qwazse

5 hours ago, yknot said:

I think it's significant that BSA, the youth organization that probably has the most data about child sexual abuse cases over time, and that could produce information useful to scout parents and leaders as well as all other youth organizations regarding incident characteristics, age, gender of victims and perpetrators, setting, type, perpetrator profiles, etc., has never compiled or produced any useful or comprehensive research or reports about it.

It is common knowledge that BSA made its ineligible volunteer files available to an independent researcher at the University of Virginia.

• She provided initial findings in 2011, and an executive summary in 2012.

Here's the reference to her formal work on the files, published years later on a sample of 6878 perpetrators of CSA:

• Warren, J. I., & Reed, J. (2021). Victim selection patterns of community‐residing child molesters identified by a nationwide youth‐serving organization. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 39(3), 307-327.

Those conclusions have been folded into the YPT program that we ask all parents to take.

This year, one other publication reported on a randomly drawn sample of 48 cases ...

• Mackinem, M. B., & Laufersweiler-Dwyer, D. (2024). A Deeper Look at the Boy Scouts of America “Perversion” Files: Structural Factors Related to Access and Abuse. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 08862605241230091.

It goes over many of the structural problems unique to the organization and tries to make optimistic conclusions.

We need to remind ourselves that criminology is hard. The data that are gleaned from these reports are also studied by folks who think it is their God-given right to lure our nation's children for their basest desires. May none of us make the error that any given activity is such a safe haven that our guard should be lowered to any degree.

14 hours ago, yknot said:

Well, the  parents would be right. The average kid is far safer from sexual abuse in sports than the average kid in scouting. Sexual abuse of children is a society wide problem in any setting where adults have access to kids, but a kid on a soccer field for two hours in public view is far safer than a kid on a campground overnight in a remote location with unrelated adults. Studies like this highlight our problems with CSA but have little bearing on BSA's experiences and track record with it. 

That’s some serious wishful thinking! Those “two hours in public view” are just the tip of the iceberg! From there, while noble coaches are trying to guide kids into a lifetime enjoyment of athletic pass time, the neighborhood predator, on the field or in the stands, is getting acquainted with hundreds of kids and ranking them by vulnerability. Sports and band camps are notorious for providing first exposures to pornography and worse. Some of the kids who are routinely assaulted at home:work their way up in the structure to where they can propagate assault.  USA Gymnastics learned the hard way that large numbers of their athletes were extremely vulnerable because of inordinate trust in professional positions.

The types of assaults that I became aware of as my kids advanced through varsity sports made me (and their coaches) nauseous. Moreover, because there is no national oversight of leadership in youth sports, we have no idea of the risks to participants.

With what I’ve learned now, would I still allow my kids to participate fully in athletics? Yes. Do I believe that structures like Sandusky laws have helped mitigate risk to some degree? Yes. Do I believe we’ve had a net effect of protecting our nation’s youth from CSA? Jury’s still out, my hope is that one day overall risks to youth will be as low as BSA’s rate, but we have quite a way to go.

2 hours ago, Tron said:

…. Trail Life is a joke.

For being a joke, I have a couple of great nephews who TL/USA helped guide into adulthood. The BSA troop’s available to them were inadequate.

7 hours ago, Eagledad said:

What might be a little surprising is that even some two-parent families look for programs with male role modes to help develop their sons. I'm not sure if the reason is because the culture is anti-male and they are looking for reinforcement of masculine behavior, or the father is out of the picture a lot from work. But our troop had several scouts in that situation. 

Personally, it wasn’t about any anti-male culture. I just remembered benefiting from multiple adult men in my life, and in scouting. I wanted my sons and daughter to have similar exposures in a weekend/week setting.

On 5/14/2024 at 12:02 PM, Tron said:

…
I don't think this is that big of a deal. Sure name change, but, we still have shooting sports. We're a very broad topic youth organization, not a shooting sports organization. The reduction in options is not that big of a deal, if a scout really likes shooting, and wants to get into different styles, different calibers, super serious with reloading etc ... why can't they go shoot clays on Tuesday night at their gun club, and roll into their troop meetings on Wednesday at the local church? 

You are not thinking like many young teens who now have jobs, the earnings from which are expected to pay for activities. If their patrols can’t go shooting at their trained ASM/RSO’s club every month, they can spend their dimes joining the club as junior members from what they save on Scouting America registration fees.

You might say only a small number of COs and families will let their scouts be so reactionary … just like families who react to the removal of dodge ball, or the removal of unisex program, …

It becomes a decline by a thousand cuts.

If a troop wants to maintain routine range time it could result in merely exchanging hazards For us the nearest commercial range is at least a half hour drive away (and I think this applies to most scouts) … twice as far as the nearest game lands or gun club, we double the risk of traffic accidents.

