DeanRx

The "guardian" is whomever the birth-parent authorizes to be. If I was in charge of an overnight campout, I would want this in writing as well. Blood relatives (Grandpa, uncle, brother over age 18, etc...) not such a big deal. Step-dad, not a big deal. Live in boyfriend, freind of the family, or other scouter who is close to the family? Dang straight you should cover your backside with a notarized permission slip stating WHO is responsible for the child. The G2SS is the death of common sense incarnate! Its not LAW, its not even a RULE, its a GUIDE !!! says so right in its NAME!

Yeah Renax, IMHO, that type of quoting of the rules is generally best handled with the reply, "Sorry you didn't feel the event held up to the BSA standard. Can I get your name, number and e-mail address so YOU can be the sub-committee chair for this event next year? I'd love to hear your ideas for improving it and we can always use more adult volunteers..." That usually gets right to the meat of the question at hand. If the parent / adult is raising the issue and has never show their face for a planning / committee meeting in their life, take it with a grain of salt and move on wi

Lets see.... Pie in the face of CM (me) for reaching Popcorn goal? Check. (last 4 years) Singing "God Bless my Underwear" at campout? Check. (every campout) Water-gun fight at district ran day camp? Check. (not my doing, but it happens every year) Liquid accelerant to magically start campfire? Check. (done by adult, not scout) Branding of rank for each scout? Check. (Boys want it on their forehead, we just started with it on their hand...) Council ran scout camp trading post has KYBO juice favored ICEE syrup. KYBO is their acronym for the pit toliets at camp

We were a group of 6, camped on night 4 of a 7 day trip at Northern tier (Charles L. Solmers). We had picked a campsite out on a little peninsula jutting into the lake and had our tents towards the lake with the fire ring just beyond (inland) and the pit latrine about 100 yrds down a single track trail in the forest. We had to counter balance our food pack to keep it from the bears and usually just left the cook gear pack at the foot of the counter balance tree. Got woke up at about 1 am by the sound of something in the food pack tree... got 3 guys together with rocks, flashlights,

If a UC, DE, or any other district or council level 'offical' showed up at my pack meeting #1 univited and #2 attempted to conduct a uniform inspection or anything else that disrupts OUR meeting or would put a cub on the spot or potentially embarras him, I would be showing extreme self constraint to keep it down to Basement's actions. I would likely call him / her out in front of the scouts and parents (hey he's calling out the boys, right?), then I'd publically dis-invite them, then I'd follow up with a not so scout-like phone call to the DE and CE the next morning! Basement, I don'

1) This is why I'm not in favor of individual accounts, but I see why some folks want them. My take is you are part of something larger than yourself (the unit) and some things you do for the good of the unit (like raising funds). Now, some will argue that if a small % do the work and a large % reap the reward, then this is not fair (these folks are called young republicans... just kidding). Anyways, people (most often parents, not the scouts) scream about how unfair it is. 2) This is why when our unit committee VOTED to have individual accounts, I (and a couple other leaders) agreed o

Yeah, Guess I'd just like to go to one District or above level event, be it training, a dinner, etc... and hear from the podium, "will all scouters who have more than 100 hours in direct youth contact in the past year please stand up and be recognized...". Instead, its usually, "Will all those who are eagle scouts please stand and be recognized...". To me, to bring up something someone accomplished 20+ years ago seems pretty silly. Its kind of like being at a HS football banquet and having all the dads who lettered in HS football or played on a state champ team from 20 years ago stand

the Akela... not sure what it looks like, but I heard its fond o hunting snipes...

I guess I'm just becoming more aware of the potential for the issue as I have begun to move from the unit level activities into more district-wide activities (i.e. helping at trainings, etc...) Mom2cubs and Lisa - I hear your pain. As a male I can't really relate to it, but our unit did loose a very good / motivated female leader this past month because she told me she was unwhelmed and couldn't deal with the "good old boys club" mentality anymore within the organization (more so at district round talbes and training, but I suspect somewhat from the unit level as well). Maybe I'm ov

1) Were you a scout as a youth? 2) Did you earn Eagle? Followed closely by: 3) Have you done WB, powder horn, etc... Just curious as recent posts have discussed the Boy Scout portion looking down their collective noses at the Cub Scout portion... is this line of question an de facto screen between adults to figure out how legit a vol leader is? or to see how you rank out vs another adult vol leader? I just find it funny as I was helping teach a BALOO course tow weekends ago and when I show up, the introductions go something like this.... "Were you in scouts as a boy? - Y

Come on guys... we're really going to get hung up on an SPL calling his peers "guys"... sheesh!

moosetracker wrote, "And maybe alot more helecopter parents trying to demand acceptence of the very weak project, so junior doesn't have to waste much time on it." Sounds like something that would happen. A LOT of this can be avoided by clearly stating what will and will not be accepable at review time, not after the porject has been completed. As for the post about a scout being designated a "lone" scout after two seperate units refused a watered down project, well councils do silly stuff all the time in the name of harmony. fred wrote, "From the above example of one cemetery

Would I put on a class? Heck no! Our pack sells about 20K a year in direct competition from at least 12 other units in a 10 mile radius! We have to attend a "lottery" put on by the district (or as I call it, the popcorn draft) to choose site sales to prevent other units from squatting on each other's sales!! They (other units) are in direct competition with our unit for funding $$. In council's eye, more sales equals more dollars into the council, but if unit A increases sales by taking unit B's sales, then its really a draw for the council, but the two units see their take change.

