Sentinel947

I saw this today as well. Brand new case. As the details become public, it will be a shame to see where things went wrong and what signs were ignored. Criminal sexual act- second degree Crime & Punishment in New York : ... A person commits a criminal sexual act in the second degree when the offender is 18 years old or over and engages in oral or anal sexual conduct with another person who is under 15 years old.

I think they know, I think they fear the liability lawyers will pummel us out of existence. The sad irony is that the organizational failures of the 60's,70's, 80s regarding program mirror the institutional failures to protect youth. I duly hope we aren't the ones who will be the last ones out the door, and turn out the lights on American Scouting.

The NY Post is not really journalism. It's a tabloid. The point of it is to publish the most outrageous and salacious interpretation of the news as possible while still falling on the right side of slander and libel laws.

I agree. On my own project I typically had my parents (non registered) and maybe one or two troop leaders over 21 who were registered. I remember for certain one of my work days I had a friend who was 18 as my second adult. My project was at the township park in full view of a busy road... certainly a public place. But overall, the BSA is at least finally making a consistent (if not cumbersome) ruling. It doesn't make sense for YPT requirements to be in place for Troop outings, but not meetings or Eagle Projects. It effectively becomes a donut hole of risk.

Guide to safe Scouting requires two registered adults over 21 for all Scouting activities.

Not much between here and the Steel City. Maybe Athens. 🤣 As much as the news can be dire or frustrating regarding the BSA. I'm all in for at least 2020. If I'm out after that, it'll be because of life circumstances vs something that the BSA does or something that happens in the news.

As a young, single adult, I'd get my social life back. Spend more weekends at the range, doing my own camping trips. No more weeknights at Scouting stuff. (3 nights this week). Maybe at some point if my church had an outdoors ministry, I'd help with that. This may happen to me regardless of what happens with the BSA's solvency.

It doesn't really break mine. Any time there's a man among youth (male of female), there are going to be parents that are rightfully defensive about it. Those of you who have rubbed shoulders with foreign Scout groups have seen that young adults in their 20's-30's make up a big chunk of Scout leaders. Here in the States, a combination of moving away from home for college, lack of paid time off at the beginning of careers, and "all adult men around kids must be potential pedophiles" keeps Scouting in the US from tapping into a knowledgeable and needed group of volunteers. I'm not sure what the answer is for that. Statistically men are more dangerous than women. However, statistically many child abusers are family or related to the victim. Given my demographic and situation, I do my best to educate others and enforce YPT. Not only does it protect our youth, but it's critical to protect my reputation as well. If other people have innocent lapses with YPT, they will likely be given a pass. I cannot and will not count on that. What does break my heart: We had our council camporee last weekend. I took some of the Catholic Scouts to Mass at the camporee. On the way back to our campsite one of them asked which parish church I attend. All 4 of the youth and I attend the same parish church. Our former pastor was recently suspended by the diocese for breaking the Catholic Church's version of YPT. After that news broke he was accused and charged with abuse of a minor in the 1990's before he became a Priest. Thankfully they didn't ask too many questions, (I hope they had those conversations with their parents.) Parents are right to be defensive and protective of their kids. The last few decades have proved you can't really fully trust anybody with your kids; not your Scout leaders, not the Priest, not their teachers, not their coaches and not even your own family. Parents can't remove all the adults from their kids lives, but they do need to remain vigilant. So I'm not mad at parents for having that attitude. I'm not mad that parents view people like me with suspicion. I'm not going to swim uphill against the prevailing attitudes and suspicions of the culture.

Bingo. This right here is why I will have nothing to do with female Scouts BSA troops. As a single man in his 20's, I can only be viewed by parents as a potential predator in the making, and I have no desire to deal with that.

Again, does having Scout markings on a trailer help or hurt? The one you posted on the 18th was found because it had troop markings on it. Hopefully the unmarked trailer is recovered too.

What do your SPL's and ASPL's think is best?

We eat with the participants for most meals. There's a few meals the staff prepare for the participants. We have one evening where the Scout's Scoutmasters visit, so staff cook that meal. Staff also cooks breakfast the day the participants return from outpost. Otherwise our meals are similar. The food is crated up by patrol and the participants send two patrol members to pick up their supplies from the QM's. If you are interested, I can ask our QM adviser and see if he'd be open to connecting with you and sharing how we managed food. You can PM me and I'll text him and see what he says. If he agrees, I'll share his contact details with you. ( I imagine he'd be excited to talk about it.) In really dumbed down terms, we made sure that the meals alternate between how demanding they are on the kitchen. So if Course 1 has a meal that requires a good deal of things to be warmed or cooked, the course 2 is going to be on a meal that requires very little prep. I don't know if it's really necessary to run food the way we do with the setback schedule. It'd be operationally a lot simpler to do the same meals for each course, but with the program being different each day, it's nice to have simpler meals on the early days or times when the schedule is tighter. As for the responsibilities of an ASPL, I'm sure it varies from place to place and course to course. Whatever works for you all, keep it. If I'm a Course Director/Scoutmaster, I don't much care how the ASPL's divide up the work so long as they and the SPL are happy with it and they accomplish what they need to. But I think it's important for the Scoutmaster to nudge the SPL to sit down with his ASPL(s) and not assume the ASPL's already know what to do.

