Order of the Arrow elections are important program aspects of all troops, crews, and ships. A unique feature of the OA election is that each unit may conduct one unit election annually. With the introduction of the Scouts BSA pilot program allowing girls and boys to be in one unit, it is important that clarification be shared about conducting that unit election.
Following the direction of the Scouts BSA division, units participating in the pilot should be operating as a single unit and using a single unit number. As such, those units participating in this pilot program should conduct only one unit election and all eligible members, girls and boys, should be presented on the voting ballot during the unit’s OA election.
Operationally, the OA understands that the previous unit numbers of the combined troops should exist in Lodgemaster and reflect individuals by those old troop numbers. For data entry purposes, individuals elected in their respective troop for boy and troop for girls will need to be updated in separate units in Lodgemaster. However, that does not mean there should be two elections for a combined pilot troop where there is one election by the girls and one election by the boys.
As an example, if Troop 1234, a troop for boys, and Troop 5678, a troop for girls, are participating in the pilot, and they choose to use Troop 1234 as their identifying unit number, Troop 1234 will hold an election. Once the election is concluded, Lodgemaster records for the boys would be updated within Troop 1234 and records for the girls would be updated within Troop 5678, because those two units are where the youth are currently represented in Lodgemaster.
If the council creates a new unit, which is not recommended, Troop 9876 for the units in the above scenario, records for all elected members would be updated in Troop 9876.