David CO

11 hours ago, SSF said:

To summarize the Star Wars issue, for those unfamiliar, there's been an extreme backlash from a large number of fans and movie goers who are nothing short of disgusted with the movie's story, direction, tone and political and social innuendos made in the movie; i.e. women are great at everything, men are less capable and need female leadership, capitalism is bad, white men and wealthy people are ev

I saw the movie last week with the grandkids. I wouldn't have gone to see it except for my wanting to spend some time with the kids. I didn't like it at all.

All the things you say about the tone of the film is true. One thing you didn't mention is the film's anti-religion sub-theme. The film implies that religion is the cause of all strife, and that the only solution is to abandon the old religious writings and customs. 

Yes, I do see a parallel with BSA.

5 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

This is my first year as a parent of a Girl Scout, my daughter is a daisy. We just received the Girl Scout summer camp guide and to be perfectly honest it blows away the BSA. The Girl Scouts have weekly camps from early June through MID August.  They have a great collection of both day camps and overnights.  They have various speciality camps. They don’t require parents or leaders of local units to attend. If adult partners do attend, they are not charged and their daughter receives a discount.  The Girl Scouts offer bussing  to all their day camps.  Their guide is in color with pictures and have several corporate sponsor pages. 

The BSA guide looks like a joke in comparison. Camps are only offered from late June through July.  They give a very high overview and no specialized camps. No bussing. Parents or leaders must attend.

I'm glad to hear it.

I wouldn't want my unit going to camp Beverly Hills. 

10 hours ago, an_old_DC said:

The first line of BSA's position description says it all. 

 

Everything that the Cubmaster does is aimed at helping the individual boy.

 

 

That statement does not mean a Cubmaster can do anything he wants, just so long as his aim is to help the boys.

For example, he still has to obey federal, state, and local laws. Nothing in that statement relieves the CM of his civic responsibilities.

He is still a volunteer for the CO. Nothing in that statement confers ownership of the unit, or any part of the unit, from the CO to the CM.

He is still subordinate to the COR. Nothing in that statement changes the chain of command.

It is a nice statement, but it does not say it all. 

42 minutes ago, TAHAWK said:

That policy, applied by all units, would fairly well wipe out my district's Merit Badge Counselor list, empty most District Committee slots, eliminate most Summer Camp adult volunteers, and make our shortage of Unit Commissioners worse.  

OK. Now what's the downside?

6 hours ago, NJCubScouter said:

Troop 2 is also nearby, has 50 kids with a good mix of Scouts all up and down the age/rank range and a full staff of leaders, uses the patrol method, no merit badge classes, everything by the book.  The hypothetical "perfect troop."  

Since you didn't say if troop 2 has an strong and active CO, I have no way of knowing if it is a hypothetical perfect troop.

20 minutes ago, NJCubScouter said:

 

I don't want to send Cubber's thread off on a tangent about CO policies toward adult leaders.  But wow.  So if your CO has a pack and a troop, and Mr. Smith has a boy in both, he can't be a leader in both.  I've never heard of that.

 

You need to understand that my CO is the Athletic Department of a school. The policy was originally designed for coaches. We didn't want people coaching two teams in the same season. If we applied your hypothetical, Mr. Smith would not be allowed to coach an older daughter's 8th grade volleyball team while coaching the 6th grade boy's basketball team.

The policy was written to apply to all extra-curricular activities, including scouting, so no one would feel that they were being singled out. 

A CO's policies may not always seem to make much sense if you look at them in isolation, narrowing your focus on the unit or the individual scout. The reasons may become more clear if you look at the bigger picture. 

The CO owns the scout unit. It is reasonable for the CO to expect the unit to fit in with its overall policies, objectives, and goals.

2 hours ago, NJCubScouter said:

Is Mr. Smith being disloyal to the pack's (and Troop 1's) CO?  Should he be "fired" as a DL for his younger son's den?

I don't think Mr. Smith is being disloyal. His son chose the troop. 

My unit has a policy against its leaders holding more than one scouter position at a time. This would be true regardless of whether the second position is with our unit, another CO's unit, district, or council. I wouldn't characterize this as "firing' the leader. We would ask him to choose.

There would be an odd wrinkle to this hypothetical situation if the scouter happened to also be a teacher at my school. The diocese requires Catholic school teachers to send their children to a Catholic school. I don't know if they would also expect the teacher to choose the Catholic school's scout unit for his son. It's possible. 

13 hours ago, HelpfulTracks said:

I do tell my Scouts I have never had an Eagle Scout tell me they regret earning their Eagle, but I have had countless others tell me they regret not getting theirs. I don't harp on that point, but I do try to get them to understand that someday the rank of Eagle may mean more to them than it does now, but it will be something they can not longer earn. 

I have a very different speech that I gave to all of my athletes and scouts. I told them that, in 5 years time, if any of them still cared one iota about any of the victories or losses they experienced in school, I would be very disappointed. 

All youth awards should have an expiration date on them, for those who get them as well as for those who don't. 

3 hours ago, NJCubScouter said:

Hmm.  Does that apply to performance in school as well?  To future employment?  To the military, if they go?  

You picked out three things that scouting is not supposed to be. 

1 hour ago, BobWhiteVA said:

CC cannot mandate where Webelos go, that's up to the individual Scouts and their parents.

The CC/COR cannot mandate where individual Webelos go, but they can mandate where a Webelos den does or doesn't go. 

46 minutes ago, Sentinel947 said:

I myself am an Eagle Scout for what that's worth

It is worth whatever you feel it is worth, no more and no less.

