vol_scouter

And those attorneys that specialize in medicine will do your neurosurgery by your beliefs. I will stick with real experts not people trained as attorneys who have an interest in a particular field because they do lawsuits in that field.

Perhaps, it is because here and other places volunteers complain bitterly about taking YPT that I believe should be done yearly. People here and elsewhere threaten to quit if youth protection gets more demanding. The organization is already weakened by membership losses. if those are the reasons, the BSA should follow your advice and let those people leave if they are not willing to get with the program and realize that there can be no program until we have all made Scouting as safe as possible. There is no excuse. We all must do the right thing to protect children.

So the next time you have a medical problem, go to a medical malpractice attorney for your diagnosis and treatment.

The program that was released a couple of years ago was done by the nation’s experts on child sexual abuse. There was a desire to study the efficacy of the new program but the BSA is strapped for funds and has downsized making such studies to be done correctly with outside researchers impossible. I hope that such studies are done in the future.

CynicalScouter, Lawyers have the mistaken belief that they can be an expert in anything. They are experts in the law - not youth protection, science, medicine, mathematics, engineering, or any other field unless that have advanced training in it. Just as many of us are looking to attorneys and yourself to translate what is actually occurring. Not that we are not intelligent enough to understand but that it requires specialized training to be an expert. Even in the law, attorneys specialize. A divorce lawyer does not handle a criminal defense or a complicated bankruptcy such as we have been discussing. If the BSA is to take what is considered a top notch program and make it better, it requires evaluation by an expert in the field just as one would select attorneys.

That is more supportable as long as the court appointed monitor is a researcher from the field.

The issue that I have with courts ordering such things is that it is dictatorial in that one does what is directed not matter what has changed. In the 1970's and 1980's, cities in the south had court ordered busing. At first, black students were bused to predominantly white schools and white students were bused to predominantly black schools. The program was exorbitantly expensive. After some time, black students were being bused to black schools and nearly all white students had left. There was no longer a purpose in spending the money to bus children from their neighborhoods to elsewhere at great cost and time on buses for the children. It continued for decades, ending only relatively recently. It benefitted few if any students not terribly long after beginning. This is not to debate whether busing was good or bad but to relate how the court continued wasting the children's time on buses and the school systems money. The court will appoint an attorney who will likely not be a researcher into child abuse and so not qualified to manage such an effort. If the proposal is to have court reporting and court ordered audits, then that makes sense. The BSA can provide information that shows progress. The court could employ researchers to evaluate the data and perform spot checks to assure the accuracy. We must get volunteers to take youth protection seriously or they should be asked to leave. Adult females should be encouraged to participate at all levels. I share your desire for not just the volunteers and professionals at the national council to be more forceful, but at the local council and unit levels.

Do open Ineligible Volunteer Files (IVF) mean listed by name? If not, by identifiers such as council? So who will defend the lawsuits by people defamed by accusations that have not been proven? Who will defend the lawsuits from people placed in the IVF because they were accused of theft of funds from a unit or the council bu.t were defamed by being associated with the IVF? How will the monitor improve upon the nation's experts? Clearly, we all want to see no child harmed in Scouting, it is a challenging goal. I do not agree with 1 and 3 but do number 2. It goes without saying that all Scouters wish to see no further abuse.

I understand your first comments and have thought about it long and hard. It has made me question my involvement with Scouting. It is my belief that there is no youth serving organization that can be formed where the incidence of child sexual abuse (CSA) is zero. CSA occurs in the home so if an organization existed that only allowed any contact between youth and adults was by parents, I believe that some children will be abused. How do we get that number to be as low as humanly possible? The parents must be primarily responsible for what happens to their children. They must be vigilant and questioning of each and every person around their children. They must have a little suspicion about anyone interacting with their children. They must be involved with their children's activities and attend much of what they are doing. When a mother takes a child to a troop meeting and she is told, perhaps very politely, that she is not really welcome, then she should recover her child immediately and the council should be notified. If the council does not remove the leader in question assuming that the story can be reasonably substantiated, then it should be disciplined by the national council. Parents are the key to lowering the rates to the number occurring in the homes that is outside of this realm to address. Until YSOs can share the responsibilities of youth protection between all concerned - professionals, volunteers, and parents, the minimum cannot be reached. That is my belief.

If the independent monitor assumes the liability, then it is a great idea. If the monitor is merely dictatorial but has no liability, then it is a horrible idea. The ineligible volunteer files needs to be nationalized by the CDC for all youth groups to prevent pedophiles and ephebophiles out of all youth serving organizations. It could serve like a criminal background check where someone who is thought to be dangerous is kept out of youth serving organizations (YSOs) but they are not defamed or slandered through unproven accusations. The councils and local volunteers must be the local police to remove suspicious individuals from Scouting. The national office cannot evaluate the local units - it is a local responsibility. National needs hold local volunteers and professionals responsible though how I do not know right now.

