yknot

How was the higher percentage of claimants filing in the BSA case over the others been determined? My thinking was that it was likely low due to the fact that many potential claimants are already dead, many abused children don't come forward until well into adulthood, and the fact that there is an inhibiting stigma attached to actually filing for a child sex abuse claim that could become public, or at least would become known in an attorney's office.

This makes me wonder how Friends of Scouting ever became part of scouting to the degree where it is utilized to fund salaries rather than specific needs. Many Friends Of type organizations often specify that their donations not be used for such. I've been on several boards -- for example, an Educational Foundation that supports a school district and a Friends Of board that supports a preserve. In both situations, requests had to be made to the board which weighed whether to fund the request. It was never for salaries, it was for program enhancements, perhaps urgent repairs, a new piece of equipment, etc. It never dawned on me how differently FOS works in scouting. It's also disconcerting how it is an aggressive 5th hand out for more money from almost the same pool of payees, the other four "hands" being National fees, Council fees, Uniform, Unit fees, and then FOS.

I don't understand underutilized camps either. I am in the middle of multiple councils. The ones who have innovative, three and four season programming open to the public and not just scouts are going gangbusters. The ones who regard their summer camps as solely a summer destination for scouts are struggling.

One thing we have to keep in mind is that scouting teaches one kind of leadership model: top down. The rank advancement system is built around that. In most cases, it tends to recognize and reward confidence and self advocacy and not necessarily competency and good outcomes. Scouting loses a lot of kids during the transition from AOL to first year or two of troop, and I think leadership plays a role. I have seen a lot of good kids leave in that time frame because they need confidence building in order to learn more about leadership and scouts is often not a good place for certain kinds of kids to get that. They get steamrolled. I really feel like scouts has often put itself forward as a youth leadership program when in reality it often doesn't seem to really know that much about kids. It's more what adults think would be good for kids, and the further away it gets from focusing on the outdoors and outdoor skills, the worse it seems to get. And as I've said before, if scouting was that good at producing great leaders, we wouldn't have the kinds of organizational dysfunction and crises that have plagued it for the past few decades because BSA is basically led by scouts.

That all seems reasonable assuming this precedent has already been set. I have wondered though why Eagle Scouts, juvenile and adult, who have committed illegal or unethical acts, have not had that status stripped by National. This is the first time I've ever heard of BSA tossing out a kid for something other than being the wrong gender or persuasion, or can others recall cases? One aspect of this that bothers me is that the kid sounds like he is of South Asian descent. If BSA doesn't have a history of kicking out kids and then the first one it kicks out is a minority, that is another bad look by BSA. However, I realize this is all just noodling around but it's a rainy Sunday morning and I'm somehow back on the site looking for bankruptcy updates ...

Because I think we need to be looking at ways to make cubs cheaper and easier for parents? Practically everything else under the sun today for kids exists as a cheap pdf download. There is no reason to make cubs buy a hard copy book every single year. At the troop level they usually just buy one. That makes more sense although I don't even see the reason for a scout to have lug around a book either.

It is NJ. I can't seem to cut and paste the statement but it basically says what I posted.

Yes. Looks like it. I am unaware of any paperwork that exists at the COs that I know. Most of them are run by a vestigial group of people in their 80s. All they know is some nice scout person comes by to see them once a year to ask for a signature. In doing forensics for one of the units I'm affiliated with, we thought it was solely located at one church but about three months ago based on oral histories found out it actually started at another church in town. There is no paperwork whatsoever. I don't know how these things will be sorted out.

Our state United Methodist Church Council issued a statement today saying all Methodist churches should not renew COAs but have the council charter units instead to limit liability.

I'm not sure about that. I think LDS was partly to blame for membership declines before it left. It never should have been allowed to create a program within a program. Allowing it to do so gave the LDS undue influence over scouting policies in general, including a really onerous over emphasis on religion in the program. Without that influence, BSA likely would have been able to better adapt to changing social values. Without LDS, it would have been a lot easier for BSA proper to open up membership in general while still allowing COs the prerogative to follow their individual principles for their particular units. LDS influence made it impossible to adapt in my opinion. Before the CSA scandal and Covid hit full force, I really thought the loss of LDS influence would eventually be a great membership opportunity. Going forward, LDS scouts and COs would be as welcome and valued as any other religion or CO in BSA, but without the paralyzing outsize influence. Scouting was never meant to be solely a youth ministry program.

