David CO

Can we please limit this thread to trying to help EagleonFire? Discussions of whether councils are good or bad should be in a separate thread, and in most cases should probably be in Council Relations. Discussions of who people might or might not be showering with who should, I guess, be in Issues and Politics.

I disagree.  Whether councils are good or bad can, will, and should directly effect their United Way funding.  It is entirely relevant.

First, let me quote myself from another post, to give some background:

 

 

So, that said, please advice what I can do to be the most effective Membership Chair I can be?  What has worked for you?  What do you prioritize?  How do you get schools to let you "in", so you sell the program to the kids directly? Specifically, I like actionable items I can tick off and say I've done, or a work product I can demonstrate I have.  I would say most of the information I have found in my google searches are either vague job descriptions, or at a bird's eye view level of detail.

 

I do have the Membership Committee Guide: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/commissioner/pdf/33080.pdf

and the Marketing and Membership Hub:  http://scoutingwire.org/marketing-and-membership-hub/

and I'm going through that slowly; there's a lot to read there.

 

YIS,

-Dan

Dan,

There is no way that I would allow you "in" my school to sell the program directly to the kids.  It simply wouldn't happen.  Don't take it personally.  You are just asking for something that my school would never allow.

To be effective, you need to learn the difference between what is actually possible and what is just beating your head against a wall.

I would have thought that in a topic titled Problem DE, it would be obvious to everyone that there would be griping about the execs. 

I am sorry to hear that your council does not provide any real programs or services, that you have to register all yuor boys directly with Irving yourself and arrange the liability insurance, that you have to develop, print and distribute all of your own applications and recruiting materials, that you have no camps or staff at the camps, that you have no camporees or jamborees in your district/council.

You get the point, Council is often doing that stuff that no one sees the work but screams if it is not done.

I get your point.  Do you get mine?

I would much rather have direct registration.  

I would gladly lose the BSA insurance if that would mean that we could make our own risk assessments and run the program the way we used to. 

We don't need application forms or recruiting materials.  The boys are members of my CO (school), and I already have all of their information on file. 

We don't use council camps.  My diocese owns a great camp just 10 miles from us.  I don't want my scouts showering with transgender kids.

I have no use for the council.  They are just a bunch of pests who get in the way of our running a good, old-fashioned, values-oriented scout program.  I wish they would just go away.

So much for Scouting Values.

 

But, then, someone else told him this was the goal to work towards and forget Boy Scouting.  He's just a Capo

in the mob.

They all are.

But it is no longer a unit fundraiser. It is a group of friends who happen to love our troop and will do all of this work and give it to the scouts in the troop for their needs. 

 

That's my idea, anyway. It's either that or drop the whole thing and let the district do it on their own. 

That won't work.  In fact, it will give the council a good excuse to step in and take it over. 

If the "group of friends" are not a non-profit organization, they will subject to all the licensing and taxes as any other business venture.  

Wouldn't it have been, oh, I don't know, courteous, to tell the council what you intended to say so that they could find someone else? I have no reason to doubt that what you said was absolutely true, but even so, if funding was cut in half then someone, somewhere experienced a reduction in real program and/or services. Unless the SE took the cut out of his own salary, which is unlikely.

I think it would have been far more courteous if the SE hadn't lied to the United Way chairperson (from my town) in the first place.  I was ticked off that he involved my unit in his lie.

They couldn't use anyone else.  After the SE stated that the council subsidized handicapped scouts from my unit, the United Way wanted to hear from me specifically.    

The council doesn't provide any real program and/or services.  We would be better off without them.

I was once asked to speak to the United Way people.  They asked me to expound on how the council provided assistance to the several handicapped scouts I had in my unit.  Instead, I explained to the United Way that the council didn't do a blessed thing for us.  The handicapped kids actually payed full-freight on everything.

They cut the funding to the council in half.  For some strange reason, the council has never asked me to speak to the United Way again.

Well, overall it does, but I thought we were focusing on the mention of "boys" and lack of mention of "girls" and whether that somehow prohibits the BSA from having programs that include girls.  Which it has had for 45 years.

That's only one part of it.  The congressional charter clearly intended that the scouting program remain faithful to its roots, and continue operating in the same manner as it had when it was founded.