"Except for a couple places where it says scoutmaster, and it could say scoutmaster or cubmaster, it's a pretty nice list." Na.... I'm a cubmaster and I'd be fine with any complaints from cub parents going to a scoutmaster. I don't care which one, just pick a troop and go complain Overall, a very well written list Beavah, thank you for your input. Dean

I'm with Beav and 2cub on this one. Committees should be looking for ways to approve the Eagle project, not shoot it down repeatedly. I know when I was a scout, our CO was a church, we had two Eagle projects I helped with... One was sandblasting (not sure that would be allowed nowadays) the old, faded parking striped off the church parking lot and repainting the lot. I think we built a disabled parking spaces and ramp to go with it and maybe added some park benches around the parking area. Another project was removing and cleaning storm windows and refurbishing the exterior of som

Kudu- You and I are closer to the same page than you might think. Thats why I put the qualifier of (if done correctly), on the EDGE method. If done correctly, it means a scout first shown a skill, then they practice until they have mastered said skill. Then to prove they have a mastery of it, they then TEACH said skill to another scout(s). In my time in the military and in college, this was distilled to see one, do one, teach one. Its an extremely effective way of teach multiple skills, the premise being that if you've mastered it well enough to explain and teach it to a peer, th

I don't think it has to be scouting, but scouting has distilled a lot of things that bring success to building character over the last 100 years... 1) The opportunity to lead, fail and learn from it. Not many places in life you get to try your hand at being a leader and if it doesn't go quite as planned you don't get fired, or cost yourself or your company lots of $$, or in the case of the military or law enforcement, get someone killed. 2) Adults and youth leaders who take a pledge to LIVE the values all day every day. This is modelling the behavoir or leading by example (my web I

yeah Barry... I get what you're saying. It doesn't matter the diameter of the bulls-eye so long as all the shooters have the same size bulls-eye to aim at, right? There will always be discrepancies and the more accurate / sensitive the scale used, the more likely you will weigh a car the night before and have it be fine, then weigh it in the morning and have it be over due to moisture or some other issue. A few tricks that have worked for us.... I have a medical grade scale good to 0.001grams. This is a blessing and a curse. The airflow over the sclaeplate can actually affect

Uhhh yeah, I don't think I would involve ANYONE in council or district for that matter until you know exactly what you are dealing with! All you are inviting is a witch hunt that will at BEST result in the "offending" scout being kicked out of the unit, at worst it will kill and dismantle your entire unit. I'm not saying you don't address it, but to suggest a paid scouter needs to be informed (or that the police be called!) is a HUGE leap on very little, second-hand information. First, from the OP - this was an overheard conversation from one of their sons. This was NOT a son coming to

I don't know about the form, but YES you can have a military doc do your physical. We used to do them all the time for scouts on the military bases when I was active duty. Dean

"While the Scouts who see their adult win or do well in a competition will or might see him or her as some sort of super hero? What take home message do the Scouts who watch their adult leader lose bring home?" Hopefully, they get a lesson in how to be a gracious winner OR looser, whichever the case may be. It was done as a way to spice up an otherwise "boring" hike as defined by most youth. Kids in general do not like to hike for the sake of hiking. They want a goal, be it geocaching, finding a hidden landmark along the trail, etc... My scouts regularly pick up small sticks along the

In general, I agree with the premise of adult vs. scout and big scout vs little scout is a bad idea. The one exception I would make is in regards to a personal best measured versus a leader with an incentive award. As a leader who has on occasion had to push a group of cubbies on a hike to go farther or quicker than they thought possible.... We had an adult in the front and one in the back of the group. I was the "rabbit" and scouts were the "jackyls". I got a 2 minute head start up the trail (day hike, 2.5 mile and roughly 1000 ft evelation gain). Any 'jackyl' that could beat th

Not sure of the reasons behind BSA's policy change, but I would have been more in favor of a training course than an outright "ban". Hard to teach survival skills when the whole "This is how to make an improvised stove" part becomes just textbook and no more hands on training. But alas, it seems the "adventure" of scouting is on a constant downslope to "project management" coursework, but I digress... As someone who majored in Chemistry in my undergrad days, I see no inherent danger with alcohol over white gas or any other liquid fuel. The danger is in poor construction and no on/off s

If I am not mistaken, the colors for the cub and Boy Scout version of the religious knot are slightly different. I'll have to look in my insignia guide when I get home. I know there is a difference in color for the youth and adult religious knot. Other than the religious knot, the ONLY other thing a scout may transfer from cub scouts to boy scouts is the Arrow of Light. Dean

I have LOTS of thoughts about this, none very positive.... But hey, if the spanish speakers want Woodbadge, then good for them. Kinda like the whole "soccer after school" experiment. BSA sees an untapped, under-utilized resource (the ever growing, hispanic, catholic population) and like many retailers of goods, they are looking for a way to tap into an emerging market. The heavy emphasis on family and religion in most of hispanic culture dovetails well with BSA's stated goals and aims. Why does this concern me? Well, now some of my FOS donation and my son's annual payment to