T2Eagle

If Mr. Mason is representing his council than his sworn duty is to represent his council, irrespective of what other clients his very, very large firm may represent. I always find it unseemly to question the integrity of someone in our profession without evidence. To your original question, in a group of hundreds of councils there's certainly going to be a wide variety of opinions. My understanding in my own council is that we'll end up paying in order to put this all behind us, and there really isn't a good alternative. I suspect that's the median position. It's a very open question

Yup, they were part of the committee that worked on the guidelines.

The CDC has issued some guidelines. As I stated in a previous post, most youth serving programs are providing pretty similar rules these days. Broadly: no one on one contact, background checks, mandated reporting of violations, no corporal punishment, constructive discipline, no tolerance for humiliation or bullying, etc. I have a problem both with overly restrictive rules from BSA and units that don't bother following them. While realizing that not all slopes are slippery, when you have the view that I don't have to follow this rule about lazer tag it becomes a little easier for someo

It's worth remembering that how well YPT has worked or not worked, or whether the abuse levels are better or worse now than in the past isn't really a question before the court. Both sides might make rhetorical claims about it, but there isn't going to be any evidence or arguments heard as to who is correct. A settlement might involve an agreement about changes to the YPT guidelines, in fact it probably will, if for no other reason than that the victims would demand some sort of change as a condition of settlement. It's hard to see what that change would be because YPT practices are b

This simply isn't true. First and foremost libel has to involve a false statement. If Johnny's father comes to a BSA official and says Scoutmaster X molested Johnny, BSA official can call the police and say, Johnny's father said Scoutmaster X molested Johnny. There can be no falsity in that statement. The BSA CANNOT be held liable for any defamation even if Johnny and/or his father were lying. Outside of reporting to the police, BSA never would have to publicly accuse anyone of anything. If they had any belief that a person might be a molester they simply had to remove him from the

Update to my own year old post. Here is what my.scouting says on the home page: "You can now transfer and multiple between units using your My.Scouting account National 11/16/2020 Now users are able to transfer from one Scout unit to another without having to take a new application into the Scout office. Unit leaders will be able to transfer youth by going to the new “Roster” feature in “Member Manager” and “Organization Manager” and select the youth who need to be transferred, then click the “Transfer” icon. This will create a transfer application which will be sent to the

Get in touch with your troop right away. There's a good chance that even if you weren't included in the recharter this can be rectified without new paperwork and with the troop just calling council. Charters don't actually expire until the last day of the month, although councils want the units to get them done before that. Even if you did happen to drop off the roster the fix is really simple, you just fill out a new app, which almost certainly can be done online.

There's certainly some perpetrators still alive. A scout leader from the mid eighties would be in his late seventies or early eighties today. If these cases weren't being brought as part of a bankruptcy claim but instead were going through the normal state court civil litigation system they would be named defendants. They might yet, the same change in statute of limitations that allows for these claims against BSA allows them against individuals. BSA might be indemnifying Chartered Orgs but they're certainly not indemnifying these individuals. I don't know for certain, but I'm prett

Is there anyone on this board that has any any insight as to how or why the NY council was able to not sell?

In virtually any actual lawsuit about abuse BSA, from today, or 10 years ago, or 30 years ago, the CO, the local council, and the individual offender are all going to be sued. Assuming the suit has merit, at the end of the trial a judgment is first rendered about each defendant: was that defendant responsible for the harm that occurred yes or no. So if, as a matter of law BSA's programs were enough that they were not responsible for the harm than they're in the clear, same for actions or lack of actions by council, same for CO, same for individual defendant. After its determined who is res

I disagree that this is happening because of litigation risk. This is happening because, by their own admission, they can't or won't take the steps necessary to prevent the rape and molestation of children by members of their organization. And if they can't do that, than no they should not have a youth program. If you can't afford to fix the brakes on your car than you shouldn't drive it, not because you're going to get sued for running someone over but because you shouldn't be willing to risk running someone over. As for the analogy to BSA, BSA isn't in bankruptcy despite all its trai

From the same article “If a church five years from now gets sued by a former Boy Scout who was molested or claims to have been molested in that church’s troop, normally the church would turn to the Boy Scouts and say, ‘You guys said you would hold us harmless and insure us, so do that,'” Jordan said. “And the Boy Scouts will say, ‘Sorry, we went through a bankruptcy reorganization and we no longer have any responsibility to do that.'” Churches can maintain their indemnification and gain access to the trust by filing a “placeholder” claim with the court by the Nov. 16 deadline, said Jordan, who

it's doubtful it will really be in anyone's interest to object to a settlement. The alternative to a global settlement is that it becomes every man for himself. That means everything comes out of bankruptcy court and each plaintiff alleging abuse will have to file an individual lawsuit against BSA, and if applicable against a local council. Among other things that would mean BSA could spend down its all its own remaining assets fighting each claim individually. For the plaintiffs that means having to prove each individual claim in court and absorb all the attendant attorney and other costs