BSA has failed to live up to this promise.  Shame on them.

No. The council lawyers statement doesn't confirm the validity of anything.  It is just a self-serving statement from the council.  It doesn't mean anything.

I reached out to my council's attorney, who also moonlights at a local university for tort (contract) law, and this is the response I got:

 

Evening             ,

 

In response to your question concerning the Boy Scouts of America Congressional Charter, specifically our purpose/mission as dictated by said document, I have prepared this overview for you.

1. "The purposes of the ...[boy Scouts of America]... are to promote, through organization, and cooperation with other agencies, the ability of boys to do things for themselves and others, to train them in scoutcraft, and to teach them patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred virtues, using the methods that were in common use by boy scouts on June 15, 1916."
2. Even though the practice of granting Congressional charters is discontinued, previously granted charters are still binding in whatsoever requirements are mandated for the chartered organization to fulfill. In our case, this includes, but is not limited to, delivering a program to accomplish our "purposes" and delivering annual report annually no later than April 1 to Congress.
3. Outside of this, the actual Congressional charter is intentionally vague so as to allow the BSA to grow and adapt as the nation's landscape and culture changes. One example, the integration of co-ed programs such as Venturing, Sea Scouting, Exploring, and STEM Scouts.
4. Changes like this does not invalidate or nullify our Congressional charter, as we still deliver a Scouting program for male youth in the United States.

Thank you for your interest in this topic, as this area of law is a personal interest. I hope this helped answer your question, and please reach-out to me if you have any further questions or need clarification.

 

Respectfully,

 

                       

What did you expect to hear from the council lawyer?  Did you think he would admit that they are violating the charter?

When it comes to "leadership" I have heard about it at school, at work, and on the Internet.  Many times I have asked for a definition, but have never gotten an adequate one.  Sometimes it is having a title and position, sometimes it is setting an example, sometimes it is a combination of the previous two and sometimes something else.  Leadership seems to be one of those terms that means whatever you want it to. 

 

I am afraid my perspective on leadership was become jaded over the years.  I have seen it used as an explanation and excuse for a great deal of unacceptable behavior.  Right now when I hear the word "leadership" I immediately stop listening.  This is a mistake, so I would like to know what you mean by "leadership"?

I agree.  As a Science guy, I tend to like goals and objectives that can be observed and measured.  Leadership is hard to define, much less measure.  

It sounds like Girl Scouts.  

IMO, a boy who achieves ranks and awards in the scouting program, but who also is socially isolated and disconnected from his class mates and neighbors, is not a good scout.

A scout cannot do his duty to his God and his country while socially isolating himself from his church, school, and community.   

Now you see that is a different question! What I mean is would they want to be seen as any of those things among those particular individuals that they go to school with? Does acknowledgement by those individuals mean anything to them?

 

I can see it in a couple of the explorer scouts attached to my group. If you talk to them it actually matters to them that they are acknowledged as leaders in a scouting context. At school though? It simply doesn't matter. It's all about that teenage sense of belonging.

I suppose that is a "Chicken or the Egg" type of question.  Which came first?

Scouting seems to attract the social outcasts.  In some places this may be based on economic status.  In other places, it may be for totally different reasons.

As a scout leader, I have discouraged my scouts from using the scout unit as an island refuge to further isolate themselves from their peers.  

I want scouts to take the confidence and skills that they develop in scouting, and use them to reengage with their schools and communities.  I think scouting should broaden a boy's world, not narrow it.

Not sure I understand that comment. 

 

Are you saying that, because school kids usually equate popularity with leadership -- and generalizing that Scouts are not cool enough to be popular -- that they (Scouts) are not equipped to lead their school mates?

Not exactly.

I think scouting prepares boys to be a big fish in a very small pond.  It doesn't take the next step of teaching boys to swim in the big pond.

Most of my scouts are afraid to swim in the big pond.  Their peers sense this.  I don't think boys scouts can lead their class mates if they are intimidated by them.

I'll turn this on its head.

 

Would your scouts want to be the leaders at their school?

