MattR

That's what makes scouting fun. Well, one thing. Enjoy!

Just one idea, make committee meetings fun. End the meetings on a social note. We used to have a beer after the meeting was over. It sure helped end long winded speakers. We also had a quarter to a third of the families represented at the meetings, which were every month.

Wherever there are adults that can charm insecure youth, which includes all those places you mention above, there is abuse. That mindset is one ingredient to reduce abuse. Just like car safety, look at the FAA. If everyone dies on a plane the first thing they look for is the black box. Learning what exactly happened is another important ingredient. Rather than general, vague rules about safety, very specific rules based on known cases can address specific ways that failures occured. Next, there's an understanding of the paradox that zero failures is the goal and yet there are f

It would be a whole lot easier to solve this problem if those deciding the value of eagle understood that eagle is nothing but a tool to achieve a higher goal. "So, your resume says you're an eagle scout. Tell me some stories of how that has taught you something useful." A nice, open question. If they talk about specific skills they've been tested on that tells the value of eagle to that applicant. If they talk about taking younger scouts under their wing and helping them out, it tells a very different value. As my son told me, eagle will get you another look, but it's not worth anything if yo

My observations are: 1) These groups want to keep their kids within their group playing with their kids. They are very tight knit. 2) The bsa does a bad job of training so the only way to learn the program is to watch it up close for a long time. That, along with 1), makes it hard for minority groups to get involved. 3) Camping and the outdoors is not the same as what most people that immigrate here think of. We have bears, snakes and crocodiles and other ways to die and we're used to it. People in South America and Asia don't really camp nearly as much as we do. 4) The bsa

What I took from the quote in @Eagle94-A1's post is parents are worried about safety, cost, and the uniform. The council people focused on safety. Maybe that's because they had an answer for that. Cost, however was ignored and the parents only saw the equipment and uniform costs. Nobody mentioned the fees.

We always have lightning in the forecast so we pick our campsites accordingly. If I've ever had a sudden surprise lightning storm at 2am I slept through it. I don't doubt they happen but it would be unusual. In the summer, where I camp, storms are normally over by the time we go to bed. As for shower houses, wow, most I've seen are leaky with lots of grounded pipes and wires sticking out of them. Furthermore, putting 40 or so people in one is not likely in the ones I've seen. Given there's a shower house there are also cars. They would be safer, assuming they're not too far away. All in a

That is one 13 year old with incredible focus. I should call him to see if he does window trim.

The question seems to be where was the line? Rather than specific actions it might be better to think about the impact on the child. A child is embarrassed vs a child is traumatized resulting in PTSD and lifelong scars (or somewhere inbetween). Rape is clearly over any line and it's always been there. So would enslavement. Being asked to change in front of an adult in the privacy of their living room is also clearly wrong but some kids might be traumatized and some would just go along and never mention it again no matter how weird it seemed. When I was a scout and another told me tha

The timber hitch should be the "learning the tautline hitch"

That's nice news. Thanks for sharing. And welcome back! And yes, the server is slow. We have contacted the authorities.

I suspect there is no grand plan. Rather, there's chaos, just like there usually is. Another hunch is that for the bulk of councils, like mine, all of the property wealth is really a house of cards. Over the past couple of decades it's been spent. Certainly there are councils with money but it's not many. If my council can get silver jte then there are a lot of broke councils. Consider that the bsa declared bankruptcy when the assumed number of cases was in the small number of thousands, when the expected payout was in the few hundreds of millions. Maybe they're not playing bluff. Ma

We really need to crank up the contention over this. It might bury the story that USC just agreed to pay over $1B for sex abuse.

All fixed. I'd say wear the knots you'd like. I don't even know if there are any rules. I've heard suggestions before. At this point in time, I don't understand why disagreements should get past just that. Some people like lots of rows and some don't. End of discussion.

Did you hear this as a scout? I told some scouts what we used to do and they get all wide eyed. Nothing like this story but the response is part jealous and part you're out of your mind.