Q. Dear Ray,
I applied for staff and have since been advised that they do not need me now. Am I able to purchase the Centennial Sash? I would really like to have this as a memento.
A. Thank you for writing about the centennial sash.
We had several thousand Arrowman (mostly adult) apply to be a member of staff -- and a thousand less for applicants than we could accommodate.
Our overarching constraint was the physical facilities available to support the program. Note, we selected the largest university campus which had the suite of facilities needs we require for a program -- and we "thought outside the box" to the extreme degree, including utilization of nearly every reasonably-priced hotel room in the surrounding area.
Within that, our primary consideration in establishing both contingent targets and total staff numbers was to: 1) maximize the youth spaces on the contingents, providing spaces for only adults required to ensure that we had a safe and policy-compliant program and 2) reducing staffing to the minimum number required (again, to maximize youth contingent spaces).
That said, as I mentioned above, we still were not able to accommodate all staff applicants.
On the centennial sash question, we are not making that available to staff applicants who were not selected. The purpose of the sash was to serve primarily as a programmatic element for the national conference. The only exception we have made is to adults who were confirmed as a contingent member with their lodge but were withdrawn given our new adult contingent targets. We contrast this to staff applicants who are not guaranteed a space until after they have been approved by their lead adviser.
I realize the demand for the centennial sash, but certainly appreciate your understanding in light of the above.
As always, thanks for all you do for our youth in the OA program!
Ray