Several parents have put their own address on the Scout e-mail list even though their son’s name is also on it.  I understand–you want to know what is going on and you want to be able to monitor communications.  But that means you get three e-mails instead of just one.  Let me try to talk you out of putting adult names on the Scout list unless your son doesn’t have an e-mail address.

First, adults will just about never use the Scout list all by itself.  My e-mails, for instance, go to Adults or Adults plus Scouts, almost never just to the Scouts.  The Scout list might be used alone, but almost always by another Scout for communication on advancement or an Eagle project or something like that.  So if I want to send out an e-mail just to Scouts, I will probably ask the SPL to send it.

But, you ask, how can I monitor Scout e-mails?  That brings us to:

Second, there are at least two adult names on the Scout list.  One of them is mine.  Another is John Woodhouse’s.  So even though we get multiple e-mails, we do it just to provide some monitoring.

Since starting the list how many inappropriate e-mails have I seen from Scouts?  None.  Zero.  But if we did, we would speak to the Scout about it.

-Hank Manz