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 failures. This means there's a constant drive towards improvement. Finally, there is no conflict of interest. The organization responsible for safety is not the one making the money. Failures are not hidden. They are public. One other aspect, that I'm not completely sure of, is that an organization can't be sued if it was following the safety organization's rules. Now, compare that to the bsa. Their mindset is that there is no abuse. They have no idea how many abuses there are and for those they do know about they haven't dug in to figure out what caused the failure. Without a doubt, there is a huge conflict of interest as the the safety side of the bsa must compete with the money making side. Cases are hidden. There is no drive towards improving the failure rate. There are all sorts of possibilities. However, there's also a conflict of interest with the legal system that's driving this. The lawyers have goals only related to past failures/victims. They have no interest in preventing future abuse, or they think that threats of a lawsuit is enough to make things better. Worse, there are those that believe that liquidating the bsa will prevent future abuse. That's like the FAA saying we should eliminate airplanes to prevent airplane disasters.

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 you can't talk about the experience.

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 is known to be "All American." Unfortunately, this means different things to different people, especially to minorities that regularly see abuse. One crazy with a gun kills a bunch of Asians, in the name of God no less, and it makes it that much harder to convince them to try scouting. The solution to all of these problems, I think, is to spend a lot of time creating relationships with minorities and helping them where they are, rather then asking them to join some unit. For example, I've noticed a lot of Korean churches in my town and that might be a place to start. Create units that support their community rather than conflict with it. But who has time for that?

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 all, I'd say stay in the tent. People are spread out and should be in a reasonably safe location, if they picked a safe spot. We had a storm in South Dakota that was unusual. It sounded like one continuous thunder clap for about a half hour, amongst a big hail storm. We were much more worried about the hail. Given that we were backpacking the best option was to get under the sleeping pad. Surprisingly, no torn tents but a number of bent poles. BTW, who camps within cell service? Maybe I'm just lucky but it's rare to have service.

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 that an adult wanted him to sleep in the tent with the adult we all said no and we never saw that adult again. As far as I know none of the scouts told anyone. As wrong as it was it wasn't traumatic.

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. Maybe there is no grand plan because they're essentially broke and the $300M is not far off. And then there's the $150M the lawyers spent. All I can think of is financial investigations. That's a lot of money to figure out that most councils are broke. Maybe they're assuming a great web of offshore accounts and lots of shell companies when the reality is just like everything else in scouting - ductape and wire. The victims will get some money but no satisfaction. The bsa will be punished but won't learn anything. Kids will keep camping but with less toys. The volunteers will muddle on. That's the plan.

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.

They still have to go through the airport full of, how to say this nicely, a bunch of hung over, indestructible students. I agree that zoom is the worst place to do this. It's as impersonable as it gets. I'd suggest a council camp in Tennessee or some other place where the weather is nice. Maybe seeing a council camp will help explain the perspectives of the two sides.

Especially if the girls want to climb trees.

Who is asking? I was my son's SM. We talked and I told him I was on campouts as SM, not as dad. I didn't actually see him very often on campouts but when I did we had fun. I always enjoyed joking around with all the scouts so it wasn't that hard. As he got older I told him I didn't care if he got eagle and there was zero pressure from me to get it. He was just like most scouts and decided at the last minute that he wanted it. I did not help him other than buying lunch at his project. But my son really enjoys the outdoors. He liked the campouts until about 8 months before he aged out and started cutting back. I still went without him. I did that for several years after he aged out. If anyone asked I said he had something else going on. Nobody could question his involvement or mine, we had more nights camping than most. I'd say that if your son is getting burned out then let him take a break. Scouting is a crazy long haul. It has to be fun or else bad things are going to happen between the two of you. This is where you have to be dad to him before skipper. My high adventure memories with my son, in hindsight, was the best part.

What little I remember of GS is that there were typically 2 or 3 different ages in the troops I saw. It was more important to have friends in a troop than a single age. That might have not been typical or allowed, but that's what I saw. Make advancement a bit more flexible in cub scouts, it's already repetitive, and I think it would help. This is more a change in how and when to recruit than anything else. Friendships and similar personalities are just as important as program. When my son took a break from cub scouts it was more about the personalities. After 2 years of 2 scouts that just ruined too many meetings he said he was done. When he came back it was with his friends, and then he had a lot more fun. I knew what was coming in scouts so I was fine with the break. Not many people understand the change and I suspect that's why there's a drive to keep kids in the program for 12 years. Everyone assumes it's like school and you can't skip grades. The council brings in more money with that mindset so they have no reason to change it. There could be all sorts of changes to alleviate burnout. But they all require the ability to tinker with things. This gets back to the thread about new regions and whether councils have much control over the program.

Good point. Maybe competitive isn't quite the right term. More like time consuming. It's not school sports but more club sports. School sports are much more balanced. My son wanted to keep playing with the advanced level soccer players but he didn't want to travel all over the state for competitions. And yes part of that was me not wanting to drive all over the state. A similar thing happened with band. My son wanted to keep playing trumpet but that meant he had to be in the marching band for football and basketball season. And that didn't include just playing in the regular band, which is all he wanted. So he left that as well.

Totally agree. But the burnout is still there. Here's an idea, borrow from the gsusa: let parents create dens of friends. Don't worry about small age differences. Encourage it for Webelos age. Tie these neighborhood dens to a pack. Allow them to be seasonal. The council could help advertise that. One reason it's hard to recruit is that everyone assumes scouting starts at lions and if you miss that then you're behind. That's what needs to change.

Lots of kids start dropping out of all the activities they are over subscribed to just about the time they would be mature enough to have fun in scouts. Just about the time sports gets overly competitive might be a good time to have a scout membership drive. I never did cub scouts and my son got bored with cub scouts and we took 2 years out of the middle of it because I didn't want to see him burn out. I would have been okay skipping all of it. It had it's fun parts but certainly not all those years worth. Or make it a single season per year for 3 years. But that means less money for the council. Until the council can figure out how to make that work this is all just wishful thinking.

Let's try and get this back on topic: the new territories plan and tangentially how to staff it. It's not about tenting regs and yp. I believe there are other threads on that topic. I looked at the territory map and noticed that mine is bigger than an old area. It goes from Mexico to Canada. I'd hate having to do meetings there. Anyway, I assume it's by population. This territory is probably the leader when it comes to small troops.

Touchè. The future of the bsa, if there is one, is going to require a lot more humility on both sides. Too many hatchets flying around that are not in an approved range, so to speak.

I don't know, your estimate makes as much sense as any other. Everyone was surprised by the number of claiments and I mean everyone. It is nearly 2 orders of magnitude greater than any other case. Given that and the fact that the bsa can make a case that it has been trying to reduce incidents, how is It that the bsa was negligent to the same level found in these other cases? They weren't moving scoutmasters around like the diocese were moving priests. In the MSU case reports of abuse were ignored. Given that nobody had any idea how many bsa cases there were, nobody was being ignored. The negligence isn't as clear to me. I have no idea what the number should be and maybe looking at the value of the bsa is not right but that's exactly what everyone is using.