fred8033

I'm comfortable with what you are saying. And, I do think very highly of BSA. But when I read page four of G2SS as it exists today, it says to fulfill legal requirements, but also then has a "scouts first" hotline. Doesn't introduce the concept of scouts first. Doesn't mention that calling law enforcement is not fulfilled by calling scouts first. Perhaps it would be as easy as saying "first report to local law enforcement. Then after the reporting process has started, also report the incident to the scouts first hotline." Right now, I can easily read and interpret it as scouts first hotline is part of how I fulfill the legal requirements. Perhaps it's the place where I'll get the phone numbers. Or get advice on if I'm really in a reporting situation. Even in the best attempt to make things clear, policies often leave vague holes. Though BSA's G2SS statement is pretty good, it is far less than perfect.

View it this way ... The old charter agreements were used as a marketing tool by BSA to get more buy-in from local organizations ... to get those local organizations help with BSA's youth program objectives ... to get local orgs to view packs and troops as an extension of the local church/school/other. Many local orgs took it with a grain of salt and never did anything. Most everyone knew that's how it worked. Even the document itself looked pretty weak and light weight. Think of it this way ... US GOV charter to BSA is honorific. Just really good marketing with little effect. Charter between BSA and local orgs was mostly honorific too. Then over the last few decades, it's inferred more and more. Lately the signed charter agreement has been used as a legal liability too. It's a contract right? I doubt many churches viewed it as a very significant contract. Just an honorific thing. NOW ... Scouting is a real liability. Real risk. You could get sued. So ... is that scouting youth program that critical to your own purposes as a local organization? If so, you should actively manage it and be involved. I myself am recommending our church change from a charter agreement to a facilities use agreement. We've had discussions. They have zero interest in overseeing the scouting program. They are glad to lend use their facilities though. They just don't want to own and be responsible.

I'm also not comfortable with policies that say call before reporting ... in any organization. It infers creepy motives. The reality is it can quickly create a mess. The reality is false reporting does happen by the over zealous or those with other motives. BUT, I'd rather see that over-reporting than any delay in reporting. Even the hint that there is a policy of "call us first, before you do what is legally required" is just not great marketing and definitely not good teaching and it might result in someone not reporting something they should. I'd rather see the police and public organizations spend their money on it than a non-profit try to manage it. It's always a hard decision. I've had to report twice in my role as a volunteer; not thru BSA, but thru another organization. I'm pretty sure in both cases the parents lost the kids. Hardest ### call I've ever made. I could have easily been talked out of reporting or not done it. SUGGESTED SPECIFIC BSA G2SS CHANGE ... https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34416.pdf ... page 4 ... Who to call first? It doesn't explicitly say who to call first. Should I call the BSA help line? Is that mandatory reporting? Should I call 911? Should I call ? Do I call 911 then BSA help line? OR BSA help line and then they route me to the right reporting method? ... Even having the helpline infers something that I suspect it is not doing. ... I'd like the guide to say "Call 911 first if immediate danger or call your local police / ??? / ??? if not an immediate danger" ... or call 911 to ask how to report abuse ... (I'm not sure who the first contact should be either). ... As a second step, you should call BSA scouts helpline so that they can help handle the implications for the scouts, the unit and local scouting. The key is due the mandatory reporting first. Avoid implying BSA before required legal obligations.

Sad to hear that. Volunteers that are not flexible are not helping and might need to move on. It's good to keep friendships and connections, but ultimately we volunteer to help the organization. That means being flexible as the organization needs to change. Districts get re-organized. It happens all the time. Rebalancing unit numbers. Budgets change. Concept changes. Membership number changes. In my 20 years, I've seen three major district re-orgs. AND, there was a major one the year before my oldest son joined scouting. That would be four district re-orgs in 21/22 years. Districts get re-organized. It happens. Always look for something positive.

Minimizing risk? I have no clue what you mean. But I'm 100% offended that you are asserting this statement is the attitude that will cause us to lose scouting. Baloney. Absolute baloney. Wanting to blame others is what will cause division and destroy scouting. Worse, it's just mean and un-scout-like. If you really want to protect vulnerable people, you need to understand the patterns and nature of abuse. You need to look at the many, many varied failure modes. To repeatedly bash a single source is unconstructive. Past society failures to identify and prevent abuse were huge and everywhere.

