elitts

Just because I think the point is fairly important (though not central to your argument): 2 Deep Leadership is NOT about having 2 adults watching everything or watching each other or anything else along those lines. It's about having a backup on site in case of an emergency. I realize various statements occasionally reference this point as being about "keeping kids safe" but that's just because it sounds good. While this is entirely speculation, I'd guess it's because developing statistics of this nature is fairly time consuming and expensive. In particular, trying to go backwards

While I disagree with them, there are a couple main arguments put forward by those pursuing these cases (huge generalization, I realize, but I couldn't think of another way to phrase it). The first is that since the BSA had information from almost the beginning of the program that pedophiles were attempting to access boys though the program, they should have done more to screen them out in advance rather than banning them after the fact. Basically they are arguing that "risk of sexual abuse" was a known danger to participants that needed to be mitigated rather than treating each pedoph

Personally, I think the most crucial thing the BSA could do is actually restructure the whole G2SS and fix all the problems with whole monstrosity. The primary issue at this point is with compliance, not with having rules that address the primary issues. And while getting people to follow rules is always tough, BSA makes it much much worse by committing several major rule making errors that I think lead directly to a lackadaisical response to the rules in general. If you need more than one or two clarifying sentences for a rule, it's a bad rule. This means that word choices become cri

Scouting is not based upon the idea that "A Scout is Trustworthy" or that "Boys can be trusted" like it's a promise. Scouting is based upon the idea that boys are "capable of being trusted" and that by utilizing the program we can help the boys/girls develop the leadership skills and personality traits to live the Scout Law and Oath. People like to parrot "A Scout is..." phrases from the Law like it's a magic spell of some kind, but the assumption inherent in having a "Scout Law" is that failures are going to happen; if that wasn't the case, the Law wouldn't be needed because those traits wo

I'm sure that's one of the core arguments for liability; the problem with conducting this analysis, as I see it, is threefold: It appears to be very difficult for most people to consider the issue in the context of the time in which it was occurring. I regularly read comments and posts (not necessarily on here) from people talking about how "The BSA should have always been doing background checks" or "There's no excuse for not letting other agencies know someone was a pedophile". This of course ignores the fact that until the 1990s, there wasn't really such a thing as a background chec

Unfortunately, your scenario simply doesn't track with reality. Scouts was never 100% safe. Just like sports, the promise is only "this program is as safe as it reasonably can be while doing dangerous activities and deliberately having scouts interact with a variety of other adults on both group and individual levels". Scouts has never (at least since I became involved in the 1980s told parents "please drop off your kids and leave, we'll take care of everything". In every troop I've ever been a a part of they've been desperately looking for adults to stay and get involved. (barr

The BSA is in a tough spot when it comes to balancing the fact that they "care about survivors" and the practical issues surrounding the operations of an organization. Frankly, the ultimate duty of the BSA Board and top management is to the organization and the members it serves, NOT to survivors; so I never expected this bankruptcy process to be anything but adversarial and acrimonious. If they had simply sold everything and given every dime to the lawyers, they would have failed in their responsibilities. The PR implications of the situation mean that actual honesty isn't really possi

These are all very specialized properties because Philmont at least is too large to sell to a single buyer outside of a government; getting maximum value out of them would likely take years. They could probably get one of the major logging companies to buy it, but it would be at a fairly steep discount. Other than that, it would need to be broken up into pieces to truly maximize the sale price. There has been a trend in many places across the country when it comes to tax exempt property to allow some commercial use of tax exempt property IF the for-profit use is solely to subsidize t

So, the Academy of Pediatrics is classifying some behaviors as "abnormal" solely because the behavior is demonstrated by less than 1.5% of children. But how exactly can they think they have accurate information on those rates of prevalence? Most parents are relatively oblivious to their children's activities in the first place, and now you think those parents are going to be both willing and able to accurately report behavior that their children are likely to be deliberately hiding? And how exactly do they square up the idea that sexual behaviors are "highly abnormal" and less than 1.5% of

The best studies I was able to find put the transmission rate of COVID at around 5% for a close contact (and 10% for a household member). They've also reviewed studies and concluded that the apparent transmission rate outdoors is about 18 times lower than it is indoors. So that puts the outdoor transmission rate for a close contact at about 0.27% (about 1 in 37,000). And even then, that 18 times lower number includes gatherings that were primarily outdoors, but that included indoors components and didn't factor out actual physical contact or surface related transmission. Given that mat

All of the regulations regarding masks under OSHA (and related orgs) are going to be about protecting the person wearing the mask. The point of widespread masking isn't about keeping the person wearing the mask from contracting the virus, it's to keep the exhalations of infected people from spreading as much. So while members of the public regularly wear their masks in such a way as to not protect themselves, the general purpose of widespread masking is still being achieved because even without a tight seal, the dispersion radius of exhalations are still significantly reduced. And unfortu

My mistake, that article confused me because it said the district court and the court of appeals both overturned the Bankruptcy court.