 

The reason I ask..... in my days as a scout I didn't fit in well at school. In short I was the working class kid at the very middle class school. My dad got his hands dirty in a factory while most of my class mates had dads who were lawyers or doctors or something similar. And I was rarely allowed to forget it and I got a really hard time about it. My scout troop though was filled with kids more like me. And I fitted in there. I was PL of Bulldog* patrol. It was where I fitted in. Back at school where I didn't fit in I have to say that I don't think I would want to have been a leader. We had elections for Head Boy and Head Girl and their deputies (this may be a very British thing, apologies if you're not familiar with the concept!). It was inevitably a popularity contest and frankly not one I had any interest in winning. I was completely done with half of those I went to school with. I'd go so far as to say I actively didn't want to win it.

 

So out of curiosity, would your scouts want to be the leaders at their school? Is it something they aspire to but don't get the chance? Or do they avoid it?

 

*previously we'd been panthers. But the panther patrol badge looked more like a gerbil. So we changed to bulldogs. Turned out the bulldog badge looked more like a Scottish Terrier. Not quite the image we were looking for!

Yes, I think so.  Most of my scouts would love to be a star athlete, popular student, and charismatic leader. 

In order to be a leader, you need to have followers.  Very few boys at school would accept the boy scouts as their leaders.  The scouts just don't have what it takes to pull it off.

That is why the scouting program is so important to them, and why we continue to charter a unit.  Scouting gives these boys an opportunity to experience leadership.  They would probably never get a chance to experience it otherwise.

The scouting program has many good features, and my scouts are a great group of kids.  But the boy scouts are definitely not the most popular and charismatic group of boys in the school.

Above the rest in popularity and charisma?  Seriously?  You can't be talking about boy scouts.

I was going to say something similar.

 

Just because I have had to use a weapon to take someone's life, doesn't make me a bad Christian. 

It certainly doesn't.

I've never heard anyone reference the Scout Law as only juvenile actions. I encourage  scouts to learn their adult behavior by measuring all their decisions against the scout law during their younger years. Every decisional situation, no matter how small, has a moral right or wrong fate. The 12 points of the law are life long value traits that guide every decision toward a moral outcome.

 

I learned in my life that integrity is directly related to ones ingrained principles. Rarely are an individual's principles developed after their young adult years. No situation is without applying principled values during any decision. Every decision has different possible outcomes that are directly related to how we apply our values. What adult wouldn't want the integrity of a scout?

 

Barry

The scout law is simplistic.  As such, it is well suited for use in a game for boys.  It is too simplistic to serve as a code of behavior for adults.

Yea, maybe the Ten Commandments was a wrong example, but I disagree with the rest of your posts. The law It's not and apples or oranges analogy. The traits of the law don't have exceptions. Exception are excuses to not be trustworthy, loyal, friendly or courteous. We are the scout law and servants of the scout law. Once we pick and choose which laws we don't have to apply, then our egos become masters. And we are nolonger scout like. 

 

Barry

Of course we are no longer scout like.  We are adults.  We grew up.

There are many adult things that don't fit into the scout law.  War is one of them.  It is not possible to wage war in a scout like manner.  

The historical fact that the American colonies rebelled against Great Britain has nothing to do with the scout law.  This doesn't make the Revolutionary War wrong, nor does it mean we should change the scout law.

The scout law is fine within the context of a game for boys.  It just needs to be understood that the scout law doesn't apply everywhere.

I think the scouts of my father's generation understood this while they were conducting scrap drives to collect war materials to make bombs to drop on the boys scouts of enemy countries.

No Barry, the scout law is not at all like the Ten Commandments.  I take my religion very seriously, and I would never compare the scout law to the Ten Commandments.  There is no comparison.

I totally agree with your views on the Bible, but I don't think it applies to a scouting program.  Apples and oranges.  Scouting isn't a religion.

I do explain that "little side-bar" to scouts.  We all do.  It is OK to undress and be examined by your doctor, but not by the weird guy down the street.  

Children need to be able to distinguish between the people they should obey, and those that they shouldn't.  It is a basic survival skill that every child needs to learn.

Scouting is a game for boys.  The scout law is part of that game.  Scouting was never intended to be a religion, and the scout law was never intended to be a dogma.

Anyone who tries to make the scout law into a dogma will quickly find out that it falls short.  The scout law simply doesn't apply to most of the adult world.

The fact that the scout law doesn't fit well into the adult world doesn't necessarily disqualify it for use in a game for boys.