yknot

Welcome back!

Any of us can do that but the reason you don't want to is that if someone gets hurt while doing something that is banned by the BSA and could be considered negligent, you risk not being covered by insurance. You are not really rebelling against anything, you are just shifting some of the liability from BSA to yourself personally.

I thought it was an instructive post. The last point bears repeating. I was on the board of a nonprofit that was sued by a member over something fairly frivolous. While eventually dismissed, it dragged on and required taking time off work to attend court proceedings at inconvenient times and places. One thing to realize is that operating as part of a well regarded nonprofit community organization provides some cover that is weakened if you are just XYZ nonprofit. People who might be reluctant to risk community censure by suing a local church or volunteer fire department have no such compunction about suing what is essentially a group of parents they may have a personal beef with.

We have a lot of local campgrounds that don't meet those criteria. No potable water, you must bring your own. No permanent bathroom or shower facilities, it's a hike to a port a john somewhere. No garbage disposal, it's carry in carry out. No permanent shlelter for activities. If it's more than a drizzle and a tarp won't handle it, pack up and go home or reschedule. Cubs don't do wilderness or extreme weather camping. I was the person who was involved in handling permits and paperwork for a linked pack and troop for years and this never came up with council or anywhere else. I am absolutely sure it will in the future though. Interesting how there always seems to be another rule you didn't know you were breaking....

I was surprised by something else in that link. Further down it talks about Pack overnight campsite approvals. I've been out of cubs awhile but that's new to me and to most of our area units evidently because most of the popular cub scout camping sites in use around here would not meet all the criteria on the linked appraisal form.

There have been insurance awards for anal fistulas of up to $50 million, so even just focusing on the physical problems caused by abuse would still be staggering. I'm not sure what you mean by limiting monetary elements to actual help in the case of physical damage. Many of these things have to be corrected surgically and have comparatively high failure rates. What would be considered "actual help" for living with fecal incontinence as a result of being raped by your Scoutmaster? What is the impact on a young man, an Eagle Scout maybe, hoping to date and have a family while dealing with that condition? Or if by some grace of God he gets married but is unable or too embarrassed to camp with his kids? Would he be able to join the military? Get a corporate job? Some people have had to endure multiple surgeries and recoveries. If just 500 survivors out of 82,000 were awarded even just $10 million for trying to cope and lead a life with that kind of physical damage, that alone would be $5 billion dollars -- far higher than the dollars being discussed in this case for everything.

I am never in favor of price increases but for point of comparison a 12 person cabin at one of our nearby state parks would be $280 for a weekend so $200 doesn't seem crazy. And no scout discounts despite a history of service projects...

The larger property management issues you raise like logging and just general poor stewardship of scout lands is another crazy disconnect. As far as Jamborees, I mispoke. I meant all the local scout jam type gatherings and what have you. They are almost always high stress on local resources and often planned without consideration as to impact. A 50 acre field mowed at the wrong time of year can be disastrous for grassland breeding birds for example but a Council that logs isn't going to be at all concerned about a bunch of fledglings. It's sadly funny that in some places you will have greedy corporate campuses sporting pollinator gardens, wood duck boxes and swales of special grasses to filter nonpoint source polluntants out of stormwater runoff. Then, next door, is the supposedly conservation minded scout reservation buzzing with chainsaws and spouting muddy runoff from the weekend's noncancelled bad weather camp out.

LNT Minimize Campfires -- Cooking MB and extensive cooking rank requirements. In many places this becomes tail gating in the woods. LNT Respect Wildlife -- Any requirement that involves collection of animals from the wild or creating artificial congregation points or food sources. For example, Fishing Derbies -- throwing a dying or dead fish back into water is not LNT and kind of a blind spot in cubs. Jamborees? Maybe when they are in a parking lot but not at most sites I've seen them at. There are more -- easy enough to find if you look yourself. BSA has cleaned up some of it over the past decade -- it's not as bad as when they had requirements that were illegal in many states -- but it's still behind the times. These are just conservation components of the program. Many, many of the badges in a number of fields are out of date as well. The whole program needs an overhaul and going forward a way to update in real time. Some of these should be partnered with expert source organizations to ensure that.

That's interesting, although I have to say it is hard to make the out of doors seem boring, but LNT gives a really good try. It's important stuff, but instead of teaching it in context with anything else, it's just presented as a dry list. I'm thinking more of BSA modifying program components in ways that would lead to partnerships or at least synergies. There are 5 animal rank names and yet nothing specifically linked to study or conservation in the ranks for any of those animals. Bears and Eagles are two head scratching omissions. The National Park Service offers a free annual pass to all fourth graders. It wouldn't cost any money to put something in the Webelos rank about learning about or visiting a National Park. LL Bean just launched an outdoors initiative with Boys and Girls Clubs. What's also head scratching are instances where Merit Badges and rank requirements are in conflict with LNT. Another thing that needs to be updated.

It ought to be every participatory parent (meaning you attend things with your kid) takes YPT, submits to a background check, and the parent pays the (typically nominal) fee. If you want to go on and be a volunteer leader, you pay the higher fee to register. Every parent should be able to observe any aspect of the program. I have no idea why BSA wants to charge all parents $45.