I suspect they'd have lost that one because the Supreme Court would have denied a hearing and let the two other court rulings stand. But your point is valid that the lookback period is a little bit murky. However, the fact that it's murky doesn't mean the attempt isn't worth it. Regardless of whether or not they thought they were going to be included in the lawsuits, it should have been a heads up to get their ducks in a row. Practically speaking, any organization that is subject to lawsuits should have all of their major assets protected from civil liability. This is why you'

Personally, I really hope the local councils mostly took the hint a couple years ago and started protecting their assets back then. If, in 2018, councils started putting conservation easements and deed restrictions in place on their properties, or transferred them to trusts, they should be pretty well protected come 2021-2022 if they start having to file bankruptcy. Obviously some did not because there are a bunch of councils selling their camps now, but I'm hoping that's a minority. Realistically, I suspect that most of those LCs selling camps now are doing it because they couldn't afford

I don't actually doubt the severity of many of the claims, or that there were cases of negligence. Where my doubt really comes into play when it comes to actually prosecuting lawsuits, is in the area of direct liability. If an abuser had been accused and the BSA failed to act, I think there should be liability. If the BSA admitted a known abuser due to negligence (as opposed to being deceived), I think there is liability. But I don't think that the simple fact of a pedophile (who hasn't been caught) being a registered scouter means the BSA should be held liable for the rapists actions.

They included sexual harassment in the definition, and with as broadly as some folks think that extends, it becomes easier to imagine. It's much like the whole 1:4 women will be sexually assaulted statistic. (they included stuff like any kind of kiss without consent as a sexual assault)

The intellectual property is owned by National, but what makes you think they don't have full control over it the way any other entity would; including the right to license it? I will grant you that if the organization goes away, there would no longer be anyone to do ongoing licensing, but that doesn't mean they couldn't make it all "public use", or license it to the WOSM, in perpetuity and have that hold up past their liquidation. And yes, I realize without an agreement the LCs and COs aren't covered. Ideally I'd like to see a settlement that leaves BSA intact and functional even if s

I would hope it's not worded that way. Clearly the intention of such a clause is to make sure that the local council can't "go rogue" and take assets that have been paid for by leveraging the BSA name and go start another organization. Or alternately, to make sure that if a council goes belly-up, the BSA can make sure any major assets get transferred to whoever is taking over the area. But it would be quite a stretch for someone to argue that a clause like this was intended to be interpreted to allow for assets to be siphoned back while the LC was actively functioning. And beyond

I only brought up the HA bases because they are directly controlled by the BSA. Plenty of troops go on weekend backpacking and canoe trips (with the BSA's encouragement) into the wilderness (or at least semi-wilderness) and there's no extra liability waiver for those, that's just "going camping". Absolutely. You tell them "Well, we don't have a structure nearby we can go into, so lets double-check our rain-flys, make sure everything is tied down and then hunker down in our tents." You certainly shouldn't be saying "OK, I need you all to call your parents to come pick you up, the c

Of course we think about the risks before hand, but it's important to keep in mind that the BSA program isn't about maintaining a "risk-free" environment. In Scouts, risk-mitigation and safety are considered, but they aren't the driving focus of the program because many of the things we are doing have a certain amount of danger inherent in the activity. So the question becomes, what level of risk is acceptable for scouts. Clearly, the BSA thinks being in a tent during a storm is generally an acceptable risk, even if it's not the "safest possible" way to weather a storm; otherwise Philmont

Seems like a good example of why crowding a bunch of people under a "shelter" isn't always a great option. I agree with the idea of hunkering down and not being out "doing stuff" during a lightning storm. Certainly I'm not going to be the guy standing there holding a baseball bat in an open baseball diamond with one going on or sailing across a lake in a Sunfish. But you don't see many places actually cancelling events because there is a forecast chance of a storm, they just deal with it when it happens, then move along. And I'm not even saying scouts shouldn't go hop int

How exactly does that work? Do you just not allow your troop to do any sort of backwoods camping? Or you just switch the camp-out from a backpacking/canoe trip to a plop-n-drop camp-out any time there is a risk of a storm? I'm not trying to be an ass, but if that's truly how you operate your troop, I can't help think you are doing them a disservice. Sometimes tragedies happen; and while reasonable precautions are worthwhile, there is such a thing as over-reacting. Basing your camping decisions on the 0.000015% risk of dying from a lightning strike seems like a good example of such

This concern over lightning strikes seems like nothing more than yet another case of "We got sued, so now we have rules for it". The death rate in the US for lightning strikes is around 50 per year. To put that in perspective, 17,000 people in the US die every year from slipping or tripping and falling down. And yet, we have guidance from the BSA telling us that "safety" requires dragging people out of bed in the middle of the night and then hustling them through the woods over uneven ground to shelters because they might get struck by lightning. So yeah, I'm not getting my scouts out

Completely different active age group for the most part. The vast majority of active Scouts are aged 10 - 14, with an even more drastic drop off at 16. Sea Scouts and Venturing doesn't even start till 14. It's exactly that 10-14 age group that tends to get the most "weird" around girls. By 15 or 16 they start to figure out how to "chill out" around girls. But can you pull a sword out from down-under at the drop of a hat?