Please ensure that your Camp Rodney merit badge picks are completed and brought with you tonight for Mr. Les to receive. If you are already on Spring Break, please make sure those picks are emailed to Mr. Les.
We will spend the first half of tonight's meeting discussing Camp Rodney, and the second half will be a combination of planning a "Lost Child Project", discussing shoulder loops, and working on knots.
There will be no meeting next week due to Spring Break and the following week will be a committee meeting, that said - we will not have a Scout meeting again till Thursday, April 20, 2023. If anyone needs a conference tonight, please email the Scoutmaster asap so we can ensure there are ASMs to support you.
Reminder - Those going to Camp Lewis for the Merit Badge weekend (April 14 - 16), that event will take place prior to our next Scout meeting.
Historical Information Related to Shoulder Loops
Shoulder loops - those small pieces of looped broad ribbon - were introduced as part of the BSA's khaki-tan uniforms designed by Oscar de Renta in 1973. The shoulder loops identify youth and adult members of the BSA to each other by program area or level of service.
Youth and adults (both professionals and volunteers) wear a set of shoulder loops.
The original intent of the shoulder loops were to prevent Scouters from having to purchase two or three shirts, with differing insignia on each shirt identifying their role and scope. One shirt would be worn, for instance, by a Scoutmaster of a Troop who also serves as a District or Council-level volunteer. By changing only the shoulder loops, the Boy Scout leader (red shoulder loops) becomes a District/Council-level Scouter (silver shoulder loops).
Later, as many volunteers served as Cub Scout, Boy Scout, Venturing, and as either District/Council or Regional/National volunteers (or in roles in all of the above), the BSA realized that this perhaps was not a good idea for people to be switching loops to "fit the occasion." The BSA's National Uniform and Insignia Committee decided that the shoulder loops would "match the REGISTERED (paid) position of the individual".
This idea went nowhere fast. The BSA eventually discarded the dictum and instead, suggests now that the shoulder loops "should match the official position you hold within the Movement and preferably the position in which dues have been paid and in which you function within."
In 2004, the BSA officially changed the color scheme for Boy Scouts. Since 1964, the official "color" for Boy Scouts was "Scouting Red", to contrast with the khaki-green uniforms of that time. When the BSA adopted the khaki-tan field uniforms, the color remained. The current "field color" of the Boy Scout division of the BSA is now "Olive Green" (some of you military types would probably call it "OD" or "olive drab"). Various BSA manuals and booklets will reflect the new color scheme starting in 2013; and as old stocks of red shoulder loops go away from Scout Shops(tm) and local Council trading posts, the red shoulder loop will become history. Scouts and Scouters wearing red shoulder loops should change them to the current olive (dark) green shoulder loops for best uniforming.
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