yknot

Districts around here don't allow anyone to send home materials or enter the school to recruit members. However, at the pack level we were allowed to hold den meetings after school in empty classrooms. When we had leaders who could do that, it was the best recruitment possible. Scouts were interacting with the school community, visibly doing service projects and having fun. The leadership mix has changed and now most den meetings are on the weekends and our relationship with the schools and recruitment levels have deteriorated.

The only appropriate role for BSA is gun safety and education. Having attended two funerals over the years of young boys in scouting who killed themselves with a firearm kept in the home, supposedly secured, there may be further information to be shared with scouting families in particular about the connection between access to firearms and youth suicide. There are numerous studies that link home access to higher rates.

I think the scouting program has moved too far away from outdoors and I don't think it does a good job of teaching leadership. The organization has promoted almost all its leadership from within for decades and BSA has been marked by extremely poor leadership. I think the thing about civic participation that I see is that scouts today are less likely to do things "just because" or due to tradition. It has to be something that appeals specfically to them. We seem to get good support for food and blood drives that have an actual impact. Few seem to want to do flag retirements, ceremonies, parades, etc., any more. We get good turnout at events where they are doing something more than just parking assistance, etc., like stream clean ups, trail clean ups, etc.

It's sad. I will say real estate evaluations for camp properties which are often unique are simply speculative until you have a buyer willing to part with money.

That is sadly too common. People donate land to scouts thinking it will remain in use and then it's sold. Where I am there are multiple scouting properties that have been lost, most developed. Thankfully there are some that became part of a parks system or held by a land trust. Schiff Reservation is one of them thankfully. It was appalling when BSA sold that. It's still nice to go there and see the old scout structures and think about old Mr. Hillcourt and what he represented in scouting. It was neighbors and a community that saved it. Hopefully some of these camp properties will be preserved.

Membership numbers as of March were down substantially according to the bankruptcy plan. I would guess some councils are using the bankruptcy to downsize. I just wish there was some kind of long term planning being done on the part of some of these councils to preserve the properties as parks/open space with continued public/scout access. It's painful to see these properties eyed for development like the one in Connecticut.

I don't understand why you are considering attending this as described. The process you are outlining seems highly inappropriate. I would stipulate what you and your scouts need the process to be in order to be comfortable with confidentiality and possible exposure to yet more bullying or berating behavior on the part of the SM/ASM. There is no need for all troop members to be present, nor for your scouts to have to confront the SM who bullied them. If those changes can't accommodated by tonight, then say it needs to be postponed. I would feel free to request whoever else you want in the room and for what portions. I would only do this though if you are committed to remaining in that troop. I think the advice elsewhere to leave was good.

How does one message the moderator team?

I think you should stop posting because if anyone from the mainstream world visits this forum and reads posts like yours claiming that neuroticism is why women aren't in leadership positions... that is very far outside the mainstream and is really terribly offensive. Again, where are our moderators? Are these fringe views acceptable and defensible?

The Bureau of Labor statistics fact sheet clearly states it does not include any infectious event not linked to an injury. That is not the same as saying that no one is at risk of dying, which I think we both clearly agree is a high risk event. The thing about the health care profession though is that infectious disease events are not outliers, they are inherent to the work. The type of fatality risk might be different for some professions -- falling out of tree for a logger for example vs. contracting a fatal disease for a doctor or nurse during periodic outbreaks -- but the types of individuals who choose to work in these fields both have a high threshhold for risk acceptance. However, healthcare is somehow viewed as a low risk, nurturing profession mainly because many women pursue it. When people use those kinds of false perceptions to buttress claims that women prefer menu planning and eschew action and adventure, or when they claim that women are incapable of holding leadership positions because they exhibit more neuroticism than men as was recently, and unbelievably, posted as evidence by Inquisitive Scouter, I think they need to be called out on it loudly. If you find that incomprehensible, I can only say you're going to have an interesting ride going forward in scouting as the numbers of girls and women in it increase.

Since I seem to be one of the ones speaking up for women this week, I would say don't make the usual BSA mistake of only looking backwards. The future of scouting, if it survives, is going to include a lot more girls and women. And since females are sexually abused at a rate 5x that of males, at least according to universally available historical data so far, this is going to have to be a youth protection area of interest for BSA going forward. If the YPC is going to do any good, it has to be looking forward as well as taking instructive lessons from the past.

