yknot

These kinds of anonymous youth reporting systems have been around for years and are fairly commonplace -- Stop It, Say Something, etc. I think most school districts likely have something along these lines by now. If you are actively around youth, then you've likely already been around youth that have access to one. Most of the ones I'm aware of have a mandatory LEO reporting component. It's not clear what this program entails, but hopefully it does as well. This is more BSA/SA catching up with the rest of the modern world than anything else.

The average outdoors person has probably passed near, over, or around them multiple times without incident. Most snake species, especially venomous, camouflage extremely well, want to remain hidden and avoid you, and are not aggressive. From a snake's perspective, however, many things that humans do can seem threatening so they will sometimes react. The best prevention is to be aware of how well they camouflage, where they like to be, and what conditions will cause them to be in places they usually don't like. You do not need to kill the snake and bring it to the ER with you, which is how many

The National Snakebite Support facebook page is a good resource for anyone who spends time outdoors. ER expertise regarding bite management can vary.

The average age of male claimants 4 years ago was about 58 years. According to SS actuarial tables, about 5,000 of them have likely died since then. It's possibly even more because the claim population was weighted towards the older end with about 13,000 being over the age of 70. Given that it's also a survivor group prone to such mental health issues as suicide, depression, substance abuse, etc., mortality possibly skews even higher. We don't know what percentage of these claims ended in compounded personal tragedy.

That would be entirely logical. The position largely invalidates the perspective.

I'm not clear what you mean by iteration. I sympathize with any struggling unit, but the point is that at least there is a unit for those boys; at least there is a hall to walk across. Girls in a lot of places aren't wanted or welcomed despite the nice words. You can see that in many of the anonymous comments here. People want to go back to the 1960s. No girls. That's what girls and women are encountering, and it's kind of hard to assimilate and find help in environments like that. If a special camporee helps, I support it. The net effect will ultimately mean more people experienced in

My view is that such events have a targeted role in the short term while the organization is laboring -- still somewhat clumsily -- to adjust to the addition of girls. It's not exactly the same as leveling subject area courses for cohorts of kids who missed school opportunities due to things like Covid or disaster displacements, but it's a similar situation and approach. We have camporees for physically challenged scouts or other unique circumstances, so it's not like it's setting any precedents. There have been undeniable challenges for girls and girl units in scouting -- the start did not go

I am an editor by trade -- or at least by one of them. For many years, I edited peer reviewed medical journals in a variety of fields. It was part of my job, with the help of medical review boards composed of national and international experts in their fields, to assess the validity of research in articles, or the citations used to support a recommended standard of care. With sometimes millions or even billions of dollars at stake, major pharmaceutical companies often employ strategies similar to what BSA did to produce or highlight favorable research or recommendations. These strategies are o

We've talked about that document before here. This document was from 2011/2012. In 2019, its paid consultant/author was stating such incorrect things as: "100% of cases over the last 50 years have been reported to law enforcement." That turned into a big, credibility damaging "research" miss and mess that led to an embarrassing Congressional apology, and pretty much discredited it. You can be generous if you like, but that 2011 document was more press release and PR strategy than a serious attempt to contribute anything useful and heartfelt to the public CSA discussion. BSA h

That is a new one I haven't heard before: It's not coaches, then, but lurking predators who scope out kids and swipe them off the field in view of the public, other kids, parents, and ubiquitous surveillance cameras? Interesting. I guess these lurkers don't go after the tuba players very often. I think it's significant that BSA, the youth organization that probably has the most data about child sexual abuse cases over time, and that could produce information useful to scout parents and leaders as well as all other youth organizations regarding incident characteristics, age, gender of vi

Well, the parents would be right. The average kid is far safer from sexual abuse in sports than the average kid in scouting. Sexual abuse of children is a society wide problem in any setting where adults have access to kids, but a kid on a soccer field for two hours in public view is far safer than a kid on a campground overnight in a remote location with unrelated adults. Studies like this highlight our problems with CSA but have little bearing on BSA's experiences and track record with it.

