yknot

The world used to place a higher value on people who did the right thing when no one was looking. Today, scouts are still doing the right things, but the advancement process seems to most reward those who make sure that everyone is looking. I think this would be a way to make sure the kids who aren't always the most popular but are good scouts still have a shot.

In our unit at least the SM didn't weigh in. The only person on our committe who would nix a scout who wanted to join OA would be the advancement chair if they didn't have the correct camping nights or requirements. Too many parents were lawyers or had ones on retainer. Some great scouts went through our units but a lot were also waved through.

We had a large group crossover and they only voted for who they knew. Unfortunately, their troop guide was on the quieter side and they only remembered the name of the SPL. The poor troop guide was pretty deflated. I still think a nomination process that doesn't rely on 50% is better because 50% is kind of arbitrary. Get three nominations from your peers in an OA election in order to be put forward.

With 70 million Catholics in the US today even in membership decline, it's a number significantly higher than scouting. No one can know specifics. But when you are comparing numbers that are many orders of magnitude above the other, you can make some general inferences.

The town ought to start talking about how they want to rezone the area for lower density. Our town underwent a down zoning to manage some speculative interests and it worked.

I think selection should be more in the form of nomination, like you get a minimum three votes recommending and nominating you for the honor. The 50% is kind of the problem. As far as an SM having an ability after the fact to prevent a candidate, who has been elected by peers, to pursue OA, that is very problematic in certain places. You'd get threatened by a team of lawyers if you did that in any of the communities I'm in, and council would not back you.

I kind of agree. Neither of my sons was interested in it, but some very fine scouts I know were. What I observed is that it was a popularity contest, with scouts getting votes not because they were good scouts, but because they were more fun to be around. That often included questionable behavior. Sometimes the scouts that were better leaders were less popular because they weren't as much fun -- they were running around trying to make things work with maybe a pointed word when others had ditched their responsibilities. I think there needs to be some mechanism that adjusts for this phenomenon.

I've seen people talk about a high drop out rate but I've never seen any firm BSA numbers on it. Anecdotally what I saw in the units I was familiar with was a high crossover rate but a precipitous drop in the first year. Peronally, i my cub years I was leader for three large dens of 10-13 scouts and 90% of them crossed over. By the second year in scouts they were down to 30%-40% of the original den. Granted, we had a lot of troop issues that contributed to that but in my broader scout universe having other family members in friends in units elsewhere and comparing notes with district and council acquaintances, it was a similar experience. When I was more involved as both a committee chair and committee member, the council heavily pushed recruitment. I always thought the focus should be just as much on retention.

Statistically, they might be more rare in your personal environment but that's only because virtually every US child has had parents or a parental figure. Virtually every US child has attended school. When looking at the broader US population, you are including females, who are abused at 4-5 times the rate as males. Scouting proportionally has been a very small percentage of the US population of kids but it still has demonstrated significantly high numbers of cases SA, espeically considering the fact that it largely excludes the historical experiences of girls.

Less than 1%. Latest membership numbers as of March 2022 were at about 650,000. Many of those in units with holdover charters pending bankruptcy clarity for COs.

Some of your comments are based on broad assumptions that are so three dimensionally flawed it is hard to know where to start trying to parse through them. BSA and the Catholic Church, apart from all other youth organizations and institutions, historically have had documented, high profile, long term, issues with child sexual abuse, predominantly among boys. This is not really debatable. It is an Alice in Wonderland moment to read of someone who thinks that BSA was actually a safer place for the nation's youth than the general population. The incidence of CSA in the Catholic Church was much lower than that of the BSA and yet no one there is proposing that the Catholic Church is somehow a safer haven for the nation's youth given their track record to date. Such a claim would be laughable if aired to the general public.

Thank you. Just having a tow vehicle doesn't mean you know how to tow safely. There's a lot to it but in scouts often any warm body with a tow vehicle gets the job because there is hardly anyone else. There really ought to be (yet another) BSA training course on towing. Also amazing how many people in the camp-no-matter-what category don't calculate in how a towed object can affect bad weather driving. When towing personally, I prefer something with electric brakes and stabilizer bars and I always keep the cargo load well below maximum.

That's what I said -- maintain the cycle of litter, fire, renewal. We're in the middle of prescribed burns where I am. Makes life interesting.