The new version was just rolled out in the last few years so it is not 11,000. Whereas there is often room for improvement, there can be diminishing ways to improve. The BSA is using the best guidance available. The changes are likely small.

The current BSA Youth Protection Training took a few years to design, write, and implement using the nation's top experts in children and youth abuse. It is considered by an exemplar. Not certain how much better it can be designed after following the instructions of the nation's best.

That is 99.93% effective

This is not to argue whether the BSA has done enough to protect children but to give a comparison to standards that society is seemingly accepting at this time (likely from ignorance). For the 84,000 claimants and the estimated 130 M alumni of Scouting the rate of abuse would be 0.07%. As I have noted before, that calculation is fraught with problems. Depending on your view, 84,000 could be too large or too small and, likewise, the BSA estimate of 130 M alumni is likely too generous. It is the best that we have at this time. Looking to the US schools in a paper entitled: "Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of PreK-12 Students by School Personnel", Grant, Billie-Jo; Shakeshaft, Charol; Mueller, Jessica, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse (J CHILD SEX ABUSE), Jan2019; 28(1): 2-6. (5p) "School employee sexual misconduct, the abuse of students by any K-12 school personnel, which may include contact or non-contact sexual misconduct, continues to be woefully understudied. Yet, cases appear daily in our media outlets, making this an everyday experience for too many students. The field's only generalizable prevalence study was conducted in 2000 and reanalyzed in 2004, and it estimated that 9.6% of the students, or 5 million students, will experience sexual misconduct by the time they graduate from high school (Shakeshaft, 2004)." The reference is: Shakeshaft, C. ( 2004 ). Educator sexual misconduct: A synthesis of existing literature. Washington, DC : U.S. Department of Education, Doc #2004-09. So in our schools, the rate of abuse is 9.6% while in Scouting it has been 0.07%. So a child in school is ~148 times more likely to be abused than in Scouting. This does not absolve Scouting of criminal acts but it does provide some perspective.

The BSA has had massive layoffs and has only said that it could not emerge from bankruptcy past this summer - not that its cash would = $0.00.

When examining the options, understand that it is not just the liquidity to operate for the next few months. The BSA must file a 5 year business plan with the court that is solid and reasonable. The assets available must support that plan. So a plan to double membership in one year with a large, aggressive, national marketing effort would not be reasonable as there would not be the money available for the marketing and doubling membership is not a likely achievable goal. There is more to the date where the BSA cannot emerge from bankruptcy than just operating funds for the next few months.

Actually, the $650 M figure includes all High Adventure Bases; the national service center; the national supply division warehouses, buildings, and contents; unrestricted funds; and other things. The Norman Rockwell collection and some oil & gas holdings are to be included but their value, to my knowledge, has not been publicly disclosed. The Summit Bechtel Reserve is valued at $350 M [unpaid loan money to the BSA to purchase it is not accounted for in that figure] while Sea Base, Northern Tier, and Philmont all three together are valued at about $60 M. The payment of $650 M [note that this is just BSA assets - it does not include insurance companies, the local councils, or chartered organizations] will have a crippling effect on the BSA. From what I know, its survival will be in jeopardy.

It is not released. The actual formula takes into account membership and financial situation. A very large and financially healthy council is a 100 whereas a small and/or financially challenged council is a 500. Councils who are of average size and financially fine but not outstanding are 300. This is the first time I recall seeing the list publicly.

Barry, Like you, I am pragmatic. The youth want STEM programming that can be integrated into a heavily outdoor program. The patrol method is a powerful way to achieve the mission of Scouting (whereas the uniform may now be a negative) but it is not the only means to accomplish those goals. Many on these forums advocate change but whenever real innovation and change is proposed, they say that we must be a camping, hiking, etc organization. Real innovation and change might move us in a direction where that the current methods are replaced or modified. Scouting is about building character and leadership. In order to do that, we must excite and inspire the youth with an attractive program to them - not to us. Battlebots is very exciting to the youth of today and arguably better prepares youth for their futures. Could one have a program around Battlebots that teaches the Scout Oath and Law? The answer is yes. People point to the soccer and Scouting program that is said to be a failure. If you look at it objectively, it was a success in getting new ethnic groups into Scouting. However, they were then encouraged to join a traditional unit. We forgot that they had had the ability to join a traditional Scouting unit but chose not to do so. They wanted to play soccer. If the BSA had built the mission into the soccer program, it could have been a success in all measures. Research on STEM Scouts shows that it is fulfilling the mission while having a different delivery model. The demand for the program is also seen by the research to be very large. There is little enthusiasm with the volunteers and professionals to market the program. Because of that, it might languish but others have eyed it. Scouting must decide if it is all about the current mission statement that does not limit it to the outdoor program. If there is a overwhelming desire to keep it as it primarily is today, it could become a niche program for some number of youth but not getting to be as large proportionately as it once was.