On 5/13/2024 at 12:19 PM, Tron said:

… Most of the changes are in line with the international scouting community (the name is more inline with international naming conventions, 173 of the 216 WOSM members are full coed at last count, … this seems like standardization not grasping for straws..

BSA can follow a pretty wide lane and be “in line” as far as WOSM is concerned. The largest or fastest-growing WOSM programs have been sex-segregated. In many of these countries the Guides and Scouts collaborate nicely. So, to really fall in line, BSA and GS/USA would “play nice” together, and that ain’t happening.

I think we in the U.S. are faced with an influx of citizens like no other country, and many parents from Europe and South America may envision scouting as co-ed because that’s all they’ve known since childhood. On the other hand parents from India, Indonesia, and Gulf states only know segregated models. For some, but not all, national scout organizations, that’s shifting. (It was nice to see young women singing and dancing while visiting with the Saudi tent in August.)

I think single moms are a serious consideration, but many single moms that I’ve met are looking for unisex programs for their boys where they believe male role models to be instrumental in a young man’s development. So those moms will value sex-segregated programs over co-ed. So, any mom rhetoric is just corporate double-speak.

The ground truth, I believe, is that the organization has collapsed to the point that it is unreasonable for it to produce an all-boy and all-girl unit in every small community; therefore, it is positioning itself to allow each unit to be more flexible in its configuration in hope that doing so may make up for six decades of losses three decades from now.

4 hours ago, ToKindle96 said:

I remember the first year girls were admitted the annual report emphasized that some 77K girls joined cub scouts, but neglected to mention there were 91K fewer boys in cub scouts. That trend accelerated. Compare the number of girls in the programs today (175K or so) to the massive decrease in the numbers of boys served (somewhere in the range of -1.1 million compared to 5 years ago. Maybe it was never about "serving more youth." Maybe it was about serving different youth. Remember, Surbaugh said the legacy clientele was no longer good enough for the BSA.

I gave up referencing myself a while ago, so I won’t link to the thread that shows this data, but here goes anyway … while BSA was mulling over including girls in packs and troops (under the corporate double-speak “family scouting”), there was a WOSM census that revealed that membership declined in nearly every European country immediately after their scouting organization incorporated girls. Recovery to where they would have the same number of boys as they did before desegregation would take decades, if it has occurred yet at all. The UK took 25 years.

So, if BSA is indeed about serving more youth, the strategy chosen is a very long term one — quite an anomaly for any American organization.

Just now, qwazse said:

…OPO.

🙄  = on paper only 

2 hours ago, Tron said:

…. I think national is still baking that one, I cornered a local who is on one of the national committees and he was like "I know of the rumor you're talking about, I can't discuss that." and he wouldn't say a word. So I would say there is legs to the rumor but no one has details/will provide.

…

To acquire Venturers in any significant number, the registration fee will have to be less than the cost of a pizza and a movie.
While we’re rumoring, scuttle but says there are co-Ed troops being piloted.

But even on an informal basis this is happening. I was manning a station at spring Camporee and saw several patrols of mixed sexes. One or two may have bee ad hoc, but a couple operated well enough that I figured they weren’t segregated OPO.

1 minute ago, MikeS72 said:

Just a guess.... GSUSA may well be ok with seeing us rebrand as Scouting America but would consider it a bridge too far if all we do is drop the word girl from their name.

 

I was thinking that, but Scouting America is no less of a trademark threat.

My take is that it needs a tagline: (Except for Canada, Mexico, Central and South America)

No clue why we can’t be Scouts USA.

Ben Shapiro’s take …

33 minutes ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Of course we did backpacking. And our leaders made us divide up that whole heavy monstrosity to carry with us.

At the time I thought it was ridiculous, but now as a leader I think it was in part for budget reasons (the reason given) but also in part to prevent miscellaneous interpersonal problems by keeping the whole patrol together.

Did you winter backpack? We always used our “circus tent” (actually a donation from the national guard) for winter campouts. It was the best way to keep an eye on younger scouts for hypothermia and frostbite. General health and safety might have also been your leaders’ concern.

1 hour ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Times do change. Didn't WOSM mandate that condoms be available at the 2019 World Scout Jamboree? Yes, they did.

It wasn’t a mandate. It’s been a matter of course for decades. And, it would even be in place if international youth events were all-male. Public health officials’ deployed this strategy to forestall death. Prior to the 90s, the occasional newborn was always possible but didn’t mandate preventative measures.

@captkeating, welcome to the forums.

1 hour ago, Eloisefig said:

...
I did see an idea on YouTube. It was someone’s woodbadge ticket(or one of them), where they basically made a syllabus that would come full circle every 2 years with all the requirements to first class.  I thought that was neat, but I couldn’t figure out how to find him. 

There are a number of helps for this sort of thing. Unfortunately, I can't point you to them! The site https://troopresources.scouting.org/ is undergoing an upgrade due out this month.

