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Enough with the Commemorative Council Strips
Enough with all the commemorative council strips. I attended a Scouting conference over the weekend and noticed that at least half of the people in the room were wearing some sort of commemorative council strip (myself included). Some of the strips were for significant events like anniversaries. Others were for comparitively trivial events. It seems like some councils are using their council strip as a temporary patch. Enough already... granted, this is more of an observation than an innovation.
Idea # 962Other
Comments
John Oneil 19 days ago
My Council has the "official" strip as well as two FOS donor strips each year. We had an special strip two years ago for our Council's 90th anniversary. For a 90th anniversary, I think that should get a little extra recognition. What were some of these "trivial" events you speak of?
Sharon Larson 16 days ago
Our council has a plethora of council strips - one for $350 sales in popcorn; one for FOS gift of $150 annually - so a new one every year!; ones for Cub Scouts stuff - ones for the 100th Anniversary. I have a different council patch on each of my uniforms - at least 5. And I've worked in the council 7 years. Hummm....
John Whitford 16 days ago
I like the concept of 'recognition' that goes along with various issues of csp's. What I object to is creating a rarity just to create a rarity. CSP collecting should be a fun activity and CSP's should be affordable and accessable to everyone, at least within any given council. I've seen CSP's issued for events with fewer than 10 people making up a contingent, even fewer than 5 in one case. This creates a 'problem' as in these cases the 'contingent' members get the patches and then can sell or trade them for many times their cost to those that are trying to have complete sets of that council or that type of event. As long as the volunteers and kids are having a good time, I don't see the harm of multiple issues in a council.
jotoro 16 days ago
I think having multiple versions of CSP's goes against one of the core methods of scouting, uniform. You can't be uniform if everyone is wearing a different CSP. The CSP is meant to be something that identifies your belonging to a council.

Baden-Powell insisted on uniforming his scouts to remove some of the social differences that the boys had. By creating CSP's for FOS or other high ticket item events we subtly reestablish class differences into the BSA.

I think that some exceptions can be made, but some councils go overboard. My last council created over 30 different CSP's in 5 years.
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