yknot

If you have any agriculture near you, try there. We have a farm that does events through December and they rent small tents to groups for a nominal fee or sometimes you can get it for free if you also buy tickets for the corn maze or other activity. I can think of worse fall pack meetings to have. Some farmers also have equipment barns. Ask a firehouse if you can meet in one of their bays. They might be willing to move a truck outside and leave the garage bay door open for you to meet. See if there is any empty warehouse spaces or empty buildings with garage bays. Most of these places won't have heat but you might get light and be out of the rain/wind. Some might have limited bathroom access. If it gets you through to December you can try Jan or Feb as a family ski or skate night outdoors somewhere or cancel for those two months. Don't worry so much about running a traditional pack meeting for now. Just get the kids together someplace safe and fun and ad lib the rest.

I have been hearing of councils that don't want to serve as the chartering org as well. That's something for BSA to resolve though in its reorg plan I would think.

Wouldn't the liability concerns for any future charter though be the same as for any old charter? The UMC COs that are switching to facilities use around here are doing so because they don't trust the liability situation and coverage going forward with BSA. It's not just child abuse concerns either but what would happen if there was an injury claim or some other problem. The BSA has a lot of the traditional COs completely rattled and spooked and from where I sit it doesn't look like those reactions are without cause. An organization they trusted for decades and took at their word because of their promotion of things like The Scout Law has suddenly become unrecognizable. I don't know that I could ask any other community group to be a CO in good conscience right now. To me the solution for now seems to be the Council because then at least if there are any problems going forward it's not going to hurt the people at my local Elks or FD or any other group I might ask.

Let's not drag the innocent Harris Hawk into this sordid tale. They are lovely creatures, which is why they are so suitable for falconry. They are less likely to talon your face.

Not at all. I'm just saying some of them and maybe more than is realized. I also think it's dishonest for BSA to try to offload all of this on COs when they intentionally did not manage or oversee the relationship. Why did they renew charters for so many units that had dysfunctional COs?

I'm not a lawyer but one of the areas I have been most involved with the law has been with elder care. The standards for a valid signature for a possibly compromised senior adult are very high. Virtually everything has to be notarized. So many of the people I have dealt with in COs seem to be of questionable cognition. Just my two cents.

But what if the COR was not a member of the CO but of the unit, and says they were told to sign the form by the unit leader and the unit commissioner (who, in effect, are their "bosses")? And then were directed to wave forms under the IH and just get a signature. And were even directed to mark the signature lines with highlighter with the intention of getting the elderly IH to just focus on the signature and "not all that verbiage on the form"?

You and others keep characterizing it as an abdication of responsibility. However, if a unit leader from a trusted legacy unit year after year waves the same paperwork under a COs nose and says, it's OK, sign here, we're the boy scouts, so you don't need to worry about anything because you know you can trust us, I think there may be questions. A lot of these people are elderly. Perhaps could even be proven to be mentally compromised. In most of the units I know, the COR is not a member of the CO, it is a unit volunteer filling that role as a warm body. At some point it can start to look kind of like an elder abuse scam. I know that early in my scout involvement, I was guilty of form waving. We were under the belief that we should not do anything to upset our long term CO and elderly members. District and Council were only interested in membership and keeping the units alive. They knew what the "warm body" CORs were doing.

The COs I know that signed off on applications did so because they didn't know the people and unit leaders asked them to. They did so because they trusted the unit leaders.

Canada is also a completely different country. They are used to socialized medicine and while some segments will still fuss, it is not like here. Look at how quickly they went from 0% vaccinated to 70% plus once they had vaccine. I think all pressure should be brought to bear on all eligible people to be vaccinated through the means cited by Eagle1993 but I think BSA has to stick with its policy for now.

This is one of those many badges that need updating because it contains extremely dated information. For example, scouts should not be taught to replace cords on blinds because they are illegal. Corded blinds are no longer manufactured and may no longer be offered for sale.

Agreed. Kids shouldn't be dropping dead of heat injury during sports practices or drowning on scout hikes. A phenomenon I've seen the past decade or so is an overreliance on phone radar apps and online weather services as if they never lie or conflict. People have lost the ability to look up or use common sense.

