Virtual Patrols during Campouts

[Greying Beaver 10]

Hi,Kenk. I guess a little background might shed some light on this situation that happened about four +/- years ago. At the time we had 60+ boys registered, but only around 25-35 active. We use the NSP method, so the boys are also grouped by age. The three patrols were the 15-, 14-, and 13-year old patrols. Those are also the ages when boys seem to leave the program in largest numbers. And that was exactly what happened. The PL's involved were from the 15- and 14-year old patrols. The PL from the 15's was closing in on Eagle; from the 14's, Life. They were using the PL position as their leadership position requirement for their ranks. They stopped coming to meetings (school work, school atheletics, etc.) and stopped going on campouts. We are talking about a total of 25+ boys spread between these three patrols. When the troop stopped using the "virtual patrol method" for campouts, only six of the 25 were still active (1 from the 15's, two from the 14's and three from the 13's).

 

For the 15-year old boy, it would mean another 6 months minimum before he would be eligible for his Eagle BoR. Trouble was, he was the one whose inactivity started all of this. The other boys in the patrol were complaining. The APL was another one who was missing meetings and campouts. The 15's were on a slippery slope; one by one they left for various reasons, mostly school-related. They were all "Stalled-in-Star" and "Lingering-in-Life". Telephone calls by the SPL to these boys to see what was going on and were they going to get active again were ineffective.

 

Anyway, the six remaining boys had been "virtually patrolling" for most of this time anyway. Amalgamating them into a patrol and disbanding the other three patrols was an example of attrition and evolution in the troop. It happens. Yes, we lost around 50+/-% of our active boys, but it was a stronger troop for it.

 

The SM, through the TC, offered these boys who wanted to become active again other leadership positions, like Instructor and Troop Guides, with the stipulation that they go on campouts to do what INS's and TG's do on campouts. The two boys who had been PL's wanted not only to be PL's again, but also receive credit for the time that they had been PL's even during their "period of inactivity". The parents were the driving force behind this. The younger patrols' PL's were doing a good job. The older boys in the new patrol did not want these boys in their patrol, sorry, full up. Nobody could blame them. The active boys had been active; the inactive boys had been inactive. They say that they are coming on a campout; the patrol buys food for them, then neither these boys nor their money show up Friday evening and the difference in the money has to come from somewhere. The reverse was also true. They say that they are not coming on a campout and the patrol is short on food. This was in the good old days when the troop would pick campout locations three hours' drive away and not get into camp until very late. Going shopping on the way to camp was a disaster. Budgets got blown, way too much food was brought back or wasted not eaten. Ask these boys (and/or their parents) to pay for their share of the food when they didn't go on the campout? Ha! Ask them to bring their food money to the troop meeting before the campout? Ha!

 

"The feathers started flying" when all of this came to a head. They didn't accept the offer of INS and TG's. It would also mean coming to meetings and going on campouts regularly. That was the problem in the first place. The boys had been inactive long enough for the troop to evolve without them. They wanted back into a situation that no longer existed. That was expained to these boys and their families. The troop has a list of boys who remained registered but were inactive until they "heard the Eagle clock start ticking". Those boys came back with one question: "Can I still get my Eagle?" A little looking through records and a caladar gave them the answer. If the answer is "No. It's less than six months until your 18th birthday.", we tell them and they understand. If the answer is "Yes.", our Life-to-Eagle Coordinator outlines a plan for them. Cutest BobWhite (my wife) is a merit badge counselor for a bunch of MB's, including a handful of Eagle required. One of those boys was talking to my wife more that I did for almost two years. The SM found leadership positions and projects for him to do for those requirements. And I sat in on his BoR's. He asked no quarter and received none, either. And by golly, he did it. He made Eagle. He's now a "Hornet Fixer" on an aircraft carrier in the Navy. Still registered as an ASM, too.

 

The boy in the above paragraph was working his program when the problem with these other boys came to a head. The TC used him as an example of how we were willing to work with a boy to finish his Eagle work. They did not take our offer. It was their decision. Nasty situation every way you turned.

 

The end result of all of this is a troop with a higher percentage of active boys. Yes, we still have natural attrition, but no more "virtual" patrols.

[KoreaScouter 13]

If we have fewer than four boys from a patrol going on a campout, the PLC will look at combining them with a similar small group for menu planning/duty roster purposes. To be sure, an adult leader could insist that small group remains autonomous, with their own dining fly, patrol kitchen, and so on. But, we don't do that -- we let the Green Bars figure it out, and they do.

 

Personally, I find it amusing that some of us assume that imposing small-group hardships on a patrol will result in successful peer pressure to get more boys from the patrol(s) on a given campout. It just doesn't work that way. Boys join Scouting voluntarily, and in my SM conferences, when I ask them what they enjoy most about it, almost all say "camping". So, their desire to go camping isn't in question. I can put those absent on a given campout into one of several categories that's keeping him away. 1) family responsibilities; 2) homework; 3) sports; 4) not interested in this month's location and/or program; 5) work. Knowing that 2 or 3 Scouts will set up and tear down a patrol site by themselves will not change any of those external variables.

 

I just took a survey, sample of one (little KS; Eagle and SPL). He thinks it makes sense to form provisionals, but said that there have been campouts at which small patrols wanted to stay separate, and in those cases, that's exactly what they did -- up to them, in other words. Funny how that works.

 

Most of our Scouts tend to prefer one extreme or the other as far as tents are concerned. At one end, they get very small tents to save weight. At the other end, they get larger (up to 10 lb) tents to fit themselves, a buddy, and all their gear inside. If there's a storm or scary stories at campfire, the numbers inside a tent can increase considerably. At one summer camp, I saw 6 Scouts emerge one morning from a single Eureka Timberline 4, that already had two cots in it complicating the footprint. Granted, four of them were NSP little guys, but still...

 

KS