Far too often authors think they are expressing justified righteous indignation when in fact it's closer to ugly bigotry and motivated by past grudges. We all should stick direct connections. The simple fact is society as a whole did not handle any of this very well in the 1980s or 1990s. Society started adopting the modern understanding of abuse in the late 1990s / early 2000s. People want someone to blame. You might as well blame every part of society.

I am betting there is another path. I've interacted ... "worked with" would over state my invovlement ... I've interacted with the local chapter adviser and youth lodge chief. They have much more flexibility than officially published. If the scout really wants to be in OA, that scout should write a polite mail (or email) to the lodge chief and copy the lodge adviser. State that he/she would be proud to be an OA member. Explain his troop doesn't hold elections. Communicate how he fulfills requirements (rank, nights camping, troop involvement, etc). Further state why he/she would want to be a member. IMHO, the perfect answer would be "to serve" and to learn from other scouts. My only fear is the scoutmaster response. BUT, the ideal scoutmaster should say congratulations and let the scout explore OA. I am betting the lodge adviser and lodge chief would find a path in for that scout. I'm not saying this would work every time, but I suspect it would work a good number of times.

Scoutbook works good for advancement. Roster mgmt too. But that might be our troop. Our troop only records what must be sent to BSA to record advancement. Ranks. MBs. Awards. We do record time in position (because it looks pretty in ScoutBook). And hikes, campouts ... for bragging rights. ... But it's up to the scout to manage the individual line-item advancement and we encourage the scout to use the paper book for that. It's an intentional choice. We don't want our adults tightly overseeing the scout's advancement. It's their path to navigate and not ours to pull them thru. If I had to record each of 50 entries for each rank and another 20+ entries for each MB, I might think again about TroopMaster. ... But we stopped using TroopMaster a long time ago and never regretted it. As for calendar, etc, we use different tools over time. Its moved a few times. TroopMaster never worked well for that ... "for us". Ultimately, it's about good communication with the parents.

Of everything happening recently with BSA, ScoutBook is my big fear. I've grown accustomed to it. I was not in favor initially, but I've gotten used to it. We only use it for roster mgmt and advancement / recognition. But within that context, it does work. I really fear national becoming unable to support it. Councils, units and individual scouts have grown very dependent on it. That's a large user base for such a small IT organization such as BSA must have.

Wow. That is disconcerting. I have wondered too. I suspect it's also that as a patient ... every visit is a doctor charge. Clinics are not wired at all to do one shot at a time. I would have gone out of my way to do that if it was an option. The big vaccination day was a known ... oh oh ... it will be a rough night ... thing. Sad that medical professionals would know without suggesting it as an option.

Inconsistency would be a red flag to me. I'd hope CO has all CO's youth groups follow the same direction. But it's the CO's choice.

I would not be so quick to write things off. I agree with the studies. But I also raised four kids. At the 2 month and 15 month (?? intervals) vaccines, each had fevers or grumpy / irritable after their vaccinations. I remember two that went from making some pre-speech sounds before vaccine to not making some again for months. ... I'm not blaming the vaccine. But vaccines are known to cause fever and grumpy / irritable babies after. It is not wholly inconceivable that someday a connection will be found saying fever affects ear channels and can slow speech development or has some minor speech. I'm pro-vaccine. The good far out weighs the bad. BUT, it's arrogant to say something that is known to cause fevers, affect mood, etc does not affect a child that is growing and doing new things daily. Anyway, I'm pro-vaccine and pro-defending people who have concerns.

Thank you. This will be interesting to see how it plays out. I can easily see it going either direction. Showing fraud on one side.. Other side potentially arguing need for cash to pay legal costs and reserves to pay damages to the number of victims projected at the time, less than 2000 at that time.

HONEST QUESTIONS ... #1 Excluding lender collusion and lender fraud ... excluding no previously existing rights to the asset .... a secure debt is a secure debt. The lender has a right to repayment independent of the reasons the borrow took out the loan. It's easy to question the timing of the loan and even how the loaned money is being used, ... but does any of this affect the status of the secured asset? Even then, this seems like a minor point. The insurance companies seem to be the biggest potential contributor. #2 Without insurance claim caps, would the insurance companies be at risk to pay the same claims twice? Once for BSA liability. Once for council liability? Perhaps a 3rd time for CO liability if the insurance was to cover them too? ... Without bankruptcy protection, insurance companies could continue to bleed for the same cases. I understand it depends on when the insurance contract was written ... are there caps ... were both BSA and local councils listed, etc. ... I'm just wondering if insurance could pay the same victim twice or three times because of different clients (BSA, LC, CO) libel for the same event and the insurance company covering all those libel.

