FireStone

You can protect a color if it's is part of the brand and identifies an organization or company among similar companies. You can bet you'd hear from some lawyers if you wanted to start a global package delivery business and had your drivers out in brown uniforms driving brown trucks. Besides, I'm pretty sure there is precedent for this with the BSA and uniform colors. Probably even more so now that there are girls in the BSA wearing tan and green, and now girls in GSUSA wearing the same tan and green. For sure this could cause brand confusion, and that's where lawyers can (and do) step in.

I would be shocked if the BSA didn't pursue this legally. I'm pretty sure they've gone after other groups over uniform similarities. BPSA-US I think was one of them, which is why they stay away from anything tan. The skirt is BSA green, not even GS green. And on their website they're selling uniform cargo pants in the same BSA green. To me, this is copyright infringement. I'm not a lawyer, but from the perspective of someone who works in a design field, this crosses the line of similarity and brand confusion.

Understood. Thank you for clarifying.

I'm really disappointed that the discussion immediately went to the legitimacy of this Eagle candidate's advancement. Unless @sri_oa161 has some other info we don't have based on the episode preview, we don't know that the scout did anything questionable whatsoever. The program has allowed for girls to be in long enough at this point to have completed all requirements by the book. We should trust that they did exactly that unless presented with anything to the contrary. Even more so in this case, considering the scout in question was shown in the episode preview with what i assume is her family, dad (Eagle scout), brother (Eagle scout), and mom (volunteer). Makes it even more likely (in my opinion) that her family traditions in scouting would make her inclined to follow proper procedure. But because she's a girl it immediately calls her integrity into question? Ridiculous. Let me do what we all should have done and just say congrats to this Eagle candidate, we applaud all of your hard work and dedication.

Is that the case here? I saw the preview for the episode at the end of the last episode and it didn't say anything about that.

I think the idea of an endorsement has come from a series of nods to the knot style of wear in recent years, from national and the periphery. I believe Bryan has been photographed with a friendship-knot-tied neckerchief. I feel like I recall seeing this several times from national sources in the past couple of years, although at this particular moment I can't recall a specific one to reference. Just saying, I don't think it was really this one thing that has led people to believe the knot is getting a nod from national.

I logged in for the first time today to see the all new Scoutbook for Den Leaders. I'm at a total loss, I can't find anything, I can't edit my calendar, I can't add advancement, all I can do on the calendar is move things around, but I can't delete anything. I can't find the messaging features anymore, that I used to use to send out emails and text notifications. Is this normal? Is it still at all possible to just manually add meeting dates to the calendar or do I have to use the pre-populated meeting schedules? If this is how Scoutbook is now, it's unusable for me. Looks like they replaced a lot of functionality with non-functional cartoon graphics.

I don't think it's an y issue to worry about. Certainly not anything that seems to have been elevated to the level of criminality in which anything would show up in a background check. And as already mentioned, even if it did, you would be the victim in the case. The real concern here should be who the heck did you get on the bad side of to make them call in such a false accusation?? 😅

Not at all. Locally for me as a youth, Scouting was thriving. But we still heard the rumors of a unit in the next town shutting down, membership declines across the state, etc. The frustration was very much a national one, and has been for decades. I had no local frustration that influenced my thoughts on the bigger picture of the BSA around the country.

We have a weird opportunity this year with recruiting. While many schools remain virtual-only and a lot of sports are shut down, both parents and kids are anxious to do things to fight the boredom and cabin fever. And here we are, offering an outdoor program that presents opportunities to try new things, explore, play, learn, have fun and go on adventures. It's kind of perfect for us to be recruiting right now, when what we "sell" is exactly what so many families need and are looking for. How that will actually translate into new sign-ups, who knows yet. In my Pack the new sign-ups are about average, which I consider a "win" in these strange times we're dealing with. But I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that some Packs see an uptick in new membership. In some areas we might be the only game in town offering an outdoor activity for kids to participate in.

This right here is the ongoing struggle of Scouting in America, maybe globally, and it came upon us long before the ills of modern technology, politics, and membership policy changes. Scouting was already struggling when I was a scout (1990s), and some of the issues back then (at least from a youth perspective) I think are the same struggles we have today. How does the program fit into modern society, is it still relevant, do kids still want to do it, etc. We can take all of the political and social issues out of the discussion and the problems of the BSA remain. The BSA has to change, it has been long overdue for major change for decades. I think they're trying to change things now, But maybe it's too late.