That is what I'm talking about -- be prepared to change plans. My nephew was badly injured during a camp out that should have been cancelled or changed because of weather. It's no joke.

I kind of disagree. Having the mentality that you don't cancel for bad weather is the opposite of what I think scouts is supposed to teach. We teach be prepared, which includes being prepared to change plans. Even D-Day was weather dependent. This is scouts, not the military.

Maybe that benefits the judge, LOL.

Yes that is true. In public schools (in my state) once teacher performance became linked to test scores a lot of things were cut out. I was on the board of a PTA, an educational foundation, and a board of ed liaison and saw school assemblies, enrichment programs, kid birthday parties or cupcakes, and most class parties all cut out. The kids were lucky to get an hour for pizza and a movie before winter break. One of the other issues (in my area) is parents being overwhelmed with emails or long emails. For example, the PTA stopped including scouts, sports, etc. announcements in their weekly eblast for that reason.

I would say it is generally localized now but coming to a school near you soon. A lot of this is the continued aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting and other subsequent events. We've discussed this in other posts but this is why many schools and grounds are completely monitored by video cameras and why many now have security guards and hardened exteriors. Over the past 20 years I went from being able to roam local schools almost at will if I was known to the administration. Now, parents are not allowed in schools. There are no parent volunteers. No more helping at field day or running a PTA holiday shop. You cannot have access to school children during the school day. After school, the facility is still locked and you can only get in with your student if you are attending practice or some other event. Even our student pickup is outside. I know people think this is somehow a conspiracy against scouting but it is not. Some school districts are not yet this extreme but it is only a matter of time.

Thanks. There was a period of time where my council said it was doing criminal background checks but didn't do them. They believed anyone with a problem would balk at signing the waiver and they would self screen, so why spend the money.

Can you clarify anything about who was/is responsible for criminal background checks in scouting? In everything I recall, it was BSA. No CO I have ever dealt with had the resources to do that until relatively recently as part of their own youth protection initiatives.

Understood. But that developed over time and I would argue didn't need to get to the point where BSA felt like LDS had them over a barrel. Making decisions based on membership has continually gotten BSA off track.

I'm sorry, I missed the part where the LDS mafia sent thugs to beat up BSA leadership and leave horse heads in their beds. Are you kidding me, LOL? A group of people who are supposed to be the most morally upright Dudley Do Rights on the planet somehow caved to this kind of pressure? This is what I'm talking about.

I'm not sure what you're asking. BSA was always in control of its program.

I worked in survey design in both politics and marketing. The BSA survey on girls in scouting was guided. You could not answer certain questions objectively. Most of the responses were gated and led you into another question that would push you towards an affirmative response. It doesn't matter whether the survey went to K-3 or rank and file. The results were skewed. Even if you don't believe that, there was no defense for not following the promised process and timeline.

BSA should never have allowed LDS to create a program within a program. They should have been welcomed, as any other CO, to participate in the BSA sanctioned scouting program. It gave LDS undue influence and skewed BSA decision making and leadership into increasingly fraught religious based social controversies. Scouting never should have become a Sunday school program for COs of any denomination. COs should have been given leeway within the confines of the program to adapt as much as possible to their local wishes but scouting should have remained true to scouting - a game for boys. And now girls.

I don't think the issue was over the published results, it was how it was mishandled by BSA: 1) The surveys were guided so that you were led into answering in ways that supported a foregone conclusion. 2) Surbaugh and others were supposedly conducting fact finding meetings at local levels in which they assured units and parents that any such changes were pending the final results of said ongoing survey and would be implemented over time. While those meetings were still ongoing, the decision was made and girls were admitted almost immediately, breaking their promise. Now, I was mostly in favor of admitting girls, but the process was dishonest and created unnecessary ill will among those who were opposed. It made the transition that much more volatile than it needed to be. We lost people who, if the process had been allowed to proceed organically and in concert with what BSA was promising, possibly would have gotten used to the idea and would have stayed. Just look at all the scouters now who say they initially opposed admitting girls but are now strong advocates for opening the program to them.