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qwazse

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Everything posted by qwazse

  1. They could be less prone, but the data is spotty (criminology is hard). It could be that CSA is more frequent among European youth, but here’s a report that shows how widely risk estimates vary in Nordic countries https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10538712.2015.1108944. Here is the most recent examination of CSA from a nation wide youth survey in the US https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/su/su7201a8.htm when this year’s data are available (probably by next year), I’ll try to plot out the responses to abuse-related questions for us all. At the moment Scouts UK is on the as
  2. One of the kindest, most mature, and friendliest of my scouts made his arguments about why BSA should not have included girls to me and, I later learned, to scouts of mixed sexes in a merit badge class being led by a female camp staff. Exactly which cudgel should I have had BSA reign down upon him? Meanwhile I have had to help multiple female scouts stand firm against proper sexual harassment from scouts (or sometimes verbal abuse from scouters). They don’t want anyone to get hurt, they don’t think they’ll be believed, they think they led on, or they think it’s part of the job. It’s
  3. @ramanous much of a troop’s culture is set by the SM. If he doesn’t buy in, the best you can do is assist his vision. With little nudges based on what you did for fun as a scout. Your personal goal should be to build your relationship with your son, his friends, and their parents. Some of this stuff regarding ideal methods will have to be put on the back burner.
  4. It depends on how you define “tent”. At times my venturers slept under the stars. I didn’t bother to measure the distance between bedding to make sure they were the equivalent of two tent walls apart. (Although truth be told the sexes segregated on their own on most occasions.) It’s a big country, and National simply has no way to enforce a common culture on this.
  5. Facts not in evidence. People do wear non-uniform patches because they have a story to tell. Because @Armymutt didn’t ask, we don’t know what that story is. In terms of taking a side, the American flag is about as much of a side as anyone can take. But the implication of it on a BSA uniform has more to do with identifying the organization’s country of origin, not alignment with international policy. So, I understand why the dissonance. A piece of real estate devoted to affiliation seems to be being appropriated for something more personal. Emphasis on “seems.” Like the Puerto Ricans, th
  6. The solution, to me, seems quite simple: get the scouters shirt size, look up the UA scout association, and see if you can order a shirt his size. Along with payment, send a little extra coin for purchase of tourniquets and other supplies. Give the scouter the shirt, encourage him to go big.
  7. … doable, as long as BSA is willing to take another membership hit over the next few decades … We’re not scouts UK, and litigation waits in the wings for any reports of sexual assault in any American organization that promotes both sexes camping together as a matter of course. I personally believe that a coed troop could be a healthy option for many communities. But the specter of abuse lawsuits will linger for quite some time.
  8. Mamma rolled steel. Women on the shop floors was bigger than we realize. The Socialist Workers Party agitated at the time, and she rebuffed them soundly. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t the only American woman who did.
  9. GS/USA might have and issue. You see, BSA likes to tally up all the service hours of every scout, multiply that by some dollar wage amount, and claim that they provide that many millions of dollars of service to the country. Now you're saying that maybe some of those $ might also be claimed by another organization!🙃 As far as the scout's advancement, however, I'm in favor of double-dipping. There's something to be said for doing the kind of work that multiple groups want to recognize. Besides, I'm sure in ways that nobody's observed this scout's done more good that went unrecognized.
  10. SM just noticed that I was missing from my new shirt. I have them in my older shirt. I had a spare on my old venturing uniform, but I gave that to a Swedish scoutmaster.
