Boy need to be registered as scout to attend YM Activities?


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My Son has been attending Wednesday night activities for the last 3 months. Sunday I was approached rather aggressively by the quorm advisor telling me I needed to fill out a Scout application. When I balked, my son has expressed he has no desire to progress in the BSA programs, I will not registar him if he will not set and reach goals or achivments.

The leader became rather insistant that I regerster him anyways, if I wanted him to continue to attend on Wednesday Night for activities. I took this last statement to mean if he wants to continue to attend any activties durring the week he has to be a scout.

Later he told me they want the boys registered for insurance purposes, that the BSA was the activity arm for the YM. In the ward I grew up in had no Scout Troop until I was 18.

I walked away not taking the application.

He missed the activity tognight, since sunday he has indicated he woulld sign up to be in Scouts. My whole point is he should be able to attend activites wether he is registered or not. Months ago I discussed the idea of him not being in scouts with our Bishop, he seemed to ok with it just wanted him attending and taking part in the activities. Suddenly this Pushy leaders comes across like Bruce can't attend our activities unless he is an offical Scout.

These same leaders have decided to hold an additional Patrol Meeting 2 sundays a month, I thought sunday meeting were to focus on the Preisthood, not adding meetings to focus on Scouting.

Is this common practices or am I dealing with overzealous leaders?

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Rank Advancement

Scouts is not simply about rank advancement and merit badge achievement. In fact, some scout books admit that some boys may not have the desire to progress down this path. There are a lot of other benefits to scouting.

Insurance

Insurance is particularly important when boys go on camps or activities outside the ward or stake boundaries. I can see the advisors point here.

Overzealous

It does seem like the adviser is pushing rather hard.

I guess I'm having a hard time seeing why you wouldn't simply sign him up as a scout with the understanding that you do not want him pushed to earn merit badges and advance in rank. Skip the Court of Honors and simply participate in the activities.

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While a lot of the activities are scout related the church also has activities. If he is not registered he will not be able to attend the scout camps and summer camps and such (but it sounds as though he doesn't want to anyway).... for those activities insurance is part of the registration process.

However, temple trips, mid week activities (though sometimes scout related are not "scout" activities - the yw are also in the building doing activities and they are not registered), youth conf. etc are priesthood activities. The church has their own insurance (and their own permission slips) for those activities and have nothing to do with scouts.

Scouts is the "activity" arm.... something to base activities around not the point or the purpose of the priesthood or the ym's program. I would go back to the bishop and discuss this again. Did they also say something to your son? Is that discouraging him from attending the activities? If they did then I might insist the bishop speak to the ppl that have the issue and insist they apologize to your son and invite him back. It's thoughtless words like this that have pushed youth out of the church in the past and there is no place for it in the gospel.

Oh FYI (in case you didn't already know) the Duty to God is something he may still participate in if he is not doing scouts and as a parent I would encourage it. Yes it also serves to qualify ym for their religious patch in scouts but it is not only for that. If you look in the book at the program there are specific ones that have to be done for the scouts but there are a lot of options that are not scout related and he can earn that award without scouts.

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Here is what Church Handbook of Instructions 2 says about it:

8.13.4Scouting

Where Scouting is authorized by the Church, quorums may participate in Scouting activities during Mutual. Scouting should help young men put into practice the gospel principles they learn on Sunday.

Each member of the bishopric oversees the Scouting program for the Aaronic Priesthood quorum he oversees. Members of the ward Young Men presidency generally serve as Scout leaders. Or the bishopric may call assistant quorum advisers as Scout leaders, with members of the Young Men presidency called to serve as assistant Scout leaders.

In each quorum, the bishop usually appoints the quorum president or one of his assistants in the priests quorum to serve as the youth leader of the Scouting program. However, he may appoint other young men as youth Scout leaders.

Where Scouting is authorized by the Church, young men ages 12 to 15 should be registered. Young men ages 16 and 17 should be registered if they are pursuing rank advancements or if the stake president or bishop chooses to sponsor Scouting programs for young men of this age.

All adult Scout leaders should register before they begin their service and should receive proper training in their responsibilities. In the United States, registered adult leaders receive liability protection from the Boy Scouts of America.

The Church pays all or part of the fees for registering young men and adult leaders in Scouting. The Church also pays for unit chartering. Registration and chartering expenses are paid from the stake general checking account. The Church provides these funds in addition to the budget allowance.

The bishopric organizes a ward Scout committee to ensure that Scouting functions properly as a supporting activity for Aaronic Priesthood quorums.

Where there are few young men, a Scout troop may be organized to serve multiple wards and branches or, in some instances, an entire stake or district.

For information about financing Scouting, see 8.13.7. For additional information about Scouting, see the Church’s Scouting Handbook.

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Before I go into explaining why I think you should register your boy for scouting, let me just state that I have no problem with your son not wanting to do the rank advancements or merit badges. That's perfectly acceptable to me (and I'm an avid scouter) and don't think that any boy should be pushed into these kinds of things. If he really wants nothing to do with scouting but wants to participate in the weekly activities, I'd recommend he register for scouting and show up to weekly activities without a uniform.

