Hello, I am the Adv Chair for my troop. I have two BSA youth members whose Recruiter strip from Cubs have each carried over to their individual BSA Scoutbook page. It was my understanding that only the AOL and the Religious knot were to carry over to BSA. Am I mistaken in this understanding, or is there a programming error at work? Thank you, Brian Heflin
Respectfully, this doesn’t seem like a council issue. Whether an award should carry over from Cubs to BSA seems entirely a National issue.
Brian, I looked in the current Guide to Awards and Insignia and the Recruiter patch is listed under the heading " Universal and Nonunit Insignia" section, which suggests it could carry over and the award is the same. When we crossed over Scouts who had earned it in the Pack it stayed on their Scoutbook accounts along with the Arrow of Light. All other Cub Scout awards we no longer visible on the Scout’s profile page. The Awards central website states that “any youth member” can earn the award. Suggesting it permanent like the religious knots.
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What @Stephen_Hornak is getting at, @BrianHeflin, is that the council is meant to be the point of contact for scouters on policy questions like what you’re asking about regarding the awards. Those discussions used to occur here, with the caveat that the opinions expressed weren’t official BSA policy. However, the BSA directed that those discussions were no longer going to be allowed here and any such questions should be directed to the councils, who could reach out to national through channels to get an “official” answer if needed.
I looked at the Guide to Awards and Insignia as well, before coming on here to make my forum post. I saw the “Universal and Nonunit Insignia” section, and like you, thought “maybe that’s why it’s carried over?” But then I saw where that section includes things like the “World Conservation Award”, which most definitely doesn’t carry over from Cubs. The Cub and the BSA World Conservation Awards are entirely different color schemes for a reason, and earning the Cub award does not give the right to wear it in BSA. It has to be earned again. Hence, I don’t see a definitive answer to this question in the Guide to Awards and Insignia, concerning the Recruiter strip.
The forums are for technology not policy - talk to council if you really think this matters please
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This is a technology question. I have the same issue in scoutbook keeping the recruiter patch held over from cubscouts. When they didn’t earn it on the troop level…
I think we have a valid issue in the system holding on to that one award when it should just go with all the other cubscouts awards. Maybe it identifies it as the same award for cubs and troop. So if a cubscout has it, it assumes it was awarded on the troop level also.
Maybe just a data cell change to be rewarded on the troop level.
There are actually two questions there:
One is implied in that you are assuming that the award should not be carrying over:
That’s a policy question that you need to address with your council, who can address it with nationals.
The other is a technical question that hinges on the answer to the policy question. If the policy is that the award should carry over, then the system is performing correctly. If the policy is that it should not, then there’s likely a bug that requires fixing. So, without an answer to the policy question, it may or may not be a bug.
Your best approach is to put the policy question to your council, note that the answer has technical implications for Scoutbook/IA2, and that if the answer is that it shouldn’t carry over, then council should open a bug ticket with national IT to get the correction made. It’s regrettably a convoluted process, but it appears to be what the BSA is asking to be done, because the technical question depends on a policy answer.
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This is an issue that has been kicked around many times in many places. The system carries it over, that is known and has been that way for a long time. The questions that come up are if the award has to be re-earned or not, which there is not a super clear National answer about. Being that it can be looked at different ways, do we want to have it be a positive that a Scout keeps and possibly gets asked about by other Scouts thus encouraging them to recruit? Or do we want to gate keep and rip it off their uniform and tell them they need to re-earn it? I talk to Scouts about it being the most important patch on the uniform, and encourage them to always continue recruiting…
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