It depends on what kind of world you want to live in. It's only about 150 years or so that people were able to strip the Western landscape for firewood. Prior to that, dead wood and vegetation lay where it fell and lots of things lived off of it. You can justify removing deadwood and understory for human fire safety, because humans have moved into these areas, but it means a lot of wildlife that depended on that cycle of forest and brushland litter, fire, and renewal will struggle to find habitat in an increasingly developed world. Our national parks are being over run. During the pandemic, every little green spot even in fairly rural areas was over run. Even places that are supposed to preserve the concept of wildness and be uninterfered with cannot function that way. The concept of Outdoor Ethics mean leaving wild lands wild. As scouts, we either buy into that and mean it, or we don't.

I keep seeing that claim that abuse is lower in scouting but most of the studies cited to support that aren't relevant. For one thing, girls are generally abused 4 to 5 times more frequently than boys, so any study done in the general population would logically have higher rates. There are other issues as noted as well. Another point about relative safety is the fact that BSA often seems to think it is doing a better job than it is. As late as 2018 BSA was still claiming it never allowed predators to return to scouting and have access to children. Mike Surbaugh, the then head of BSA, had to retract that a year later in a letter to Congress. Right up until the bankruptcy filing, BSA was still showing that it was either dishonest or incompetent on this subject. Since nothing much has been done over the past two years since then, I think it's only going forward post bankruptcy that anyone will be able to determine scouting's relative safety.

I'm sure you know that goes without saying. I'm not sure what your point is there. But it's only in scouts where you are banned or muzzled or labeled fun police for simply reading, knowing, and following the policies and procedures manual, which in BSA's case is G2SS. In any other youth organization it's not a battle to get people to follow it. If you don't follow it, you generally get tossed. BSA has a 100 year history with youth and it still has major disconnects when it comes to keeping them safe is my point.

This is where I am stuck. If we know gross buffoonery and safety issues are STILL occurring after being sued into bankrutpcy, why are we trying so hard to save this organization? Can it be saved? A small part of me thinks it's possible, and that's why I'm still here, but why should any volunteer have to fight so hard to keep kids safe in a 100 year old youth organization?

I think many folks view the resolution of the bankruptcy case as some kind of reset date but in reality it will only be the beginning.

I know it was very emotive, and there is a men's Methodist group that is very passionate about scouting, but I wouldn't put trust in a few hours of testimony. The UMC also has plenty of issues of its own where it is floundering. If boosting membership in BSA helps it avoid a crippling financial hit, that is a risky place to put our youth.

Thanks. Interesting article. One part I can't wrap my head around is that the plan requires both the Catholic Church and the United Methodist Church to work with the BSA to increase membership. That shifts the priority from youth protection to youth recruitment. It seems like a serious conflict of interest that once again by default creates an environment where less than ideal situations may be overlooked in the drive to increase membership.

Most of the threatened legal actions I've been involved with have been frivolous . It's usually been someone angry that they've been thwarted in some way. Parents who think a unit setting minimum standards for leadership roles is arbitrary and getting in the way of their scout achieving Eagle and the economic impact that will have on their college prospects and future career success. Someone with personality issues whose membership is refused. They don't have to be gunning for your house or think you are Bill Gates. You can still spend a couple years in court hearings until it's dismissed at great personal cost to you.

No. My nickname is the fun police. My concerns about youth safety and commitment to best practices equal yours.

Think about what scouters do with other peoples' children and where they do it with them. It doesn't take much to prove willful negligence on the part of a scouter or a CO in the event a child is injured on an outing. Weather is a big one. Scouters who proudly, publicly, and recklessly claim they never cancel a camp out...

That's partly why I'm no longer a scout leader. As far as forming a board, if it is a board formed of local families, then you are the board. If someone wants to sue, they are not suing a valued community institution with long term stature like a church or service organization, which might give them pause, they are suing a random group of adults.

COs are dropping scout charters not because they are horrified by the abuse scandals but because of liability concerns. The liability landscape has changed dynamically and is continuing to change. I would not recommend taking on risk based on past experience because it's meaningless going forward. Everyone is looking to reasign risk and liability. BSA insurance provisions are actually unclear and attempts to gain clarity from national are unsuccessful. That's why some COs have been dropping units. As I've advised before, anyone can sue you for anything and even if you are proven blameless, you can spend a lot of time dealing with a very stressful situation, having to hire a lawyer, attending hearings, and taking time off from work until it's resolved.