fred8033

All things aside ... just a verbage issue ... the term Upstander is junk. Shakespeare would weep. ... It sounds like a committee met repeatedly to pick a rallying word, but had to pick something. So, they chose upstander.

#1 Purpose of MBs ??? ... Going tangential. Not directly on this MB. I agree with "...there is a ton..." ... I fear this is yet another where BSA does a light weight, cheap, shallow introduction to a topic done much better in school and church. ... Scouting has historically been reactionary to society trends. Think STEM. Think the 1970s new scouting program that moved away from outdoors. At this point, I'm a bit lost on purposes of rank requirements versus MBs. I used to think MBs were about either skills development or career exploration. Now, MBs seem like a disorganized dumping ground for things we think kids should know. ... If it were for me, scouting should be focused on distinguishing itself by keeping kids moving and doing things they can't get elsewhere ... aka outdoor adventure and physical skills. Hiking. Swimming. Camping ... Welding. Wood working. etc. #2 Synonyms ... About this badge ... Society and Community are synonyms. They mean the same thing. We have two MBs named the same thing.

Ok. Thank you. No need for words such as "If you don't get it, you probably won't." Those words are ugly and mean. I understand your point. It's the personal connection of a heart felt apology. The human expression. ... I know I saw that during our SE's discussion and the discussion that followed between the SE and district leaders / unit leaders / CORs. He expressed everything you could express in a personal, heartfelt apology. It was painful. ... I'm sure other scout leader have experienced similar. In my post ... last night I asked the moderators to remove as it wasn't worth continuing ... it must have been removed after your reading ... my post quoted several articles showing BSA's apology. Here's the one that I thought was most human and not a press conference. https://www.bsarestructuring.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/BSA_An-Open-Letter-to-Victims.pdf I'm just not sure what the next level of apology is. IMHO, ... sometimes the hurt is so bad, that you can't move past an apology. You can hear the words, but the relationship can't be healed. I fear this is one of those situations. The pain. The damage. The tortured emotions. The broken trust. People will try to apologize, but it's too late. ... Like a marriage where one partner does something so horrible that the other partner just can't forgive. The partner can apologize continually, daily for years and decades, but the other partner just can't move forward. ... I fear this very similar. I really think we are in this situation. There is no apology to heal CSA.

It is a gambling game. I've read on SOLs to try to understand reasoning and laws. Some will open. Others, maybe in the longer term. Some will never open. Pennsylvania? ... Penn State abuse cases. I'm not sure they could honestly re-open SOLs without opening up for Penn State / government liability for most government institutions. I'm not sure the state would want to do that. Utah with LDS? Texas being very conservative? Other states that had open SOLs that expired years ago. Will they want to re-open yet again? I think it's a longer path to re-open SOLs.

I understand and sympathize. "Voluntary" / "involuntary" is who filed the bankruptcy. It says debt can't be paid. It is not an easy or arbitrary business strategy. ... The current mess is a chicken and egg thing. Lawsuits pulled BSA into bankruptcy. Bankruptcy pulled more victims in. It's a mess. The trouble is viewing it as denying a day in court. BSA is speeding into a financial wreck, but others are asking to be heard before the course is changed. It doesn't work that way. The goal is to get cash into a trust for victim's benefit. I'm not sure another six months of spending on a different plan will increase the cash pool or just guarantee a worse wreck.

"I'd be tempted to say then" ... that you also know the other adult lives in the same house and provides common care for the children. Most importantly, the mom knows this and has chosen this. ... Perhaps just ask for a simple handle written note from the mom. I'm flipping back and forth on this one.

I'm not sure that is useful in this specific situation. I'd only ask him if you are asking the other parents. I really seems you need some simple guardianship form signed by the mother indicating she is granting the adult temporary guardianship of the child. There are web sites that can be used. Keep it simple. Most importantly, be open with the mom. You're not a business and you don't have your own lawyers. You are only trying to do right by the child and by the organization. The more I think about this ... I'm betting ... the mom has had to deal with this for other reasons. I'm betting she has had to setup some type of guardianship documents for her partner to use with the child. Ask the mom. Talk to her. An interesting point ... when kids have joined my packs / troops, we never wanted evidence of who was the parent or who was a partner. We never knew if they were the legal guardian or the real parent. ... It was not our business. ... it was more the parents responsibility to name who took care of the kid. ... What we were watching for was that none of the leaders or other parents took up that role. ... We never injected ourselves into the internal family dynamics. I'd be tempted to treat this similar. When the scout joins, have the parents tell you who the guardians are. I fear this is one where the parent asked and now you have more work. My heart goes out to you. A gold star family. They have already lost their dad in service to our country. I'd want to bend over backwards to help them any way I could and to help the kids. ... but do it within the rules of G2SS and your good conscious.