My Council did 5 courses spread over 3 weeks. The first two weeks have 2 courses going simultaneously, starting one day apart. One starts on a Sunday, the other on a Monday. I'm not claiming my council does it the best or most optimal way, but this is how we do it. This allows us to have one set of program supplies. We do all of our staff development weekends together, but split up into courses for much of the weekends. I can send you some sample schedules if you'd like to see what that looks like. Overall, we have a few adults that serve as advisory staff, One who leads the overall NYLT program, an advisor for admin, program, and QM. This ensures that new adults we get in those areas get some training, which lets the Course Directors/Scoutmasters focus on working with their youth staff instead of preparing adults. It's a luxury we have thanks to willing volunteers who are happy to teach others but are done with executing the actual program. For each course's Adult staff: we have a course Director(Scoutmaster), an Assistant Course Director(Assistant Scoutmaster for Program), an Adult QM and an Adult Admin. None of these are shared between courses ideally, but we have when necessary. So 3-4 adults is typical. For Youth Staff:(I think our Youth staff's are a little bloated, but we want to engage the youth that we have that want to be on staff. Even with this arrangement multiplied by 5, we still have to turn away staff applicants each year.) We have an SPL. We have Two ASPL's per course. (more on this later) We then have two "Senior STG's." It's a position we've mostly made up. They support training and preparing the TG's for course. If we can't get enough TG's for course, or somebody gets sick or injured and goes home, we have a highly capable replacement TG. This is a bloat position, but I think it does have some value. We have two youth QM's. They do all of our food preparation, portioning, and some meals they cook. Most of the meals we have the participants cook in their patrol sights. They help with material staging, but typically the ASPL's and STG's do most of the materials staging. We don't have a youth admin, unless we have a 9th TG, who effectively becomes a youth admin. We then have 8 or 9 TG's per course to start. as @satl8 points out, sometimes TG's drop out or aren't up to speed. @jjlash You pointed out a problem I encountered this year as an ASM of Program. Our ASPL's hadn't had their roles clearly defined by the SPL, and I hadn't realized I had a role to play to help them define that until we were on course. Day one was a little rough, but they figured it out. If I return to NYLT staff next year that's something I'll try to have addressed. They ended up falling into a set up like this. One was effectively Program/AV/Backup SPL. The other ASPL fell into more of the Logistics and Materials prep guy. It worked for them and they were happy with it. I'm not sure how optimal it was, but was good enough for me.

And the Scouts. In high school I did Marching Band and SPL at the same time. The Scoutmaster was accommodating and I made sure to delegate what I couldn't attend. I probably made 90% of the meetings and 50% of the outings during band. If the Scoutmaster had made me choose band or SPL, I would have chose band. That would have been a bitter pill to swallow, and I wouldn't have handled it as maturely as @qwazse. If I stuck with Scouts it would've been a bare minimum endeavor. It would have made huge changes to my the friends I have, my current volunteering in Scouts, and my career (which I realized I'd be good at thanks to my adult volunteering in Scouting.) If a Scout can't reasonably fulfill their POR during band or sports, I have no problem if they take off a few months for sports. Does it impact the patrol method? Yes. But I'd rather have 4 or 5 patrols, some of which are lukewarm or seasonal participants, vs 1 or 2 dedicated Super Scout patrols. Clarke Green at Scoutmastercg.com had a great idea on how to assign patrols to filter out the in season athletes and musicians who can't participate regularly. I'll see if I can find it later.

Scouts, Music, Sports are all pieces to the puzzle for how we develop youth. Sports can be great, teaching teamwork, promoting physical fitness, and many sports can lead to lifetime hobbies/activities. Music is similar where the reward for those who are talented or put in the practice can be very self gratifying. Being part of my high school marching band, and hitting some of those big moments in our shows was addicting. There was a feeling of being part of something big and special. (My high school marching band had about 180 students.) Scouting is the same, and unlike other activities, Scouting can be for every youth that wants to be in Scouts. Their participation in Scouting can generally fit into their other activities. I think the key different benefit to Scouting (done properly) vs Sports or Band is that the youth drive it. They are responsible for setting their troop/patrol goals, organizing and planning and executing. My Troop has done a number of weekend and week-long backpacking trips where the Scouts have planned the whole trip: Destination, meal plan, hiking route, driving route, emergency plan. The pride and accomplishment they achieved after completing those trips is unlike what they would experience in Music or Sports, where the director or coach calls the shots. To me Music/Sports vs Scouts should be an and instead of a either or.

Unit volunteering is easier to sustain than District or Council. There is a more immediate "payoff" to unit volunteering that isn't always true of District or Council. It's ok to take a break, especially from District or Council stuff. I just turned down an offer to join the Distict Eagle Advancement team. A few years ago I'd be all over that, now I've got too much going on.

