Merit Badge Miscellany

What this page is

Section 7.0.4 of the Guide to Advancement, which the Guide itself titles Merit Badge Miscellany. Every item cites the topic it came from.

It is not a procedure. It is nine independent answers, and the plan draws them as nine branches off one starting point because the Guide sets no order between them. One of the nine is a real procedure, and it is the one people arrive looking for: what a unit leader may do about a badge that could not actually have been earned.

Requirements changed while a Scout was working

Once a new or revised requirement appears on the Merit Badges web page, any Scout beginning work must use it. A Scout who has already started under the old requirements may finish under them.

There is a second case, and it is the one that catches people. If the change turns up first in a revised pamphlet, a handbook or another official release, before it reaches the web page, then unless the announcement says otherwise youth have through 31 December of that year to choose: carry on with the old, or switch to the new. A Scout who has not begun by that date must use the new requirements.

Discontinued is not the same as changed

Nobody may begin work on a discontinued merit badge. If actual and purposeful effort, more than simply incidental to taking part in Scouting, had already begun before discontinuation took effect, and work actively continues, the badge may be completed and counts toward rank. Whether the patch itself can be presented is a question of availability.

The Guide names the misconception outright: it is not the case that a discontinued badge may be earned for as long as the patch and the requirements can still be found somewhere.

The recourse procedure, and its limits

When it is plainly evident a Scout could not have personally fulfilled the requirements, a unit leader may act, and the Guide fences the process on every side. Consult the people involved first. Hold the conversation in a positive environment, with a parent or assistant leader present as an observer. The Scout must not be retested. Decide quickly, within 30 days of discovery if possible. Offer the name of at least one other counselor for anything outstanding.

And the sentence that governs all of it: because the badge was never actually earned, nothing is being taken away.

It is not an opportunity for retesting, for imposing another set of standards over a counselor's, or for arguing that a Scout was too young, too small or too immature to have done the work.

Most "prerequisites" are not

Emergency Preparedness requires the First Aid merit badge, but nothing says First Aid must come first, so it is not a prerequisite. It is just another requirement, and Emergency Preparedness is simply not finished until it is met. Scuba Diving is the real thing: requirement 2 says the Swimming merit badge must be earned before the remaining requirements are completed.

How to read the graph

Each question is a branch off the top. Nested items are part of the item above them. Dashed lines apply only in the case written on the arrow, and the two questions above the plan decide which of those you see.