who longs for the old days and a realist who thinks this kid belongs in the OA. I only want to add that while I think you are partially correct on the philosophy of the requirement, it is also to show a regular and recurring commitment to the unit's camping program, with the idea that one (theoretically) must attend several camping trips over that

We looked at a similar option as well, but found the insurance costs to likely be prohibitive. Since we found a choice of COs, we didn't explore it too deeply.

I am not a member of the UMC, so am not too familiar with their governance, so take this with a grain of salt, but as I understand it each UMC can ignore the advice of the governing body if they choose. Each congregation is autonomous, or semi-autonomous? In any event, it seems risky to recharter knowing the bodies above you might not have your back if something goes wrong.

Our District Membership Chair sent us this list of what some other units in our District were doing: - one UMC will recharter as before/ traditionally relationship - several looking at new chartering org., but Facility Use Agreement to continue to meet at their respective churches - one looking for complete replacement of chartered org. & meeting location - two looking at Council as chartered org. but Facility Use Agreement to continue to meet at their respective churches.

Very late to this, but I just wanted to post what our Troop (and the "affiliated" Pack) are doing. We have been sponsored by our UMC for 72 years, and the Pack a bit less. We're now dotting the i's and crossing the t's on a new CO agreement with the Episcopalian church a block or so away. We'll have a facilities use agreement with the UMC, though I think we'll be moving physically more and more over to the Episcopalian church in due time. Our Troop is pretty well off for a Troop, I think, and I suspect that if our Council got our bank account we would not see it back if we later foun

If one believes we are trying to fix the past, then I would agree that is impossible. But I don't think that's in the intent or execution of what is happening today; I believe we are taking the lessons of the past and trying to fix the present, which includes quite a bit of downstream impact (intentional and otherwise) of many decades (centuries, societally) of very bad policy and practice. And a valuable tool in identifying and eradicating (or mitigating) those ills is asking the people who suffer from them what they think.