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Mass exodus from a unit.... past reasons ??


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Oh - Sorry I did not see this sooner!

 

Lisabob - thanks for the support, but I met Baden earlier this week on the boards. I unfortunately had come back from a very angry and hostile district council meeting and was very aggressive myself.. I took some of that aggression on on Baden.. I did a appologize, but Baden wants to continue the banter..

 

Baden - To truth, I really do enjoy the banter, but you need to learn how to ruffle my feathers a little more subtly, with humor, or just has play devils advocate. And don't attack other boarders who try to come to my rescue.. It is just as rude as what I did to you that first night. You don't want them to start following you around on the board in the same fashion.. You want them to find humor in the banter and not take up arms at you.

 

Baden's been trying to sterotype me in other posts, as well as this one.. I'm suppose to be "reliving my youth through scouts and totin lots of knots etc.. etc..".. Well he hasn't got it right yet, but it's a funny image.

 

So I may be way off with my image of Baden.. But if you look up top on this website for the picture of the gruff guy by the name of "Bill".. That's who I picture when talking to Baden.. One of those scouters who is just a lovable, but grumpy stubborn old coot, that although he is full of lots of bluster, everybody loves him anyway.. He is probably all marshmellow fluff on the inside..

 

Tone things do a smidge Baden.. But look forward to our next meeting.

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And here I thought BadenP & I had a special, one-of-a-kind sort relationship.. Baden, I'm hurt!! You've been "puttin' people in their place" long before me.

 

Yep I woke the grizzly bear up out of his sleep.. I just need to hug him a bit until he settles back down.

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This happened to me when I was an SPL way back when, only with a Varsity team. A number of the older boys, including me, were invited to join this thing with the understanding that the intent was to complement the troop's activities, not replace them.

 

Unfortunately, that's not what happened. The older Scouts in the Varsity team soon disappeared entirely, as far as the troop was concerned. I saw it for what it was turning into, and being SPL of the troop, I had to withdraw from the team to concentrate on keeping the troop intact.

 

So this sort of thing can happen even with the best of intentions. What's important is what you do to respond to the event.

 

@ BadenP - Relax. Breathe. Smile. :)(This message has been edited by sherminator505)

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Anyway, it isn't very likely going to work. See, I believe that when somebody is trying to shove another person around (whether literally or figuratively), the folks standing nearby have an obligation to say something.

 

Ah, spring. I think I'll go out and enjoy the sunshine for a bit.

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moosetracker

If I hurt your feelings in my responses to you I do apologize, anyone who devotes their free time to scouting is okay with me. Mea culpa.

 

Lisabob

I am glad you see yourself as the guardian of this site, however since you falsely accused me months ago of being pro rape in the Roman Polanski thread here I now take everything you say as irrelevant and emotional dribble from a woman with a painful past. I truly do feel sorry for you and hope you are getting help with your anger issues.

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So the hatchet is offically buried..

 

I'm am glad BadenP. I sincerely offer you my virtual hand in friendship. You did not hurt my feeling.. I know I hurt yours with my original response. I truely and sincerly tried to appoligize.

 

I was just surprised you were not accepting a sincere appology, so had to figure out another way to calm you down.

 

Friendships are forged under stranger circumstances..

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You're right MT - I had an excellent crew and an excellent committee on both the troop and adult side. But I also had this:

 

- A crew in our council whose exisitence was "oppositional" to their troop. Like you described it was truly SAD.

- The rumor mill that ignored the dozens of other crew-troop pairings (as well troops in close proximity) that operated successfully "by the book".

- Paranoid adults who tried to protect us all from a rumored hypothetical scenario when 1) it was not occuring in our district, 2) there were no signs of it occuring in our units, and 3) our youth urgently needed us to stop bickering and step up to help them.

- Folks who would use our "issues" to continue personal arguments that half the people in the room had no clue about.

 

If it weren't for the youth being willing to forgive us -- if it weren't for them pushing us to do what the program says we're supposed to do in spite of our hurt feelings ... we would have been sunk.

 

Like sherminator said, kids vote with their feet. So I guess one primary cause for mass exodus can be not listening to them ....

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No, BadenP, you are mistaken. I see every one of us as "guardians" of this site. That is how societies function and develop societal norms of behavior. But, I won't continue this conversation with you any further since it has moved away from the topic of the thread.

 

 

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-Having scouts who are verbally or physically aggressive towards other scouts without being corrected/stopped by adult leaders.

 

This is not to say that you have to throw out a scout who has issues (aren't most scouts a work in progress?). But it does mean that if you are going to give all the benefit of the doubt to the aggressor scouts without ensuring the safety of the others, you ought not be surprised when families walk.

 

-Having two leaders who each have a SM vision for how things should be run.

 

-Failing to hold the scouts to the boy led aspect of scouting. Then when you aren't providing enough "fun" it is the troop's/adults' fault rather than something that the scouts pony up to fix.

 

-Having scout leaders who are doing such a fine job leading that no one else feels the need to or feels qualified to step forward into leadership roles. Then when the leaders move on (kids age out, burnout, move) there isn't anyone from the farm team to step up.

 

-When scouts or adults carry disagreements from other associations (school, sports, church) into scouting. For the longest time I couldn't figure out the dynamics in our first pack. I finally realized that one group went to church together, another group had kids in the same school since preschool and another group had done soccer and baseball together for years. There were actually two sets of parents who weren't on speaking terms over some call in baseball from the year before. (This might be more common in military/expat units.)

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