Wow... Those were a couple examples for illustrative purposes. As far as Covid, I didn't think you'd dismiss the thousands of health care workers, from physicians to nurses to aides, who have died in the past few years from Covid, far eclipsing fatalities in any other profession. Infection doesn't count in your book? That doesn't qualify as bravery or a high risk profession? Wow. Those were not people who got infected and just got sick... Those are people who died. Google yourself how many. You won't believe what I post anyway.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/hospitals-health-care-workers-face-inordinate-violence-they-need-our-ncna1286705 My friend's sister is an epidemiologist who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for Doctors Without Borders. More than 75% of their workforce is female. Infection is not their prime risk concern when working in regions of conflict.

No, but as Moderator you are defending the comments of someone who essentially did. You tell me how else to read that comment and now some of yours. Maybe show some of the things that have been posted here to some random women, maybe even outside your immediate orbit, and see what their reactions are. I'd be curious to hear. Personally, I've got a houseful of livid people here. Maybe tell some of your girl scouts that the reason they can't be in mixed gender troops is because they like to menu plan too much. See how your Twitter feed blows up.

Most of these clips/posts are by male authors with self validating biases. The Psychology Today piece says women are not in high risk professions but fails to delineate comparable risks associated with professions that are identified as female dominated. Health care for example is one of the highest risk professions. In other cases, women are invisible in certain dangerous sectors that have traditionally been considered male, like farming/agriculture where about 50% of operators are female. It also neglects to mention barriers preventing women from entering heavily male dominated fields like, say, mining or logging. The James Damore memo has been around for years. Those Medieval opinions are not worth the etherspace that they are wafted upon. I think they are beneath this forum.

How so? I don't see that.

You're talking about making assessments about what is optimal for boys vs. girls based on views that are discriminatory and offensive. Differences in behaviors is one thing; claiming differences in skills and/or character development to justify excluding girls is another thing entirely. Believing that girls are neurotypically prewired to plan menus is akin to saying a woman's place is in the kitchen and she likes it there. If you don't see the problem with that then I am here to say -- you need to see the problem with that.

If you substituted race, skin color, or any religious or ethnic category for gender in this comment, it would be off the charts offensive. I don't know why the moderators continually give a hall pass to comments like these. They have no place in scouting. It's one thing to recognize adolescent behavior like showing off; it's another thing entirely when you start attempting to make broad assessments that stereotype skills and character traits in discriminatory ways.

I am sure it is because there is some reporting requirement that BSA can't or does not want to meet in order to accept the money.

Is that your video? That is very cool. Love bobcats. The rare glimpses I've had are treasured.

I don't think much unless it's related to the LDS connection to many of these troubled teen schools.

One of our local council camps does weeklong tracks so the scout can come either with a troop or patrol or on their own and do a week of marksmanship or aquatics or climbing, etc. They used to run an ATV week that was popular but I haven't seen it in a few years so maybe that's no longer in G2SS.

Yes Where do you store your personal food? Some of the local school cafeterias have started incorporating farm to table. Not everything, but it's not that hard to incorporate local fruit and produce in season. Although my kid's daily lunch food ticket is between $10-$12 and likely to go up.

These are the kinds of comments where I miss CynicalScouter. I can't recall exactly what his opinion on this was but I know he continually pointed out that the IVFs were precisely why the BSA was in trouble -- court cases found the BSA negligent for supressing their existence. It was negligence more than the actual abuse that tripped BSA up. Or something to that effect. To me that's the most sobering part. If the IVFs hadn't been dragged out into the light of day, the full scope of the abuse wouldn't have been known.

There are several issues like this that have not been addressed in the bankruptcy reorganization plan. To me, that renders it almost pointless because it's yet more BSA willful fiction. The chartered organization model has long been dysfunctional as a national strategy. The ability to rely on volunteer leadership is declining. The likely only way forward for scouting is more paid staff at a district or council level that can oversee consistent administration of the program and backfill volunteer attrition. Without reliable oversight, nothing in the program can be held to account and that includes the most important component going forward -- youth protection.