Agreed. I really don't think there is a better side for most victims though. Some yes. Most no.

Does anyone doubt this is a real bankruptcy? It will exit chapter 11 (reorg) or chapter 7 (liquidation). The pending legal fees alone are massive before even considering settlements and judgements. I truly believe a failed chapter 11 bankruptcy means liquidation. Liquidation means less for most survivors because of debt priorty. "Some" in open states may get more, but most just won.t Plus, lawsuits will restart and continue for years and be extremely expensive for all parties. It seems the best exit is a BSA only chapter 11 and soon. It reserves the most cash for victims; preserves the organization and allows the next set of legal cases to start (cases against insurance, LCs, COs, etc). I'd prefer the current plan as it has pain for everyone and people can move on. BUT, I doubt it's future for many reasons. If the current plan is adopted, great. The sooner we can move past legal cases the better. I just fear 2020s will be the years of continued lawsuits.

This is a common challenge for many youth serving organizations. I volunteer at another (non-scouting) family based service program. When I started 15 years ago, family was defined by the mom and her kids; and a married husband if they had one. About ten year ago, it switched to more of a common law rule. If it was long-term, then it was family and this was for sheltering and parental oversight. So, my heart goes out to scouters answering this questions. Even married step-parents are not automatically legal guardians. Long-term married boy friends? It's almost like when new scouts join a unit, the scout registration needs to include a statement of who is allowed to function as a guardian (tent, etc)?

At low levels. If the contribution amounts are kicked up, those without current or probably liability, ... would they stay in the agreement? I did not think all 250+ had agreed to contribute.

Wow. Thank you. That is very helpful. Please forgive this view as it's just my thoughts. A great evil was done before. Now, we are doing another evil (charging future kids more) to pay for a past evil. This is just ugliness on top of ugliness. I guess it's like the old saying that when things get dirty, no one comes out clean.

Good point LDS left. So Utah probably doesn't need as many camps. ... The question is whether the LCs in Utah have signed up for the agreement as I bet their SOLs won't re-open. That probably explains what I'm seeing in my state. Camps were less busy, but not way, way, way less. Camp usage by LDS in my state was far less than 10% of the campers. Far less. I'm betting it was between 2% and 5% at best. So it does not affect our state much. So, our council still needs the local camps and potentially could see a recovery in the coming future.

Thank you. Wow. I did not make that connection. I still agree with my thoughts. I just did not think that future kids will be paying for this settlement. Wow. I really did not make that connection. I'm used to bankruptcy cases and income projects etc. I can see if more business comes that a bankruptcy agreement would adjust for that to avoid hiding probable future earnings. ... I just did not make the connection that the trust explicitly was funded by future kids signing up. ... Legally it sounds normal, but it just sounds wrong that a non-profit with a good cause would be penalized for doing more good will. Thanks again. I had not understood that point.

It is intellectually dishonest to argue 900,000 as the long term membership numbers. We just had a PANDEMIC. I remember. We had funerals this last year. We buried our friends. 2019 ... After 20 years of bad press and continual court battles and membership battles and recruiting challenges, etc, etc, etc, etc), 2019 was still 2 million members and 700,000+ volunteers. It is very conceivable if BSA can get past this final ugly hurdle and get past THIS CURRENT PANDEMIC, the program will recover. It is conceivable if BSA can fix it's marketing too, that it can successfully market a program that gets kids off their video game consoles and back into nature. ... It's a stretch, but we could see the program grow again as parents realize they want their kids outside being active and moving.

Isn't that the negligence of the claimants lawyers? The victims should be pissed at their own lawyers too. So ... Which lawyer met the victim? Which lawyer invested time with the victim? Which lawyer incurred cost working with that SPECIFIC victim? (versus the overall case)

Some posts are appearing with a red x in the lower right corner. Has a pull down with Hide All Signatures and Hide <user> Signatures. What does that mean? What is the effect?

Ahhh ... Good point. My apologies. This question started a while ago. I should have re-read the original post. My apologies. The best you can do is make the issue known to your own unit and the district. Beyond that, there must be a reason for the other scout leader to brag. You could also make the council advancement director aware. It does seem strange to have a SM from another unit sign Eagle requirements for a scout in your troop. That is highly irregular. Not much you can do for the past. Not much you can do about the other scout leader's registration. BUT, you can let people know so that it does not happen again.