I am COR of a Pack and Troop sponsored by a Catholic parish. We have several registered leaders who are not Catholic. No one expects them to profess Catholic faith or deny their own. It's possible your CO has a different expectation but that would be pretty unusual. As to the training and document you're being asked to undertake, that is very very common in catholic units. I'm surprised this is just coming up now, a version of YPT for adults working with kids in Catholic parishes has been as close to a mandate as the structure of the Church allows for almost twenty years now (you m

2000 scouts on the books is going to make operating two camps, a HA base, and a Cub camp really challenging. So Grand Teton went from 26,000 to 2,000, does anyone know the numbers for similar councils out west?

The unit, in your case the pack, has to approve your son's application. The Cubmaster or a designee can approve the application. If your pack is using online applications this is a matter of a few clicks, if you're using paper applications then it's signature from Cubmaster, then someone has to drive it to the local council office where an employee, the registrar, has to enter it into the computer. all those steps could add up to some time. Your adult application needs an additional couple steps, you have to also complete BSA's Youth Protection Training (YPT) before any thing can be process

I have a number of thoughts on this, and like the rule they're not going to be completely crystallized. First, in all of this discussion the thing to keep in mind is that the enforcement mechanism for any of this, or said differently, the benefit conferred for compliance with any of this, is continued membership in BSA and to a lesser extent coverage by their insurers for things that may go wrong. BSA is not the only organization that does this. My religion has provisions for excommunication for certain acts, even if those acts occur outside of church or church functions. Lots of empl

I'm not sure how long you've been at this game known as scouts, but hard earned experience is that if you do this: "One form (call it "Scout copy") is kept at the scouts house, by the scout, and one form is kept at the "Form Keepers" location ("master copy"). " you will spend a lot of time every Friday before pulling out of the parking lot ensuring that each scout has a form, and then you'll spend some more time as one or two scramble because they forgot it. If you're just going to have the scouts responsible for their form what is the point of having a master file that never gets used?

She built a bench. Like oh so many Eagle scouts before her. I would love to know how many benches have been built as Eagle scout projects over the years. I see them in virtually every park I've been to over the years, and have had my share of my troop's scouts build them. The number has to be in the tens of thousands. ETA ... and the sore feet and tired legs of a nation,including yours truly, are grateful.

The BSA uses a commercial company to run background checks. What they're going to pick up is things that are a public record, basically a credit report and a list of criminal convictions if any. There is almost zero chance that what you're describing exists in any data base that anyone would be able to access. Put in your application, don't worry, and hope that this becomes a weird/funny story you tell in the coming years.

Unless they specify ahead of time, and it would probably have to be some sort of targeted audience course to do so, no one is expected to have backpacking level equipment for WB. There are no fitness requirements for the course, and a lot of participants are going to be from the Cub level where they haven't yet invested in light weight gear. Assuming that your tent isn't so big that it takes more than one person to move it anywhere you should be fine.

I like the idea that the requirements are deferred. Our unit was running into trouble with this and were going to have a good group of scouts unable to advance at the pace they wanted. Our "solution" is that we just did finally find someone who has a pond we can use, so we're scheduling a one time only swimming requirements afternoon. I hate it, we never schedule advancement only or even advancement centric activities. We schedule fun scouting activities and out of them arise opportunities to work on requirements if that's what the scout wants to do. I'd rather the requirement be defe

This dead horse isn't really worth beating, but, nothing here is out of the proper chain of command. In scouts the ASMs report to the SM. The SM reports to the committee. The Committee , led by its chair, reports to the COR. Part of the committee's responsibility is selecting the ASMs. So if they're responsible for recruiting and selecting ASMs they would logically be involved in knowing why someone is no longer an ASM.

I've been on a couple of non profit boards, gifts like this are trickier than they appear at first glance. It seems great on its face, but dig a little deeper and it's more work for what might be only a marginal gain, at best, for fulfilling your mission. A launch point and then a separate parcel --- two new pieces of property, not connected to each other and not connected to any other scouting properties. Someone has to maintain them, someone has to make sure they're always in compliance with all the various regulations that affect wetlands and waterfront, someone has to empty

I've always been a fan of leaving lots of time for the scouts to just be scouts: run around in the woods and have fun. Too much of kids' time today is programmed. A lot of the benefit of scouts i y opinion is just giving them time to figure out how to occupy and entertain themselves. I occasionally get push back on this from the other adults in the troop, although I've brought most of them along. I definitely get push back when we're at district and council events. But I never insist my scouts attend any part of a program that they don't want to --- most of which are evening program