I'm constantly fighting this battle within my Pack. It's exhausting for everyone when we're on a tight schedule in camp. And it's totally unnecessary, especially at the Pack level. I think the idea is that we camp just a few times per year, so we have to make the most of each trip. But it seriously burns people out, I think the kids included. They want time to just run around in the woods, play a game, hang out in camp. That's a quality experience in itself. To this day one of my Webelos son's favorite memories of scouting so far is a trip a couple of years ago and "log battle" in camp, 2 kids just trying to see who could stay on a shared log longest. he still talks about it. What he doesn't remember are the activities that we were running to, trying to be on time, rushing to go through the safety intro or whatever else we just barely showed up on time for, and then not having all that much fun doing the activity because the kids are tired. I don't know why anyone likes that kind of over-scheduled madness, pre-crossover or post. I would have thought that by the time a parent sees their scout cross over, they'd welcome the idea of their son/daughter having some time to choose their own activities, make their own schedule.

Is that checklist a list of required protocols for all meetings and/or activities? I'm not super comfortable doing medical screenings before each Den meeting. I'm not a healthcare professional and some of the criteria are open to interpretation. A cough can be a lot of things. A headache could exclude me from activities pretty often. If a parent attend a Den meeting and says they have a headache, am I supposed to ask them to leave?

My Webelos will wear the blues and the tan uniform will be optional next year. Come at me, uniform police.

Seems specific to Board of Review, but what about other situations where video conferencing could be used now that we're not able to meet in-person? Regular meetings, Patrol Meetings, SMCs, Cub Scout meetings, etc? Are the guidelines the same? Parents must be present at the beginning and end, no recording, etc...?

I was thinking about doing video Den Meetings a while back, and now it seems like even more of a useful option to have. I've used free services like https://whereby.com for work, and I think it could work for doing a virtual den meeting (with a small group). Obviously some YPT issues come into play in a virtual setting. I'm not even sure if video conferencing services are allowed with scouts, need to research the YPT implications. But off the top of my head, if we used a service like this I was going to ask that a parent/guardian be present and visible on camera with their scout for any video meetings we hold.

We're also in NJ, nothing cancelled yet but I think we'll know more about what the schools are planning by early next week, and then we'll probably follow their lead. I think it would be weird if schools closed but we were still trying to get kids together for group scout activities. A lot of local schools are doing half-day or full-day closures on Friday for teacher training on virtual learning.

If that is the true intent, the slides aren't the problem, the neckerchief itself is. We need to go back to square neckers folded in half, and at a large enough size to actually be usable as a first-aid tool or other device. The knot really has very little to do with the utility of the neckerchief.

I love this. Glad this seems to be gaining more traction. Slides are awful, especially the metal ones the BSA sells.

I haven't seen it in the G2A, just keep hearing that Scoutbook is the official record in various places, like this Bryan on Scouting post: https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2017/12/21/scoutbook-lite-to-replace-bsas-internet-advancement-platform-in-early-2018/

I didn't mean which one is more practical, which I agree the printed book is more reliable for out in the woods. But my understanding is that the handbook is no longer the "official" record of scout advancement, Scoutbook is. Aside from the challenges of a digital record-keeping solution, and that the handbook is still a required resource along with the uniform, the line we've been getting at least here in our Council is that Scoutbook is the official record.

Is it? I've been under the impression that Scoutbook is now the official document/record.

Think about where we were a month ago with this thing. In one month, so much has changed. So thinking about where we'll be with it in July and August is impossible.

A lot of folks (myself included) were voicing concern about PR before the Chapter 11 filing. Now it just seems like it's too little too late. The BSA had the chance to respond strongly and convincingly to the accusations of continued abuse, continued failure to better protect scouts, and continued lack of vetting of leaders. All of which is absolutely false, but the BSA dropped the ball when given the chance to respond. Front-page news articles made these kinds of false accusations and the BSA offered up weak, canned responses. They could have (and should have) responded with the stuff they have come out with since the bankruptcy filing, about how scouting is safer than ever in the BSA, how we have come so far with expert-informed youth protection policies and training. Now it just looks like desperate replies to a dire situation. These responses all could have done some good back when we started getting beat up in the press. Now it might just be too late. It's hard to battle back from bad PR.

I think the logic is that this should have happened long ago, so if this process results in the BSA losing everything than it was just delayed, in essence taking something away from today's scouts and scouters that should have been gone long ago if these lawsuits had occurred back when they should have. I think that if we see another dues increase, it will be really hard for anyone to believe that it's not going to be used for lawsuit settlements. Whether that is true or not, it doesn't matter. The optics of this situation have always been the most challenging and potentially harmful part of the whole thing for the BSA. The more that it looks like current members are being hit repeatedly for funds to pay for the abuses of the past, the more we will start to see families leaving. Even for me it would take some serious thought and soul-searching to decide whether or not to stick with the BSA if they hit us with another dues increase. It's worth some added cost to me to continue scouting for my kids, but everyone has their limits. At some point if dues keep going up and it feels more and more like it's just going to cover legal expenses, I'll have a hard time continuing to support that.