One of the most alarming, although slightly funny, experiences I had on this subject was with my last AOL den. At their cross over ceremony they were so pumped and ready to be Scouts. All they wanted to do was camp, hike, shoot, high adventure, etc. And then the Scoutmaster got up and said a few words of welcome to them. He spent the next few minutes talking to them about leadership, hard work, merit badges and how Eagle Scout would look on their college applications; how important it was to "get it all done" before things got real busy for them in high school. He told them that the challenges they would face would help them develop life skills they would need. He told them being in scouts would develop leadership skills that would be recognized by future employees and help them get a job... I never saw a bunch of 10 year old kids deflate so fast. Parents couldn't pull out the checkbooks fast enough but all those pumped up scouts were suddenly full of apprehension and somber faces. What was thought of as fun suddenly sounded like work. I think as adults we sometimes get carried away with things that seem important to us but are not necessarily as important to kids. I do believe a lot of kids walk away, especially during those critical cross over years, because scouting at times is more what adults want it to be. You can still supposedly be a boy led, patrol based unit and have the culture largely driven by adult expectations and egos.

Combining 4th and 5th graders with kindergarten and first graders is one of the top reasons cited to me by parents as to why their older scouts stop coming to pack meetings or even leave scouts. For a youth organization, BSA often seems to know little about kids. The idea that 9 and 10 year old kids will enjoy "teaching" or "running" things for younger kids when they themselves still want to run around and have fun isn't all that practical. Most anything designed to appeal to 4th and 5th graders is likely to be too long for K-2. In the school system, we always broke things down K-2 and 3-4 or 5. In recent years, grade level specific even has become more the norm. Even at the troop level, it can be a stretch to have 10 year old and 17 year old kids together.

I wish someone would make a documentary about this.

Whenever YP comes up we seem to instantly sort into these completely polarized nuclear bomb positions. Yes, BSA has improved its YP. Yes, it is harder to abuse children in scouting today. Yes, child sexual abuse is a prevalent problem in society. On the other side of the coin, has BSA done everything it can to minimize CSA? No, This forum is full of areas where BSA can and must improve. If scouting survives bankruptcy it will not survive a round two of child sexual abuse cases. That is simply the reality. One of the biggest conflicts I see is that one of the few action items in the BSA reorg plan is a focus on increasing membership. Historically, this National focus on increasing and maintaining membership is what has contributed to our youth protection gaps and resultant crisis. The focus needs to be on running a safe program. An increase in membership would be the hoped for result.

I keep getting confused on the fees since I'm no longer in Cubs. So National is now $72, plus there is a $25 new member fee, plus there is an adult volunteer fee of $48 -- that would apply to any parent who signed up as a Tiger den leader or assistant den leader, yes?

That's the way it has been. But maybe it needs to change. Top leadership being completed disconnected from program has been, in my opinion, a slow building disaster for BSA. I think senior leadership needs to have program on their dashboard so that they can better provide support to volunteers in the field. Focusing on fundraising totally detaches them from what scouts is all about. It hasn't been working. At all.

I've brought this up before and it's not entirely the same context, but there is a certain degree of forensics that can be done that can provide some validity even to claims that are missing information. If you know that Scout X claimed abuse during period Y in Z vicinity but is lacking some key data, you can match that up against similar claims made during period Y in Z vicinity. Meaning, if a scout forgot his unit number but knew the time period and location, if there are a dozen other incidents within those same parameters, it lends credence to his claim.

I was a Pack Committee Chair for many years, plus a Den Leader throughout, so I heard the parent feedback while also having to ensure the health of the program. - Be careful about fundraising. This was one of the biggest sources of parental dissatisfaction. It is good you are offering a buy out option. Many families will go for that. Others, however, will have to fundraise in order to participate. My advice is to offer a menu of options so that no one feels stuck with a fundraiser they can't succeed at. - Try to do pay as you go as much as you can. That way families can opt out if they can't afford something, but make it clear you also have scholarship options for those who can't. - Don't focus on one big, painful, fundraiser. There are lots of smaller, easier ways to raise funds. For a couple years, we ordered bulk pizzas at a discount before pack meetings and sold slices at a profit. People were happy to pay $2 a slice and not have to worry about dinner that night. It was both a service to our families and a fundraiser. Look for those kinds of things. - Forgo the uniform for the next couple of years. Do a pack t shirt. Opt out of Scout Life. - I was not above bending some rules. Councils don't want you to approach local merchants but the reality is local merchants have no interest in supporting boy scouts in general. They are happy, however, to support the local kids and families they see around town. A few gift cards can go a long way towards keeping your blue and gold food costs down, etc. A pasta and pizza night from a local eatery where 10% is donated to your unit is great. These businesses would never respond to Council. They would however respond to a local unit because they know the kids. - . I