What a shame both Cynical Scouter and ThenNow are gone. Their commentary on something like this would have been insightful and likely provided more context.

Sadly, it has missed a great opportunity to be the nation's guide to the outdoors, most tragically during the pandemic. There are so many partnerships that could have been leveraged with NPS, conservation groups, and reimagining the outdoors as the scouting world's classroom. So many struggling scout camps that could have become scouting branded community outdoor resources for recreation and learning.

That study has some strange omissions, like the fact that the Amazon has also lost 20% of its acreage/habitat in the past 30 years or so, but the Bird Study badge, along with many badges and rank requirements, are desperately in need of updating and revamping. We truly do need more outdoors in scouting, and what is offered needs to be more relevant, up to date, and field oriented.

It's interesting you think someone who walked away from signing an NDA and as a result left a significant amount of money on the table has credibility issues. I can't come up with any other senior BSA executive who has done anything like that in recent memory. Further, he was an expert in youth protection before he was hired, for ten years he was the first and looks like only BSA senior executive focusing soley on youth protection, and he's still a nationally recognized expert in the field. For those reasons, his assessments about BSA youth protection policies will have credibility to the wider world in whatever venue he is asked to appear. His comments on COs and the lack of oversight and gaps in youth protection are not wild claims -- those problems have been an open secret. What is wild are the extreme differences in how the BSA program is carried out, from optimal to abysmal, depending on region, council, CO, and unit. He is the first senior executive to publicly acknowledge that problem and its effect on child safety. Scouting is in this mess because of longstanding dysfunction in the CO/BSA relationship structure and he's right when he says nothing has materially changed present day.

On youth protection, maybe start with what the former BSA director of youth protection Michael Johnson had to say on the subject: 1) Recognize that scouting is a high risk perhaps the highest risk youth activity as far as youth protection and other aspects. 2) Recognize that a significant percentage of current abuse cases are youth on youth. Older youth supervision of younger youth is a problem. 3) Remove NDAs that prevent other youth protection experts who have contracted with the BSA from speaking out. 4) The CO structure is dysfunctional as far as supervision of units and scouts. Some COs still allow known perpetrators to have access to youth. 5) Release files that have names of perpetrators who have not yet been reported by BSA. 6) BSA's focus is more on protecting the brand and protecting the COs that are at the core of its business model and not on youth protection.

I have never known a CO or a COR that isn't absentee or at very least hands off and I have been involved with two councils that would never force the issue for fear of losing units, membership, or FOS dollars. In many of the units, the COR is just a name on paper -- they do not belong to or represent the CO because there is no one available at the CO. Many COs around here are smaller churches with declining, elderly leadership. I think this is very different depending on what council you are in or part of the country. This is a problem BSA has ignored or played footsie with for years. The CO model has not worked at all in many places.

I was also absolutely unclear to what our moderator was referring and I am neither an attorney, a client, or a victim. I'm just interested in trying to keep track of what is going on and who all the different players are. I went back and reviewed all of the recent posts including ThenNow's and could find nothing that seemed remotely commercial. It was a long thread of logistical discussions similar to you can buy tents at Walmart, Costco, or REI. With all due respect, this was a pilot error, not a passenger problem.

They said they were doing that at the last TCC town hall that Michael Johnson spoke at.

That disqualifier makes absolutley no sense. Certainly a thousand other review or oversight bodies aren't formed that way, whether it's sports injuries, accessibility, drunk driving, etc. If you want to fix something, you want people who are passionate critics and advocates involved. Otherwise you get lip service.

While I empathize with our volunteer moderators who may have felt they had to uncross swords 24/7, it did seem like people were continually baiting Cynical Scouter. Some of it was unwitting -- they were often newly arrived to the discussion -- but others seemed to enjoy poking the tiger knowing full well he would swat. I miss his analysis. I hope he comes back.

That's what I'm talking about with this badge as well as the disability badge. I really think those requirements should come out.

Just FYI some packs are completely pay as you go -- so you pay for your own expenses including advancements. Any fundraising would go toward pack expenses that everyone would use -- like camp stoves or meeting facility fees or web hosting.

I've been trying to keep up but my son just told me about another one -- A for Ally, not Asexual. His definition is that an Ally is someone who is either a friend or supportive of anyone who is one of the other letters or symbols, which basically means pretty much everyone is in the acronym. I've been trying to think and anticipate what the next one could be but I think the double AA along with plus might just cover it all?

One of the minor problems I have with this badge, which is the same issue I have with the disability badge, is the requirement to find and talk with someone who is disabled or, in this case, different from you. This kind of turns different scouts, as it does with disabled scouts, into unwitting and perhaps in some cases unwilling "specimens" for investigation to get a badge. We've all had scout who are pretty zealous in their pursuit of knocking off a merit badge requirement. I hope counselors for this badge will talk about tact when seeking out someone to talk to. Not every disabled kid wants to be thought of as disabled and many in fact actively push back against that idea. I imagine it could be similar for kids who may be taken aback or even offended to learn that they are thought of as different when perhaps they themselves don't think so or are fighting that label.