More than once I wished for a delete button ... or a "Way Back Machine" button.

Never would have guess you could use a hammock on Munson island.

No issues. If anything, it might be a nice separation. The only worry I'd have is extra work that conflicts with schedule. For myself, I got involved at the district level because of our troop not hearing enough at the district level.

Fair enough. I overreacted. Please attribute it to a long day and too many hours between relatives with strongly different political positions. I'm extremely frustrated that we have no middle ground anymore. I was discussing this with my son on the way home. We've lost the ability to keep our emotions out of current events. Me too. For me, I cringe hearing this sort of thing. I believe in vaccines, but then I've got the relatives mocking those who don't trust all vaccines and intentionally demeaning them with anti-vaxxer. Devaluing their thoughts and person. It hurts hearing one group mock the other. It gets my dandruff up to defend those protesting. It's hard to be a friend to all when people who's position I agree then mock the other group. My national reaction is to defend those who have been demeaned. So again, my apologies. It hit a sensitive point.

Pairing back my comments. My apologies if I write too explicitly. This smells of the over-zealous using their scouting position over others to force a medical choice and medical tracking. It's wrong.

A few comments Focus less on strict "rules" and more about creating great experiences Rank award is important if the kid / family value it. If you can "reasonably" justify it, then help the family / cub. Watch out for making extra work for the den leader Watch out for the scout being separated from their friends In the long path of scouting advancement, no Cub rank is all that important. FOR ME AND MINE ... I'd focus more on their connection to their fellow cubs and classmates more than if they get the patch. If they are obsessed about getting the patch ... and I can justify some reasonable path ... fine. I'd go out of my way to help. But, every kid doesn't have to get every patch. Few kids wearing Eagle will have the slightest memory if they earned a specific cub batch; often not even Arrow of Light. DO NOT SWITCH DENS .. I would definitely not move them to a younger den to try to get the patch and then move them back. Continuity with fellow scouts is important. Maybe attend a rank requirement event if it conveniently overlaps ... but even then ... the previous rank patch is just not that important and the other den should not be distracted with a cub from another den. HARD DATE: ... ???? ... If you had to have a hard date, perhaps the first day of the next grade. Generally ... RANK = SCHOOL GRADE. Did the kid earn the rank during that school year (plus or minus summer)? Is there some way to justify it ? MY BIG FEAR ... If the scout's den is active and working the next rank, then more damage is done by pulling the cub away from his classmates. Further, you are distracting the cub with old requirements instead of the den's current focus.

Cool. I love hearing stories like this. I'm familiar with a local camp that served as a small charter school also. In addition, most of our camps have school groups, sports groups, etc coming in through-out the summer. Our in-city camp seems to have a school group daily. A cub camp that's about 30 miles out hosts sports groups during the week in the summer. I remember visiting a week when a soccer league was using it as a training site.

Well written. I agree with "no way to a fast solution can come if you include councils." That seems fully correct. It means litigation for years, but that may be the best path forward.

Perhaps Virtus training has evolved again ... I've taken it a few times as it's evolved ... BSA YPT and Catholic Church Virtus are very different and are complementary. Multiple times I've said I thought both organizations would be better if the training was combined / merged. Virtus is excellent at raising awareness, emphasizing the seriousness, how to look for signs of abuse, how to report, etc. I still remember the first time watching the interview with the roller skating teacher jailed serial abuser. His interview was shocking and eye opening. BSA YPT is more focused on stating expected behavior and communicating the G2SS rules. I often deal with quality mgmt and process oversight. Explicit requirements are critical. G2SS is that standard we follow. It's not perfect, but it sets expectations. Both can easily be criticized. Virtus is light on specifics behavior expectations. Virtus lacks a supporting G2SS like standard reference. A simple one is I'd like to see Virtus have rules like: No one-on-one contact. Or guidance that if you need one-on-one contact, do it in the presence of others. BSA YPT is lacking on the gravitas. This is real. It happens and will happen in your area. You don't want to be the leader / adult who misses it. BSA YPT and Catholic Virtus trainings are both excellent. I find them commentary, but lacking without having taken the other.

So six months to negotiate an agreement before trial ... or during trial ... or wait for end of trial. This could be easily a year out.

That's great to hear. Negotiating demonstrates two separate entities. Variance of the charter agreement / by-laws across LCs further demonstrates separate entities.