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2021/06/23/619808.htm

Welp, I hope the focus stays on youth protection and that if there is any good that comes out of this horrific mess it's that fewer children are harmed in the future in scouting and elsewhere. I hope eyes have been opened and that things are learned from this. I'm not a survivor so I can't presume to know how any of you feel about that but that to my third hand perspective would be at least some kind of nameless but worthwhile monument to your pain. BSA cannot forget what happened. It can't keep happening.

We do and we don't. The unit is advancement focused. It's youth led, but with adult expectations that the boys internalize. The scouts prepare hard prior to crossover. Then there is a standard camp out or series of meetings in the spring post crossover where the material is gone over again before anyone will sign off on anything, so to their minds they've done it twice. Then in the past they've been told they must attend Dan Beard/First Year scouting at summer camp so they do it all a third time. Then, none of the SM/ASM team trusts camp sign offs, so they have to sometimes do it a fourth time if they weren't smart enough or motivated enough to get the sign offs in the spring. Lately, there's been some give on camp because of poor feedback and lost kids. This unit is kind of an Eagle mill. The SM is a great guy but he will not tolerate any sitting around at camp in a hammock or doing anything that doesn't serve advancement. The parents scream if kids don't come back from camp with four and five merit badges. I don't know whether it's because they were raised this way or not, but most of the boys are very focused on checking off every box they can and design most meetings around that. It's good for the very focused boys, but we lose a large percentage of those who are more chill. I should actually not say "we" because my younger son and I finally dropped out this year. He's more of a hike and what kind of bird is that kid.

4H offers pretty much everything depending on where you are so if you are in a camping club or are working on a high adventure type project, yes they do unit like things. However, there is generally a lot more parental involvement and it's often more of a group setting. It's also not as much tent based. When I was a kid we camped a lot but it was in everything from group cabins at summer camp to empty barns to pop up campers and the backs of pick up trucks. It was usually a bunch of kids stuck together and a leader somewhere. I was not in a camping club but we often camped to be near our projects either at a fairgrounds -- think jamboree type set up -- or nearby or for fun.

Maybe this has been their strategy all along and why they have fought losing the HA bases. If you look at the problems with youth protection, liability, structural issues with oversight, insurance, BSA may have concluded it really can't run anything other than a family program at the national level. This way it will preserve the charter, preserve the boy scout name and legacy to some degree, and leave local scouting to whatever councils/unit survive or are able to continue on their own.

I don't think it's credible to claim it's due to search engine issues. It would be pretty magical if 4H was somehow invisible throughout the interweb. 4H historically has also always served far more youth than scouting. Right now the membership is somewhere around 6 million to BSA's 700,000. Even if many parents, lawyers, and the media somehow colluded not to link the 4H name to abuse cases, there would still be a lot of cases out there. Activities in 4H can be similar but the program dynamics are completely different as I outlined above. It is largely a group activity done in public. There are opportunities for abuse as there would be anywhere kids are present but they would appear to be less. There are a lot more women involved. Parents are also far more likely to trust a boy scout leader or a pastor with a child because of institutionalized assumptions about character. As I've also said before, in 4H as a kid you are much more on your own with other kids and it is more kid run. There is no real advancement process that drives adults to become directly involved with youth. The idea that a child wouldn't remember that someone who abused them was a 4H leader because of a lack of uniform is nonsensical. I don't mean to be defending 4H so much, I am more using it as an example that the scouting program is inherently attractive to predators and creates unique opportunities for them. I think until scouting confronts that and figures out ways to address it better instead of trying to deflect it as a societal problem that can't be helped, the future of scouting, and the kids in it, isn't safe. Others have been focused on the money and numbers throughout the bankruptcy process here but this is the aspect that has riveted me.

4H members can also do high adventure and more outdoors oriented projects depending on the state and county but the process is very different and there is more parent involvement. 4H offers almost everything, so it is a fine slice of the membership pie but then again 4H enrolls many, many more kids than scouting. I think the membership now is over 6 million. Many 4H clubs, regardless of what subject, still camp as part of the experience and also attend 4H camp. When I was young, we camped with an adult leader, but it was generally a group bunkhouse at a camp. You were never really alone with an adult.