Youth sports dwarf scouting. Around 80% of kids ages 5-18 each year are enrolled in sports and prefer their chosen sports to scouts. Scouting currently involves only about 1%-2% of the kid population. That reality means there is no point in comparing scouts to sports, yet a lot of energy and attention in scouting is spent on blaming sports -- as if sports is the reason more kids don't do scouts. There are few kids today who, after a day of near inactivity in school, want to sit around in den or troop meetings for another hour or two of "being good". In an outdoor youth program, leaders shoul

Scouting is tilting at the wrong windmills when it compares itself to youth involvement in sports. Many youth simply find sports more fun than scouting. Some people may be delusional about professional sports careers or scholarships to D1 schools, but for most families, sports is merely a good activity for youth to be involved in during middle and high school careers. Even if they don't make a varsity team in high school, or make the team but spend a lot of time on the bench, they are still spending 4-5 days afterschool practicing, involved in team spirit events, involved in clinics and practi

NAM used 2023 numbers. In March, the 2024 actual membership numbers were posted elsewhere on this forum and they were around 870,000 or 890,000 -- can't remember which. BSA also changed the registration scheme so that anyone signing up after August 2023 would not be prorated but signed up for a 12 month membership so that number likely includes some dropouts that normally would have been cleaned up on December recharters. Renewal notices will be issued for six months after that, so anyone on the roles now is going to stay on the roles as a member for 18 months rolling forward. In a way, i

Once BSA moved to admit girls, it should have changed the name to reflect its dual membership. Once BSA decided to accept girls' membership dollars, and charge girls the same fees that it charges to boys, it had a duty to make sure the general program experiences and opportunities were similar. That's what a well managed, functional organization would do. If it didn't want girls, and it didn't want their membership numbers and their membership dollars, then it would have made sense to retain the old name and the old perspectives and live with that. But that's not what the organization did, and

I'm guessing it's going to be Boy Scouts of America DBA Scouting America instead of Boy Scouts of America DBA Scouts BSA? It's a mouthful with more syllables. Scouts USA would have made more sense if they were going to change it. Plus, I've family in Canada and South America and have spent time in both places. People there also consider themselves part of the American continents. It's a little in your eye.

Is this the big announcement? Is everyone at the launch getting numbered jars of scout jam?

That's not a universal view. Many consider it proof that scouting's unique problem with men preying on boys was already so well known and documented after only 25 years that it was publicly acknowledged by no less than the son of a President on a national stage. The article is proof of how early the problem was known, how long it was allowed to fester, and how little BSA effectively did about it over the ensuing decades. I've seen this article cited multiple times throughout the bankruptcy process as proof BSA has known it had a unique problem for almost its entire history.

It's hard to get past that sentence. We're not talking about rain or snow here. I've been in a lot of places where people didn't think I belonged and didn't want me there. I persevered and maybe that was character building but it also almost got me killed. I would not subject any youth under my care to such a thing today. Thankfully, we mostly don't have to because most youth organizations have moved beyond such backward ideas. There are plenty of things out there that can build character that don't have anything to do with a person's race, religion, orientation, or gender.

There's nothing stopping people from having these kinds of discussions here or anywhere. But if that's how someone feels about a certain class of kids and it contradicts the policies of the organization they work or volunteer for, they shouldn't be responsible for kids of that class. That's the conventional viewpoint, often reported on in the media, and I'm hardly saying anything as controversial or as pearl clutching as implied. BSA policy for the past six years is that girls are scouts. It's really not about the adults anymore, it's about the scouts.

My views are a little different. I think people pretty much have a right to say whatever they think, wherever they want, and it's better to know what those thoughts are. If those views include thinking a certain class of children doesn't belong in a youth organization they are involved with, then they shouldn't still hold an active role within it. If registered leaders hold these views -- that girls in this case, or gay, minority, or non Christian religious scouts in other cases, shouldn't be in scouting in opposition to BSA policy -- then they should not be adult leaders responsible for these

I'm not sure that's a great example to pick, because when Tigers were added to the program, verbal or physical threats weren't made against those children by other scouts or adult leaders. I don't know why people think it's OK though when it's about girls. Protecting children shouldn't require discussion. It's not censure ship to expect that registered and trained youth leaders in a youth organization protect and support the youth in their care.

Change is indeed painful but we are talking about adult leaders who are responsible for children so there really isn't much leeway to accommodate adult issues. Adults who resent the presence of some of the children they are supposed to be supporting and protecting probably shouldn't be in the organization six years in no matter what other value they bring.

That might have made sense the first year as people adjusted, but it has been six years and girls are nearly fully integrated into scouting. The fact that adult leaders, who are in charge of girls' safety and well being, are still allowed to hold such positions while espousing those views is a Youth Protection failure, not dissent. Keeping struggling units alive isn't an acceptable excuse. If old time leaders haven't worked it out by now to the point where they can accept it and focus on the kids then they shouldn't be responsible for them in scouting. We don't tolerate leaders with out of dat

A lot of public places like museums and larger stores have a family option that is a single private room. Parks as well as town and school playing fields often have single stall porta-johns most months of the year. I've gotten to where I can find them almost anywhere within driving distance in my region although it might be different elsewhere.