However, it's not too hard to leaf through the handbook and ask the scouts to pick a chapter to work on for the next coming month. Usuallly after summer camp the scouts' advancement starts to diverge, then the PLC's are about asking what is the skill that most boys in their patrol need to master, and how would they like adults to help with that.

DON'T focus on advancement per se. DO focus on skills to master.

On 4/26/2024 at 5:18 PM, skeptic said:

Finding ways to incorporate the community locally might be the best way to redeem the program.

I’ll go one further: integrating the local community is the only way forward.

There are hundreds of ways to do this.

Waiting for National’s next marketing campaign is the least effective.

11 hours ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

I would have liked to have ordered her thesis, but she only takes Swish as payment and you can't open a Swish account with a foreign address.

Do you remember how it was contentious?

I don’t exactly. (Plus it was an English translation of the page that I think was originally written by youth. So a lot may have been lost in translation and generationally. ) My impression was that the girls’ organization wasn’t playing well with other scout associations, and the king, having been a scout himself, served as a neutral party with authority.

Also, the Swedish scouters who I’ve met were relatively young, and not historians. So their description of their scout movement was limited to their generation. I myself was too immature to strike up a conversation with Carl Gustav, let alone probe him on what it took for he and his fellow citizens to inspire a co-ed scouting organization.

Lesson: if you have elders in your family or friends who were scouts, now is the time to interview them on their childhood and young adult experiences.

One trick with PLC: instead of one lengthy meeting a month, consider reserving 15 minutes after the regular troop meetings. This basically gives boys just enough time for after action review and time to plan the next event. Not great, but if it increases attendance you’ll have double your time in terms of man-hours attendance.

Understatement …

On 4/21/2024 at 4:00 PM, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

long process  with a lot of discussion

Scouterna’s site used to be packed with a lot more details on its front page. It seems like a marketing agency got a hold of it and fell for Western “don’t let words get in the way of great pictures” style.

From the original site, I learned that integration was contentious, and the king was instrumental in getting all parties on board. It made me feel proud to have launched a catapult for Carl Gustav when he visited the pioneering area at National Jamboree.

18 hours ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

So more conflict-averse rather than trying to draw the line between civic and political?

15 hours ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

… The trick is to get better at recognizing both intentions and outcomes. Sometimes being conflict averse is bad. Sometimes it builds harmony that leads to strength and functioning. Without a situation or a context you can't really say if it's good or bad. …

In another thread, someone criticized me for being okay with scouters and other adults speaking their mind to my youth.

That got translated into allowing “hostile” acts — even though the topic was clearly discussing speech that did not involve any physical threat. Some repliesasserted that its somehow wise to shield a kid from someone who could teach a him/her how to forestall death, but has voiced problems with their membership.

Youth have a word for situational ethics: duplicity.

Interesting point spinning off from JTE. How much should the PLC be invested in those benchmarks?

10 hours ago, curious_scouter said:

...

• Roster overview (registered vs. active, rank breakdown)
• Summary of report from IA on ranks, badges, awards earned this year ...

I would go lean on the advancement statistics. You can give that at each CoH.

IMHO, the most important thing a committee needs to know regarding advancement is

• how much is being spent on patches and awards.
• how many BoRs were completed and thanking MC's who devoted time to this.
• how many BoRs might be needed in the coming month.
• how many MBCs are fielded by the troop, and which MBs need a counselor in your district.

Try to listen intently to your PLC for ideas they float that may need committee assistance. These could be properties to camp on, special equipment, or a presentation or visit to a workplace or charity. MC's might have "in" on any of these. But if the wish list doesn't reach them, they might never know to offer. So, although gear budgets are very important, the more esoteric wishes are what will hold your committee's attention.

@mrjohns2, we validated you, now what do we propose for a solution?

One of my strategies: offer to cook an adult-only meal. This assumes you know how to cook one very fine meal very well. But, usually when adults know that they’re getting a meal where they won’t have listen to kids complain, they’ll pitch in.

Other ideas:

Camp physically distant from the youth.

Attend Camporees and require that the SM visit all of the other troops.

Get your SM to training.

Attend a summer camp that does patrol cooking.

It takes quite a while to unlearn bad habits. So encourage her every time she takes a step back.

On 4/13/2024 at 6:38 PM, yknot said:

… But if that's how someone feels about a certain class of kids and it contradicts the policies of the organization they work or volunteer for, they shouldn't be responsible for kids of that class. …

This is argument ad absurdum. In my years as an advisor I didn’t care how people felt about my venturers. (And some voiced fairly negative opinions.) I expected my youth to take it on the chin and press on.
Those same people taught my scouts incredible skills. For that, they earned the right to voice any opinion they may have had. Needless to say, over time their opinions became more nuanced after working with my youth.