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Female youth meeting with District Eagle Chair


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When it comes time for these new female youth Scouts to begin working on their Eagle projects, what adult leadership (21 years old & over) will be required when meeting with the District Eagle Chair?  In our District, when a Scout is beginning to work on his Eagle project, he meets with the District Eagle Chair to review the proposal and obtain the needed signature.  The Eagle Chair always has the Scout bring a parent so that 2-deep leadership(?) requirement has been met.  This has always worked in that it could be mom or dad attending.  In the future, when the youth is a female, does the policy require that only mom could attend?  Or at least another adult female, which would then require at least another Scout so that there is no 1-on-1 contact between Scout/ adult. If only dad brings the female youth, then there would not be an adult female at that meeting.  I know that this isn't an issue, yet, but it will come up very soon.

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In our district there is not a face to face meeting to get the district approval.

Scout working on the Eagle project, after getting unit approvals, sends the PDF and signatures to the district person.   Copying in unit leader, etc.  The district reviews and either approves, approves with some small recommended additions, rejects and send back to unit for review.  Original signature page is left in a drop box.

If there were some challenges with the unit and the process, then a meeting can be scheduled with the unit leader, Boy Scout, etc.

In our particular area I would presume no changes to the current general process.

Edited by Jameson76
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I agree with @ParkMan.  This situation is similar to the merit badge counselor (MBC) situation where the MBC counts as 1 registered adult and the parent of the Scout counts as the second adult.

From the Guide to Safe Scouting: Youth Protection and Barriers to Abuse FAQs

 

Quote

 

Adult Supervision

Q:  The Barriers to Abuse say that there must be two registered adults present for all Scouting activities and meetings.  Does that include merit badge counseling? Fund-raising events?

A. Yes. However, the parent or legal guardian of the Scout may serve as the second adult. This parent or legal guardian does not have to be a registered leader.

 

 

(And by "the parent or legal guardian", I think they mean a parent / guardian of every Scout who is present -- I don't think one parent would work for multiple Scouts from different families.)

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, scotteg83 said:

If they are both published by BSA, they would both stand.

I appreciate the sentiment but disagree.  If the BSA publishes two documents with different guidance on an issue they can't both be right.   Not to mention it's confusing for volunteers.  The BSA updates the G2SS every quarter.  How hard is it to write a clear and concise policy?  

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There's two different issues here.

1) the question of which stands in court really has nothing to do with the BSA directly.  In court, it will be up to whichever lawyer makes the more compelling argument.  In this case the BSA has two documents - one which defines the policy and one which expands and clarifies it.  Here, I think just about any lawyer would be able to make the argument that both hold.  But, I'm not a lawyer - so perhaps I'm wrong.

2) I completly agree that the BSA should be more precise in this language.  There's probably something like 10-20 different adult supervision scenarios that exist.  I don't want more rules, but writing these exisiting scenarios out makes a whole lot of sense to me.

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35 minutes ago, allangr1024 said:

In our district the scout meets with an Eagle project approval committee of three adult volunteer scouters.  Youth protection is not a problem.

Are you sure?  If your three-person Eagle board is all male, it will not be in compliance with YP for a female Eagle candidate unless the candidate's parent is also in the room.

 

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23 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

Are you sure?  If your three-person Eagle board is all male, it will not be in compliance with YP for a female Eagle candidate unless the candidate's parent is also in the room.

 

Female or Coed units have to have at least one adult female at all unit activities to meet the YP guidelines.  An Eagle Board is not a unit activity but a district/council activity. 

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1 hour ago, allangr1024 said:

In our district the scout meets with an Eagle project approval committee of three adult volunteer scouters.  Youth protection is not a problem.

My son did his Eagle project about a year ago. The process here is for the District Advancement Chair (or a designee from the Advancement Committee) to meet with the scout to review and approve his Eagle project. Still not an issue as he/she requests a parent to be present at the meeting.  Requiring 3 adults would sure burnout the advancement committee mighty fast!!

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1 hour ago, walk in the woods said:

I appreciate the sentiment but disagree.  If the BSA publishes two documents with different guidance on an issue they can't both be right.   Not to mention it's confusing for volunteers.  The BSA updates the G2SS every quarter.  How hard is it to write a clear and concise policy?  

None of this would have anything to do with court.  There is no law anywhere that says that a minor cannot be alone with an adult: any adult, any gender, no relation.  The rules we have are internal rules and only govern scouting activity, the worst that can happen for violating them is having your membership revoked.  

To the OP's issue: our district is like Jameson76, there's rarely face to face contact with the District Eagle Coordinator.  This does bring up some interesting questions though.  I would say the MBC meeting is the most analogous situation, and so EBORs, project committees where they exist, etc., are going to have to be aware that they either need to have female leaders present or ensure there is a parent there.

This will be interesting when it comes to EBORs, in our district the candidate submits names of folks for members outside of whoever the district coordinator is bringing, that would put some responsibility on the candidate to nominate some female board members.  In those unfortunate districts where it's the same group of old boys who comprise all the EBORs they're going to have to recruit some female leaders and open up their process --- probably not a bad thing for lots of reasons.

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12 minutes ago, ValleyBoy said:

Female or Coed units have to have at least one adult female at all unit activities to meet the YP guidelines.  An Eagle Board is not a unit activity but a district/council activity. 

The requirement for female leadership when female youth are present is universal, it covers all scouting activities not just unit activities. "A registered female adult leader 21 years of age or over must be present for any activity involving female youth."

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