What it comes down to is that the BSA and it's volunteers have sold Scouting as a positive environment for kids. We've sold it as character development, an all American activity. So when folks involved with Scouting do terrible things, the media pounces, because it's scandalous. If it bleeds, it leads, and the same is true of scandalous things. Most folks with an opinion worth a cup of spit aren't going to look at this young man pushing drugs and think, "Scouting caused him to do that." I don't feel a need to defend Scouting from a situation like this.

Yea. That'll be the tipping point. It'll be interesting to see what happens going forward. Like watching a train derail in slow motion.

I'm not sure what the BSA was responsible for vs what WOSM was responsible for.

Craziness. In Belgium some rifles and shotguns are legal. Likely the ones Scouts are shooting:.22's, pump shotguns, cowboy action style guns, are likely legal in Belgium anyways.

First thing: Wood Badge can be well worth your while because it will teach you the same material they learned at NYLT. I found Wood Badge helpful and I'd already been to NYLT. Otherwise: I like Eagledads advice. Ask them what they learned and want to try in the Troop. NYLT talks a fair amount about creating visions for yourself and your team and creating SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time set) goals to accomplish that. If they are SPL or ASPL's ask them what their vision is for the troop, what goals they want to set, and as they go along, help them refine their goals and objectives. If they are Patrol leaders, same thing applies, just at the patrol level. If you are a Scoutmaster, you need to create your own vision for the Troop. You can find some sample ones to help you brainstorm by Googling "Scoutmaster Vision Statement." To summarize NYLT as best I can: Each Scout is divided into a patrol of relative strangers. They will each take turns being a patrol leader while the Staff will model all the of the Troop level positions. They'll do by-the-book flag ceremonies, troop meetings and PLC's. Throughout the day they'll attend presentations on leadership skills, communication, values ethics, servant leadership and more. Between and sometimes as part of those presentations they'll play games or complete patrol challenges that force them to grow as a patrol and lead one another. NYLT is not a silver bullet however; Last December I "retired" from my Troop. New Scoutmaster took over in May. I had helped get him up to speed and was pivoting to focus on graduate school. Things have been shaky since because we've done a terrible job recruiting new ASMs for about 4- 5 years and I didn't do nearly as useful a job preparing the new Scoutmaster as I thought I had. Folks have been approaching me and complaining about the state of things, so I've dragged myself back off the bench. The Scoutmaster needs others to handle logistics, communications and other things so he can really focus on the SPL and the PLC. Hopefully the Scoutmaster, CC and I can build and train up that team, so in a year or so I can "retire from the Troop" for good. Last weeks Troop meeting, I was substitute Scoutmaster while the SM was on vacation, I chatted with the SPL and ASPLs. Each had been to NYLT and each had staffed NYLT. I asked two questions. "What problems have you noticed?" and "What changes do you want to see to the troop?" I was encouraged when one pulled out his phone and said "I have a list." They have all these great ideas and goals, but need some help getting from where we are now to where they want to go. Sometimes all they need is encouragement and "If you get stuck come find me." Sometimes they need some direct guidance. The way I try to describe it, my job as a Scoutmaster/ASM is to help the Scouts create a structure. Right now, my troop's youth have a leadership structure of POR's, but no communication structure or practical structure for how tasks get done. When they figure that out, their execution skills thanks to NYLT will be great. My NYLT staff always amaze me at how fast they figure things out, but the SPL's a typically copying the structure they've seen before, and it's a good one. In my Troop, the structure has grown and decayed over the years. I tell that cautionary tale from my Troop not to discourage you from sending your Scouts to NYLT, but to stress that it's not a silver bullet to make your troop. NYLT Scouts still need a structure to operate in and some guidance from the SM and ASM's. When they have it, they'll be exceptional if you let them.

Difference is I'm a single man in my 20's without kids. If I strike up conversations with random youth that's kinda weird.

Logistics is always a challenge for most Scout events. One would think the largest jambo in history they'd figure it out, but I'm sure they are trying to avoid leftover inventory. Not sure what is on WOSM vs what's on the BSA. One if my buddies had a hard time getting swag he ordered and he is on staff.

In my neck of the woods, we call those individuals suckers..

Visiting WSJ was a great time! It was the first time I've visited the Summit, and I was able to forget about the debt and it being a financial albatross for a few hours. As a visitor to WSJ it's hard to meet any of the foreign scouts/scouters because they all have activities and such to do. Still the international exhibits were really cool. I had some Francesinha from the Portuguese food tent. It was fattening and so tasty. Met a few scouts and scouters from my council, a few on purpose and a few on accident! Met with @qwazse which as he told his scouts: "I'm off to go meet some stranger from the internet!" Saw the back of Rex Tillerson's head during a dedication ceremony for the Tillerson Leadership center, but Trading Post shopping was more interesting to me than watching the whole ceremony.