  11. The card is a tool for SPL’s to maintain discipline, if needed. In many troops, it’s not needed, so it might not be required. If a scout is found to violate knife/axe safety, rather than temporarily robbing the scout of a tool, a PL or SPL may request to see the scout’s card, clip a corner from it, explain the safety violation that necessitates the clip, and assure the scout that you think he or she will do better next time. Once the scout presents a card with four corners cut (never happened in my lifetime), slice the card in half and invite him/her to retake a safety course with a JASM
  12. This makes the statistician in me cringe. There is no formulation of YPT that can cover all the bases. At the very best, it can reduce the odds of CSA. I'm not faulting @AwakeEnergyScouter for the word choice. This is precisely the language that BSA policy wonks put forth. Also, the following is problematic: The jury is out on the "time under care" hypothesis. Mainly because criminology is a very difficult science. In pregnant substance use scenario, we don't know the odds of the biological father being a co-conspirators vs. trying to interdict their partner's substan
  13. Agreed. Contact your council advancement chair who will hopefully be as helpful as ours.
  14. I thought you were talking about guys missing out on a root beer float social or something! I can only base my speculation on the enthusiasm with which youth in my charge have approached these surveys ... This is a service to the boys who aren’t invited to be part of the statistical sample. Feel sorry for the girls who expend the effort to complete the survey and naively think they’ll be heard instead of being used to drive to a foregone conclusion.
  15. Let’s not have “max tan” and “max color” scouters casting aspersions on one another. The one thing we can be sure of: whatever insignia suggestions we have, 99% of them will be ignored by BSA. @Gossmaaf, welcome to the forums!
  16. Not sure about your references to BSA activities. It’s a big country. Some district somewhere is bound to be doing something that some scouter somewhere else will complain about. All I know … My Eagle scouts who took Citizenship in Society MB told me that it was an enjoyable experience. The minority scouters whom I’ve met are awesome. The ones who volunteer in underserved communities need our help. Making that happen is very very hard. I grew up among klansman wannabes. Comparing notes with older cousins later in life, I realized that mine was a novel phenomenon. Having, in the
  17. To Scouts Canada’s credit, they produced a really nice necker for WSJ.
  18. I was impressed that Ortega put up with independent youth organizations for as long as he did. Gotta keep up with the Putins, Pings, and Ils.
  19. One other thing, or two … Practice with a buddy. That will help you build confidence. If he/she can record you all while giving your pitch, that will help a lot and maybe give you a few laughs when you review the film. Then, go with your buddy and with every other customer you take turns giving the pitch while your buddy listens. After a while (like maybe 20 tries) you will see your sales pitch become smoother. Bonus points: if you live in a multi-lingual community, try learning your pitch in different languages. This will require help from a people who speak that language, but
  20. I guess if the decision to let girls participate in our program was ordained by a president, or the courts, or legislature removing “Boy” from the letterhead would be intuitive. But, what happened in this country was that men and boys developed, then preserved, a program that was fun, character-building, and largely egalitarian to the point that a percentage of American girls preferred it to programs with “girl” in the name. The enthusiasm of those girls moved the hearts and minds the preponderance of men and boys leading it. Basically, girls can become Eagle Scouts because the boys said they
  21. Any tribe … like Picts, Goths, Angles, Celts, or Saxons? Non of those alive today were involved in those actions/events.
  22. It sounds like you’re going to start selling popcorn with meat stick up-sell!
  23. Welcome to the forums! So, here is what I’d do (from experience being a crew advisor tightly linked to a troop): I would insist on being on both rosters. Register as an ASM in the partner troop, and have the partner SM register as an ASM in your troop. This makes it imperative that each of you are accountable for every youth’s personal growth, and youth can conference together with either of you as needed. Both SM’s need to have comparable training. Make it so ASAP. Physical distance between patrols and from adults on camp outs works wonders. If you have an open area (e.g.
  24. But that’s the flaw of an ecological hypothesis, you or I may not have seen sufficiently refined ideals in any 12 year old that we’ve met. But ours is at best a sample of maybe a thousand. If generalizable, that gives us an upper limit of 0.1%. Multiply that by the tens of thousands of crossovers that have transpired during our scouting careers, and we shouldn’t be surprised that one or two made the cut a year and a half later. P.S. - Thanks for sharing your story. I did not intend for what I said to be an ad homenim. My point was that it is incumbent on recipients of grace to be just as
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