yknot

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.

I don't think so. But it's disheartening.

One of the interesting slides that was part of the hearing that I saw posted elsewhere were recent membership numbers. BSA had put out some PR I think in January that membership had grown from 700,000 to one million. As most scouters here know, however, the real number is generally arrived at in the first quarter after most of the recharter grace periods end. The real membership number as of March has dropped to about 650,000 scouts. Whatever plan -- Churchill or private senior staff -- BSA has to build up from there. What isn't clear is if that 600,000 also includes the UMC charters that were put on extension.

For years people have been saying iceberg dead ahead and BSA has done little to nothing or reacted far too late. I'm sorry if the constant iceberg warnings seem anti scout or hateful, but that's not the place they come from for most of the people that raise them on this forum or at least I don't think so. For example, I'm not here because I like constantly pointing out BSA's failings, I'm here because I want BSA to stop failing.

That's not really state of the art, it's kind of been status quo normal for at least ten years. When I first signed on as a T ball coach it was ridiculously easy and I could access almost anything I wanted online and so could parents. "Health of the unit" was pretty easy to assess. You could view rosters, standings, schedules, training, volunteer status, etc., etc. From the parent viewpoint, registration is easy -- all forms, including medical can be taken care of right there, payments, uniforms, attendance at specific events/games, team/unit communications, etc. As the years have gone by, useful features and convenience has only become more robust.

This is what people like me who are active in other organizations have been saying for years. The processes elsewhere are generally seamless, convenient, efficient, and easy. And cheaper. When we attempt to recruit people from outside scouting to the organization, they encounter this morass and are incredulous. Many folks who have been involved in scouting for years are in essence boiled frogs. They accept an incomprehensible situation as acceptable. Those that don't accept it and try to change it are blocked, silenced, tossed out, given some pap about how we're all volunteers and the answer is to volunteer yet more for this crazy universe, or dismissed as anti scout cranks. I too hope BSA will reorganize in a way that will allow it to reach a modern level of basic administrative competency.

That's good news and is exactly what might be a relevant federal role in this situation. May not be able to save boy scouts, but many of these properties are worthy of preservation, especially anywhere on the east coast. While on the one hand I want to see survivors optimally compensated, on the other hand individual communities and states cannot afford to lose some of these as yet undeveloped legacy properties. The pressure on local, county, state, and federal parkland and wildlands is extreme and the pandemic accentuated that. More acreage and access is needed.

I have no wish to rehash these same topics that have been repeatedly and definitively discussed in other threads as you note. I would refer to them if I could find them. But I think anytime someone tries to claim that children have been safer in scouting the basic irrationality of that should be noted. The fact that we are in this thread talking about Chapter 11 is one of the more relevant and factual aspects of that reality.

You're entitled to your opinion but it's not based on facts. There have been similar claims made here that scouting is somehow safer than other youth organizations and repeatedly that has been debunked. One of the largest youth organizations in the US is 4-H but if you google sex abuse claims and 4-H you come up with very few cases. There are unique characteristics in scouting that have made it more prone to infiltration by predators. This was recognized by organized scouting as far back as the 1920s; before we had the ineligible volunteer files they were called the red files. Scouting has done a lot to clean up its act in the past few years which is good but no one should think kids are somehow safer in a tent on a scout campout than they are in the middle of a public ballfield in daylight with multiple kids, parents, coaches and spectators watching. That defies logic.

Reality does not support your opinion. Youth were particularly at risk in scouting for reasons similar to the Catholic church. The person BSA hired to oversee youth protection also said youth in scouts were particularly at risk because of the nature of the program. Failing to comprehend those risks only condemns us to repeat them.

I have issues with some of the inanities of the diversity/equity movement but for the most part there are a lot of people in scouting who are still in the dinosaur age. They are in our units, they are all over facebook and reddit and on some of the scout sites. I think the badge will be just fine and is a good thing in general. I have been in a mixed progressive/conservative council in a very blue state and the stuff that people say around here still curls the eyebrow hairs. I can't imagine what it's like elsewhere.