Public schools ... 15,000 in one year. 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/10/15/sexual-assault-k-12-schools/ Interesting ... we have the data because there is a governmental organization collecting the data. Go figure. https://ocrdata.ed.gov/ Sports sexual abuse https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6204631/ I'm trying to find the link to the numbers and the details. NPR had a great article earlier this year about coaches and sexual abuse. ... Including coaches IN THE LAST DECADE minimizing penetration incidents as boys will be boys and not wanting to ruin a kid's future AND NOT REPORTING.

Just wrong. Wrong.

Yeah. Umm ... Can you provide a parallel example from other youth serving organizations? So BSA is hiding? ... show me youth serving organizations that are posting those numbers on their home page? Big Brothers and Big Sister has been used as an example. Send me their page doing this as an example. Or Newart, NY YMCA page showing the numbers. ??? ... or ... ??? This is not about YPT. This is about punishment and shaming and humiliation. This is an attempt to kill a program. Perhaps Ford dealership should list number of highway deaths and injuries. Heck, they made the Pinto. They negligently killed thousands and hid the facts. They should be humiliated further for it.

TCC / victims or BSA? What a horrible mean inference. Don't do that. It's just mean, inaccurate and wrong. You said parents will know. That's not true. 99.999% percent of parents won't look just like I've yet to meet a parishioner that knows. This will stay in the reporting channels. Worse, the emphasis on oversight will change and diminish over time. As less people pay attention to the numbers reporting, less effort will be put in to collecting and managing. TCC statements sound like self-hype to misdirect away from the negligent revictimization of promising huge settlements. I'm glad TCC will also work on legislation. That is what should happen. It's how society improves. This whole category screams for broad national oversight and expansion. I've seen that with DOD programs too. At one point, they all required a specific quality vender quality program as part of contracting. Now, then magically it was gone.

"inform parents" ... does not follow. I've been a member for my whole life without seeing any of the reported numbers ... even in the last few years. The reported numbers are reported to channels; not members. ... Are you saying the Catholic church numbers are sent directly to each member? Or are you saying BSA should do more than the Catholic church ? "protect children" ... does not follow. Catholic church statistics were not that different than any other faith denomination. Now they have good vulnerable person protections unlike before. Now they have mandatory reporting ... except with knowledge acquired from confession. . The protections occur via the rules (which are good). I doubt the number roll-up will do any good. Worse, I really believe the single-focus reporting program will eventually fall by the wayside and worse leaves many other channels unhandled. . Yes, the legal case is about punishing BSA. But applying the rules to BSA only is just further punishment without a single protection improvement. Further punishment for incidents from years ago ignoring many of the current improvements. If TCC lawyers wants to protect children, TCC should focus on legislation for all youth organizations. But yes ... we could add reporting. Fine. I believe in numbers and quality control programs. I've been the advocate for many. I've seen many (lean, TQM, SPC, six sigma etc). The sad point is they tend to build excitement and then die a quiet death. I've seen quality programs adopted by individual organizations and every one falls by the wayside eventually. That's really why I don't like the analysis being BSA specific or Catholic church specific too. We need industry like oversight for all organizations that do youth programs similar to FAA for flight, FDA for medical, NHTSA for roads, etc. Expecting an individual organization to fund and run it's own reporting program is a bad decision.

Well at least I take comfort in your confidence and affection for the Catholic church. I do appreciate that.

Here's another view. It's just a rank. A youth award. It's not a license to practice anything. Like some many things in life, you get out what you put in. If the scout got Eagle without the work, then the scout will always know the award is mostly hollow for them. An example is that a huge majority of adults have high school diplomas. Yet, many adults have difficulting reading or writing. I'm a good example in many of my posts. Once the diploma is awarded, it's done. We never take away high school diplomas. Some kids are really proud of their high school career. Others are not because they did not earn anything. On a practical side, why would a council want to ever take back such a rank? It doesn't serve a purpose. The youth is done. Gone. Maybe for severe felons. Scouting is a youth serving organization. Revoking would create damage and hate. Scouting would be subverting it's own goals by re-opening such cases. Let the past be the past. Focus on doing right by your current scouts. On a personal side, we're not gate keepers trying to protect the Eagle rank. Rank are our tools as an incentive for scouts to achieve. If parents subvert our tools, then it's sad. BUT, it's not our job fix past ills. We just don't participate or support the bad practice. BUT, once the harm is done, then our next role is thinking about how we can next help that youth. What can we do? EXAMPLE: Suppose a scout family subverted the life rank. Now the scout wants to achieve Eagle. I'd treat the past rank as done and gone. It's been awarded. I'd focus more on the current rank and seeing that the scout fulfills those requirements. That's my tool to help the scout grow. The SM (or his chosen/assigned delegate) does not need to sign off unearned requirements. ... But the SM needs to do right by the scout too. ... For example ... call out the scout early when the scout is not fulfilling expecations. POR. Project. Behavior. etc.