KublaiKen

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.

4 hours ago, TheGreenWizard said:

     Another thing is, the primary difference between the other three and CIS is the others force you to go searching for outside resources, such as a public meeting, rather than sitting around and talking about your personal opinion. A good citizen understands that unless someone's Constitutional rights are being inhibited, their opinion is just that; theirs. Others may agree with you, and you are allowed to voice that opinion, but unless a Constitutional right is being infringed, nothing needs to be done.

     That's another thing too; the other three merit badges, or at least community and nation, encourage you to talk about the law and governing documents in your country. This is something CIS lacks, and thus it should really be a non eagle-required merit badge called Society, not Citizenship in Society.

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.

2 minutes ago, skeptic said:

The saddest part of this continuing issue is that if we simply fixed the legal system so as to not have overly zealous and greedy saw suits people could still have protection with reasonable cost and some type of fair and balanced guidelines.  The expectation that there is an absolute ability to keep all bad actors out of Scouting or any other group is not feasible.  And, when those individuals do get past barriers, for whatever reason, the idea that anyone that has ever spoken to or touched them, or furnished a place to meet, and so on is ridiculous and should not be a reason to sue.  Just my view, and if you do not agree, please do not get rude.

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?

3 hours ago, MikeS72 said:

That puts me and most of my Scouts out of the picture!😄

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 period to meet the requirement. That is supposed to help the unit members answer those "Who among you..." questions. At least that was my understanding.

17 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

My friends' units, a pack and 2 troops, that are chartered by an UMC church started their own Optimist Club with the sole purpose of chartering units.  They will have a FUA with the UMC church.

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.

27 minutes ago, PACAN said:

Thanks KublaiKen but how is a unit rechartering as before?   Not an option as we read it.

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.

21 minutes ago, PACAN said:

Are there other UMC units out there that can share what they are doing?  

Our District Membership Chair sent us this list of what some other units in our District were doing:

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 found a CO.

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.

I don't think it's enough to say that following the Scout Oath and Law will resolve these issues.

I joined Scouting in 1975. The last segregated council was integrated in 1974. That means that for the first half of its existence, segregation was permissible in the BSA. That means either the Scout Oath and Law permit segregation and are inherently flawed, in my view, or they were ignored/misunderstood across the board by the entire organization for over 60 years. Having affinity groups that can point out such blind spots is a net gain, in my view.

Integration doesn't mean homogenization, and having other groups bring cultural/thought elements to a white, straight, male organization isn't bad, in my view.

I'm not sure I see the real harm in that decision being "taken" from the youth; they already don't decide membership requirements. Having said that, I am not at all opposed to keeping single sex units, but I would view them as transitional to where it is obvious BSA is headed.

It seems to me as though BSA is adding a new rule (or propagating it for the first time) that works to further silo units when we should be trying to be more ecumenical, both among the units and programs within BSA and without. I was just discussing a joint camp out with a neighboring Troop and now I wonder if it could even be approved. And it would hardly be competition with corporate, since our District only does one camporee a year. It's knee jerk, but I don't like the rule.

On 5/23/2021 at 10:22 PM, elitts said:

Except that none of those other things you've mentioned are contagious. 

And if there were a shot (or two shots) that could prevent one from dying (or minimize the danger/damage) from car accidents, lightning strikes, snake bites, or drowning, would anyone be arguing about taking it?

If this topic is inappropriate or in the wrong area, please move/delete it, and I apologize.

I have a bunch of bamboo on my property, most contained, but not all. I have read online some of the pros and cons of burning bamboo, but I was hoping for "real world" input from a community of experts. My son, who is one more example of the adage that inside every Scout is a pyromaniac waiting to emerge, has volunteered to burn it when it is dry. He would be burning it in an above-ground, free-standing fire pit, if that matters.

Yes? No? I'm crazy? What sayeth this forum?

37 minutes ago, RememberSchiff said:

Please reread what @David CO posted below. My take is he wants to screen kids to better protect them from predators, not exclude them.

 

Upon rereading, I see that. I think what was confusing was the comparison with screening adults; in this context, the only screening we do for adults is to exclude them from the program. It is single sanction.

21 minutes ago, David CO said:

That's fine.  It's always good to have a balancing opinion.  

I don't agree with either position.  I don't think the program is either safe or unsafe.  It's the kids who are either safe or unsafe.  Some kids enter the program with certain vulnerabilities.  Others don't.  The only way to make BSA completely safe would be to identify the vulnerable kids and exclude them from the program.  I don't think anyone seriously intends to do that.

BSA is in trouble because it deliberately markets its program to vulnerable kids, and then does little to identify their vulnerabilities or protect them from abuse.  We need to better at screening these kids as they come in.  It's not enough to screen the adults.  We also need to screen the kids.

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I think you've jumped in the deep end of victim blaming and then failed to tread water. Blaming a child victim of sexual molestation or rape and saying the antidote is to keep them out of the program instead of fixing the environment is a non-starter across the board, at least for me.

I live in the 7th most diverse city on the U.S. (three of the six ranked above us are our neighboring cities). My son's Troop has a couple of Hispanic/Latino kids (same family), a few Asian kids, three bi-racial kids, and one Black kid (my son, from a transracial family). We are right in downtown, such as it is, and don't come close to matching the racial and ethnic breakdown of the schools, soccer teams, track teams I've coached, etc. Scouting is missing large and growing populations.