Lost Merit Badge Card

[sangrang]

Wow! This is the 1st time I've ever posted and I've read so many opinions that I'm not sure how helpful this has been, but it is interesting!
Let me address a few questions. My son does not have to redo the badge as the current MBC has accepted his old work after meeting with him several times to go over it. He wants to have one more meeting with him and then will sign off the new card with the current date. That's the problem because the date is 18 months after the date he made Life using this MB. It is the Citizen in the Comm MB. The mixup happened when we first moved here (my son was 14) and so we were new to the troop. Everything was different (we moved from another state) and I think that my husband was trying to be helpful in getting my son adjusted to the troop so he was attending the meetings with him at first. He had one more requirement on the badge which was done in the new troop and then the card was handed over to the SM. I don't know why a counselor in the new troop wasn't involved. I also don't know why noone realized that the badge didn't make it to the next Court of Honor. My son even has a binder with all his blue cards and advancement cards etc together and it still got missed. All I know is that the troop's record have him down as having earned the badge and the council doesn't. Both troop and council have him at Life rank. There is a card for the Life rank but no card for the MB that anyone can find. As for the last post, my son has been a scout since 1st grade continuously, earned his Arrow of Light Award, has attended Philmont, is a member of OA and Venture. He enjoys scouting. He has not always just focused on earning MB's and that's why he ran short. He is finishing them up now and will have more than enough to qualify by this summer with 6 months to spare before he turns 18.

[ICanCanoeCanU]

Well fair enough. With a little more explanation from you, the details help in understanding what and how it happened.

As for re-doing the badge, I had said there were too many variables to make him do the entire badge or just sign off. Sounds like a reasonable solution was made.

This post may not have been very helpful to you but hopefully it did help others in seeing the importance of record keeping and following through.

[lifescoutforlife]

I as a MBC also keep abook with the blues cards I have did over the years. Very helpful when something comes up like this.

[wagionvigil]

At Laurel Caverns we keep the counselor record for many years. I have had to look up scouts from two or three years back to replace a card. WE keep them by the dates they were there.

[ASM-142]

Wow! This is the 1st time I've ever posted and I've read so many opinions that I'm not sure how helpful this has been, but it is interesting!
Let me address a few questions. My son does not have to redo the badge as the current MBC has accepted his old work after meeting with him several times to go over it. He wants to have one more meeting with him and then will sign off the new card with the current date. That's the problem because the date is 18 months after the date he made Life using this MB. It is the Citizen in the Comm MB. The mixup happened when we first moved here (my son was 14) and so we were new to the troop. Everything was different (we moved from another state) and I think that my husband was trying to be helpful in getting my son adjusted to the troop so he was attending the meetings with him at first. He had one more requirement on the badge which was done in the new troop and then the card was handed over to the SM. I don't know why a counselor in the new troop wasn't involved. I also don't know why noone realized that the badge didn't make it to the next Court of Honor. My son even has a binder with all his blue cards and advancement cards etc together and it still got missed. All I know is that the troop's record have him down as having earned the badge and the council doesn't. Both troop and council have him at Life rank. There is a card for the Life rank but no card for the MB that anyone can find. As for the last post, my son has been a scout since 1st grade continuously, earned his Arrow of Light Award, has attended Philmont, is a member of OA and Venture. He enjoys scouting. He has not always just focused on earning MB's and that's why he ran short. He is finishing them up now and will have more than enough to qualify by this summer with 6 months to spare before he turns 18.

The date of the MB does not matter at this point. What matters is the date that council has on record when the scout earned Life.

[evmori]

Thanks for the info.

Actually the date does matter. It could be a sticking point.

As A MB counselor, I keep all of my portion of the blue cards for every MB I have counseled.

[jhawk]

We had a similar thing happen in our troop, although the boy in question has always been in our troop. When he turned in his paperwork for Life he was told that the council had no record of him earning a particular merit badge. He had his recognition card from a court of honor but either the guy who was AC at the time didn't turn it in or the council didn't record it properly. As the current AC, I just put it on a new advancement sheet with the date on his recognition card and it went through. This particular scout was playing "beat the clock" as he was out of the troop for 2 years and came back to go from Star to Eagle with one day to spare before his 18th birthday and it all worked out fine for him.
Our council never asks to see a blue card at any point unless a scout needs it to prove having earned a badge when there is no record. Even then, though, it has to be recorded on an advancement sheet to get recorded.

[FrankJ]

Here is a thought. You now have the blue card so the merit badge is complete. Talk to the advancement chair. When he records the date on the advancement sheet, use the date in the troop records. Point out since it is in the troop records has being earned on that date, it not the scout's fault it is not recorded at council & the advanement chair is only correcting a paper work mistake.

This should not be problem with the Eagle board because the record will show he earned the badge & the eagle board cannot change the date he earned life because it has already been reviewed. So the board should be concerned with scout spirit & how the eagle project was done.

[gwd-scouter]

Last year, I had a problem with the last two Eagle Scout applications sent to our Council. In both cases, they had NO records for these Scouts. Nothing, zilch, nada.

Further talks with the Council turned up that they didn't have any advancement records for our Troop AT ALL prior to those I turned in after becoming Scoutmaster a couple of years ago!

Without going into the tribuluations that were our former Troop's adult leadership, suffice to say that they were pretty lax in turning in advancement records. In those days our Council was also slack in requiring advancement sheets to purchase rank patches and merit badges.

In both of these cases, the Council accepted a TroopMaster advancement record for both Scouts and all was well.

A question though, why do some councils require verification of blue cards and others don't - ours does not.

[Mrw]

My take on this one:

If the troop records recorded an appropriate date for the completion of the merit badge, then there must have been a reason for this, even if the blue card cannot now be found. I would put it on an advancement record form, using the date in the troop records, and send that on to Council (presuming the Council does not have it already recorded).

In our neck of the woods, that would fix all the problems.

Blue cards come to me as advancement chair. I record the advancement, currently in our copy of Troopmaster and also using on-line advancement to send to Council. Blue cards never go farther than me. I keep paper copies of the advancement records and I kept that last part of the blue cards in case of questions. I recently noticed that someone cleaned the troop closet and threw out the blue cards.

If there is some problem with the dates or badges Council has recorded in ScoutNet, they want a copy of the advancement report to fix it.

We have a separate date form that goes to Council with the Eagle application that they do use to verify the dates before sending the application on to the district to get the EBOR scheduled.