Now, let me explain why I think he should register for scouting--

The primary reason is insurance. BSA leaders undergo a lot of training. If they are current on their training and file the proper forms, the BSA's insurance will cover them and the boys for all trips and activities. However, part of the condition of getting your son covered on BSA insurance is that he be a registered scout. One of the conditions for leaders to receive coverage is that they only lead registered scouts on trips.

So, if your son is not a registered scout, goes on a trip, and gets hurt, BSA coverage will not cover the incident. That may not seem like a big deal to you, but if your son is not registered, goes on a trip, and one of the registered scouts gets hurt, the BSA can decline to cover the incident on the grounds that if the leaders hadn't been supervising an unregistered boy, the injury might not have happened. At that point, the leader is also exposed to litigation from the parents of the injured boy.*

Yes, it's convoluted and kind of crummy, but if you don't register your son, it is in the leaders' best interest not to allow your son to participate in activities.

You might think that not having the BSA insurance is no big deal, you can rely on the Church's insurance to cover injuries. Unfortunately, the Church's activity insurance is supplemental insurance, meaning it will only pay what your insurance won't pay for. Depending on the nature of the activity, you're probably better off with the BSA insurance (for instance, I'd rather be covered by the BSA when I go white water rafting than by the Church).

That's really all I can say about why I think you should register your son, even if he doesn't want to participate in some aspects of the program. The downside is that you're going to have to work with your son to defend the boundaries of what he is and isn't willing to do. You'll have a lot of well meaning leaders trying to push him into the program**. It's okay for him to say no.

* the BSA will also defend leaders against litigation as long as the follow all the guidelines to the best of their ability. Allowing an unregistered boy to participate could very well nullify that coverage.

** One of the flaws of a non-optional admission program.

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I have no idea what your area's BSA council is like, but if it's like the one I work for, there's a possibility your son might get registered as a Scout anyway via your ward MLS list. National BSA recognizes a MLS list of boys given to the district by a stake president as legitimate.

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The question is does your son want to go on rafting trips and such? If he does I agree he needs to be registered. But if all he wants to do is show up at the church on wed night (a church activity) and then youth conferences and temple trips etc then the church insurance is fine for that. The BSA insurance won't cover injuries at youth conference anyway, they aren't scout activities. The yw are covered for regular mid week activities.

So what activities does your son want to do? Decide on registration from there.

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Is it any wonder why the general statistics of the church are that 1 in 3 boys becomes less active when you have situations like the OP outlined. I have seen this in various wards over the years this -- the fanatic scout leader destroying testimonies.

As opposed to the fanatic personal progress leader? or the fanatic bishop? or the fanatic home teacher?

I suspect the activity rate of young men has less to do with fanatic scout leaders than it does with inexperienced and untrained youth leaders in general.

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I don't see what the big deal is if they are not asking you to pay any of his registration costs. The fact is, it is much easier for your son to be officially registered as a scout for insurance reasons. It is a big pain in the behind for a dual PH/Scouting leader to have to stop every time he plans an activity to stop and decide whether it can be a PH or a scouting activity, and thus whether to include your son or not. Sign the kid up as long as the ward is footing the bill. If he doesn't want to participate in any obviously scouting activities, then he is free to choose that. But the line gets blurred so often that it is just best to be registered so that if anything were to happen on an activity, then between the church and scouts, the leaders will know he is covered. If I were a leader and knew that your son was not registered as a scout because you don't care about scouts, I would err on the side of not inviting him to activities if there were any question as to which jurisdiction it falls under. It's simply easier if he were registered, and in most cases the ward covers the costs, so it's no big deal other than your time to fill out the form.

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At this point I have no problem filling out the form. My main objection was in the way I was approached, here fill this out, when questioned as to why since Bruce has no real intrest in the Scouting program did I need to regester him. The response was well if he wants to continue to attend Wed, night activities. Get with the program. I was shocked to learn that they allowed only Scouts to attend YM programs. Hearing this accompied with the e-mail sent the previous evening requiring our sons to attend an aditional meeting after the 3 hour block twice a month for a special Patrol Meetings. I am old enough to remember when the three hour block was started being instructed not to conduct extra meetings on Sundays whose purpose could be accomplished on regular activity days.

Thanks again to those who took time to address this issue.

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If you son is not interested in scouts, then I wouldn't worry about attending the patrol meetings, and I think you are right about having them on Sundays. I personally have a problem with doing anything scout-related on Sundays, even Courts of Honor. Just keep reminding yourself (and your son's leaders if they push things) that YM and scouts are meant to be a help to the boys, not for the boys to be a slave to.

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At this point I have no problem filling out the form. My main objection was in the way I was approached, here fill this out, when questioned as to why since Bruce has no real intrest in the Scouting program did I need to regester him. The response was well if he wants to continue to attend Wed, night activities. Get with the program. I was shocked to learn that they allowed only Scouts to attend YM programs. Hearing this accompied with the e-mail sent the previous evening requiring our sons to attend an aditional meeting after the 3 hour block twice a month for a special Patrol Meetings. I am old enough to remember when the three hour block was started being instructed not to conduct extra meetings on Sundays whose purpose could be accomplished on regular activity days.

Thanks again to those who took time to address this issue.

You might want to let your Bishop be aware of the approach. Your son needs to be welcome at midweek activities regardless of the leaders feelings.

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