23 minutes ago, Cambridgeskip said:

I think it's generally accepted that the pre industrial revolution, so early 19th century, levels are the standard by which we should be measuring things as that is broadly what the levels were through most of human existence. Whether that is optimal is another question but it's certainly the level from which human interference started from.

Fine, just so long as it is clearly understood that it is an arbitrary standard. There is no valid scientific reason to choose that as the starting point. 

CO2 levels have not been level through most of human existence. It has gone up and down. 

2 hours ago, WisconsinMomma said:

OK, maybe this is a dumb question, but what are your thoughts and feelings about a boy's journey through Scouting whether he achieves Eagle rank or not?

I don't think boys should view advancement as either a goal or an achievement. It should be something that just happens sometimes during the course of a journey, like finding a really neat shiny stone while strolling down a path.

The problem with the whole climate change question is that no one seems to know what the ideal environment would be. Are CO2 levels currently higher or lower than optimal? Nobody knows. All we know is that they are slightly higher than they used to be.

It may turn out to be that higher CO2 levels are a good thing. Future college students may be complaining about  declining CO2 levels.

14 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

With all do respect, I disagree. Yes the COR works in the background, But I bet you a Dutch oven pizza that you have been to activities with your units: whether it was Scout Sunday services, Blue and Gold, Court of Honor, and that people at least know your face. IMHO part of being a good COR is checking on your units time to time.

So do you owe me a DO pizza or I owe you?

Hey, no fair!  I'm a teacher. The boys see me every day at school.

31 minutes ago, NJCubScouter said:

But I seem to recall that at one point, in an earlier and happier (?) time, this thread was about physical contact between Scouters and Scouts.  If there is nothing more to say on that subject

I was going to compare (many pages ago) the recent trend to avoid physical contact to BSA's long past decision to ban nude swimming (my point being that times and sensibilities change), but then I thought better of it. I would rather keep the thread out of YP.

I agree that it may be time to let this thread go.

2 hours ago, Tampa Turtle said:

(I just think that too much girls in scouting controversy should go back on a separate thread)

...and this whole discussion on wood badge belongs in the wood badge forum.

4 minutes ago, Tampa Turtle said:

Poor guy.  

There's an idea. Maybe they should change the title from COR to PG.

1 hour ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Because they are not seen or involved in the program, many people will view the uninvolved COR as uninformed and interfering when they finally start doing their job.

There is a big difference between unseen and uninvolved. If the IH and COR are doing their jobs right, most of their work will be unseen by most of the scouters, parents, and scouts.

The SM and CM are the front men of the units. They have the most visible roles of all the scouters, and rightly so. The public should see the SM and CM as the primary leaders of the units.

It is understandable that parents and lower level scouters might feel that way (uninformed and interfering) about the IH and COR, but the SM and CM must never do so. The SM and CM should be among the CO's most loyal supporters. If they're not, it is a big problem.

22 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Please do not take offense, as it is not meant as a criticism of you.

Let's face it, active CORs are so rare, that most people do not know anything about the role. Heck, I was a trained ASM and sitting on the district committee, and I didn't know anything about the position, except you had to have one in order to recharter. It wasn't until  I was a DE, 3 years after joining a district committee, and was in DE school that I learned of the responsibilities it entailed. So most folks do not understand that ultimately the COR is responsible for Scouting at the CO, and they sit on both the district and council committees with full voting rights. 

No offense taken. You said it exactly right.

I came on this forum nine years ago precisely because of this. Most unit scouters don't seem to understand the proper role of the CO and its representatives, the IH and COR. By adding my voice to the discussions, I had hoped to make scouters more aware of our existence and of our important role in scouting.

8 hours ago, TAHAWK said:

Active COs are as it should be, but hardly the overwhelming state of things.  Benign neglect is the typical order of the day.  Sad.

That's why I feel so strongly about scouters showing some respect to the active CO's who are trying to do it right. They should be put up as an example to emulate, not as a target to attack.

10 hours ago, NJCubScouter said:

I didn't mean what I think you think I meant.  Of course the CO does not want the unit to lapse.  I was responding to a couple of people who seemed to think that recruitment was a waste of time because the charter is about to expire or has already expired. What I was saying is that I think the CO can work with the council to keep the charter from lapsing while awaiting at least 5 crossovers, and as the worst-case scenario, the charter could be "revived" quickly enough.  That being the case, the biggest issue remains recruitment.

I disagree. The biggest issue is leadership. How can a CO recruit new boy scouts when its own registered leadership is unwilling to support the unit.

7 minutes ago, NJCubScouter said:

And there are other ways to do it, which are less "trustworthy."  As long as the registration fees are coming in, most councils don't really care very much.

Funny you should mention that. I actually started my unit by registering a bunch of my Lone Scout friends in my troop. The council did have a few raised eyebrows when they observed that some of my scouts lived hundreds of miles away, but they let it slide.

I never intended to use paper scouts as a long term solution. I was just priming the pump. 

23 minutes ago, Jameson76 said:

They had to have had some paper scouts, you need to have a minimum of five paid youth

True. The troop couldn't have rechartered last year with only 2 registered scouts. The paper scouts might have aged out.

11 minutes ago, NJCubScouter said:

That's a good point.  Games have already been played with this troop's charter.

Obviously. 

11 minutes ago, NJCubScouter said:

So I don't think the technical non-existence of the troop is the biggest issue here. 

Are you serious?

If one of our units failed to recharter on time, it would not only be the biggest issue, it would be the only issue.