So can it be inferred that the mediation is possibly making progress if essentially nothing large has been rules upon that would mean that it is in the deal making? Could the parties still be terribly far apart? Or does it not mean anything?

STEM is not being pushed hard. If it is true that female leaders do less outdoor programs is likely multifactorial. Part could be because the males are really critical, especially in the outdoors and the female leaders wish to avoid the criticism. I know of nothing that would lead me to believe that females are better prepared or able to lead STEM programs that have been male dominated in the past. STEM is where the job growth and upward mobility lie. The BSA could be a powerful after school competitor in this area.

Though Scouting is far from the more organized military like meetings in the 1960's, I agree in general with your statements about the uniforms and how often that the uniform is worn.. Outdoors is the issue. Most BSA volunteers like the outdoors and are a little blind to some of the messages from today's youth. They are reluctant to go into the real outdoors. Most are not allowed unstructured play time, especially in the great outdoors, so the outdoors that we all embrace is foreign and scary to the children of today. When I was working with a venturing crew from ~2011 through 2015, the youth always enthusiastically and overwhelmingly wanted to do outdoors activities - hikes, canoe trips, camping, etc. However, the attendance was near zero or zero on the actual outings. If the emphasis was all about learning STEM topics, we had near all attend. They were thinking about the STEM activities and not concerned about their fears of the outdoors. Growing up in the 1960's, my grandparents still used a wood burning stove and had a small farm. Being able to start and maintain a fire appropriate to the needs (warmth, cooking, metal working, etc.) and all men carried pocket knives as boys did too - even to school. All of that has changed. A fully competent adult male or female may never have a need to build and maintain a fire. Though I use my pocket knife all of the time, I know few people (no females) who carry a knife who are not Scouts or in manual fields of endeavor. Someone said that other organizations offered outdoor programming and were swamped. The programs named were all STEM oriented. Few lasted more than a day at a time. We all know that a day trip to someplace accessible by car or bus is very different from backpacking. So the parents saw the value in being outside and learning STEM topics. This is provided by someone like their school teacher - safe and friendly. Scouting can sometimes be led by an imposing adult who is not like their teacher - a scarier person who wants them to go into a scary environment. We do not see it this way. Our society has changed. It is more maternalistic than the 1960's. Think about the dynamics of a mother who has a son or daughter in Cub Scouts where she is an integral part of the program. She is comfortable as she is a part of everything that occurs. When her daughter or son crosses over, it is likely she will feel less wanted or told that she is not welcome as a leader. She has little or no outdoor experience so has fears for her child. Additionally, she may have had issues with a male in her life so might have trust issues. Then the males tell her to trust them to take good care of her child on the outdoors that is foreign to her. She might pull her child then or it might be the first issue that occurs. We must welcome mother and encourage them to be leaders. Some units do this but most do not. Children want explore their worlds. It is natural. They are also afraid of things that seem foreign and mysterious to them. Their world is full of electronics, astounding scientific discoveries, and movies about exploring the universe that is all provided in a safe environment. Scouting must have STEM activities to appeal to the parents AND their children because much of the other things are seen as irrelevant by society (note that I am not saying that I do not see the relevance but that most parents and children cannot). We must remember that our mission is: "The mission of the Boy Scouts of America is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law." The outdoors is just a means but it is not the only or sole means to achieve the mission. We must appeal to the youth of today and pay less attention to what drew us to Scouting when we were children. We all know the Robert Baden-Powell quote: “A fisherman does not bait his hook with food he likes. He uses food the fish likes. So with boys.” Today's youth want STEM in their programming - not courses or lectures but showing the STEM aspect to the world in which they live - how the rope is made and why, the science of ziplines, the chemistry of a campfire and cooking, etc. Scouting will not cease to exist but it will limit the number of members unless we adapt to the desires of today's children and their parents.

The Scout Association (UK) does have waiting lists because they cannot find enough adult volunteer leaders. They still have too few Scouts. The BSA is largely a legacy organization. Each generation tends to have fewer potential Scouts and there will never be 100% who join. Scouting must do things that allow it to fulfill its mission such as more STEM activities. The outdoors do not appeal to America's youth as it did for the Baby Boom generation.

CynicalScouter, Though we do not always see situations in the same light, I do appreciate your posts. You keep us informed about important happenings while not bogging us down with the myriads of documents that are a necessary part of the court proceedings but no very germane to our understanding of the those proceedings. So my thanks. I would comment that Cynical in your name would seem to be a gross understatement. Please continue to post.

I agree.