yknot

Except a lot of teacher abuse claims are for all abuse, not necessarily sexual. I do think some assessment of order of magnitude would be very useful.

This stupidity strategy is employed quite a bit. A lot of financial institutions play it. I've encountered this kind of nonsense with personal accounts, trying to administer estates, and in business.

Before anyone can answer that question you would have to consider at least two additional things: Scale and comparable time periods. There are 3.5 million teachers in the US and 57 million school children creating many opportunities for abuse. There are far fewer scouters and scouts. For example, in 2014, there were 1 million adult volunteers involved in scouting and 2.6 million scouts, creating far fewer opportunities for abuse. A useful comparison of incidents would also have to select for comparable time periods. I think the one good thing that might come out of this mess is bet

Let's just agree to disagree on BSA. I think individual scouters' views of BSA have much to do with personal experience. If you had my experiences and saw things from my perspective, you might agree with why I wrote that. And perhaps if I'd had yours, I'd think differently than I do.

One of the valuable things about this thread, in addition to the excellent legal information and analysis, has been the perspectives from people who have actually been abused. I can go to any scouting venue, forum or friend, and hear hundreds of opinions from people who know a lot about scouting but a lot less about child abuse, which is the single biggest crisis ever to face scouting. This is the only place that I know of where a handful of people have been willing to give firsthand accounts of some of the incidents that have all but destroyed something that we love. They've given their opini

Earlier in this process, people had speculated whether the Biden administration would step in to aid scouting and I pointed out the existence of that foundation and the family history. I was just being consistent in doing the same in light of the fact that now there has been some federal involvement. Sorry I should have provided that background.

https://www.beaubidenfoundation.org/ I'm not surprised there might be federal interest in ensuring justice for CSA survivors based on this: https://www.beaubidenfoundation.org/

I got a donation request yesterday from council that insisted all funds stay local.

The dilemma is that while scouting in many regions is indeed over-camped -- I think there are almost 10 within 90 minutes of where I am -- without access to convenient camps, many units will fade away. It's harder to get adult volunteers on weekends when they have to drive more than an hour or so. And the really sad part to me is the impending loss of all this undeveloped camp acreage across the country.

I agree that kids like the out of doors but I disagree that scouts really offers much of it anymore. In a previous post I mentioned how nature centers jumped into the gap by offering Covid suitable programming during the pandemic. Their memberships have burgeoned while scouting has tanked. Parents love it when their kids come home talking about hiking and birds and butterflies and trees. Unlike their typical cub scout leader or ASM, the nature center naturalist can actually tell them what animal made that track or the name of the bird they just saw. BSA is really not that outdoors focused.

I think there is a lot more boomer influence in the parent role than you may realize. I know too many women who had kids into their 40s and those kids are mid teens today. Too many dads whose last kid is that age or younger as well. Not trying to quibble over demographics just saying there is still a generational influence in scouting that is very supportive but is on the cusp of disappearing. Edit -- Also, it is Boomer age volunteers who are still filling most of the volunteer leadership positions in our units and many district level posts even though their own children have aged

Congratulations on your future cub and thanks for reminding us grumpy old people that great young people are always out there.

That's exactly what I'm saying. The Boomer generation is still significantly influencing and populating the scouting movement and there are not many more years left where it will still be present. That's going to have a continuing depressive effect on membership.

I think it's more about specialization. Families don't want to waste time or money on activities that don't meet their exact needs and interests. Other youth organizations have adapted to this. A kid interested in soccer, for example, can find options to play rec, local travel, regional travel, or elite travel. I don't agree about the outdoors. During the pandemic when units shut down, many nature centers offered Covid friendly programming and their membership rolls burgeoned while BSA's has tanked. A lot of those kids don't want to come back to scouting because of being too much like homework

I kind of disagree. The biggest supporters of scouting in my neck of the woods are younger boomers who still have relatively young kids and then to a lesser degree, Gen X'ers. We are still out there supporting things like scouts and sports and all the legacy community organizations. I think when the last cohort of younger boomers with scout aged kids, which I'm in, ages out in the next few years, it's going to be noticeable. Which is to say I agree that BSA is going to have a tough time producing a business model that supports retaining all these camp and HA bases.

Well, I'm a boomer with a young teen and so are most of my friends who have/had kids in the program. I don't know if we gravitated to each other because of the generational thing but here we are. Not uncommon for people to have had kids or adopted late in life or be on second marriages with younger kids. We have also been the ones running things. A good segment of Gen X'ers right below us too-- thank the Lord for you guys. Millennials? Uh, almost none.

It seems kind of obvious but you do hope. I don't know about Gen Z. First off, I see them putting off having families as have Millennials. Frankly, I look out over the units I see and there are still a lot of Baby Boomer parents here with adolescents and teenagers, especially dads. We're still riding the membership connection to that generation.

Given that scouts is at 750,000 now, 1 million may be optimistic. The success of this fall's recruitment will be informative when it's seen how many scouts return. There could be a big bounce but it's also possible there could be yet additional attrition. The pandemic has changed a lot of things -- family priorities, finances, youth interests. It's unclear how these changes could affect recruitment. I have wondered what happens if at some point during Chapter 11 it becomes clear that scouting is a dinosaur on life support.

That's my point. BSA COs in many cases actually don't do any supervising, whether or not it is assigned to them on paper, and BSA doesn't follow up. I have witnessed outrageous adult behavior in all kinds of youth settings. In a sports setting, offending adults are no longer allowed to coach or ejected from games and practices. It's clear who is responsible for removing the adult. Often times the people empowered to remove the individual are on site and witness the behavior. In scouting, I've never seen that happen and it is unclear to most COs that it would be their responsibility to do so. I

This is complicated by the fact that while on paper BSA assigns responsibility to COs, in practice it does not ensure those responsibilities are being carried out. Every council is different, so there may be some where COs were more conscientiously supervised and had their charters pulled for lack of unit supervision, but that would never happen in my area because it would result in lost units and membership. BSA in my experience does not care if the CO has any role in the operations of the unit. It knowingly abdicates this oversight responsibility.

That's exactly why COs are so confused about their role with BSA. With most other organizations the relationship is simply one of benign support. We also have church chartered units and the pastors know a couple of people in the organization, generally the person who comes and asks them to sign something, but they know no one else. Most of the CORs are that in name only and don't belong to the congregation. There no longer is any connection between the congregations and the unit. This isn't an issue for any other organization because they are not looking for the CO to hold a supervisory role.

I'm not so sure. The reassurances were pretty emphatic to my council.

I think it's also important to point out that it seems like the people who are posting about this on this forum or are mostly lurking but popping in from time to time are... the relative success stories, if that would be the correct term? They were somehow able to function and hold jobs despite needing therapy and experiencing bleak episodes in their lives. The people who are not on here weighing in and likely not even included in the 83,000 claims are the ones who were largely lost. The ones who committed suicide, or turned around and became abusers themselves because that is a common sequela

I saw someone selling it roadside in cut, stacked bundles the way you would sell firewood. People apparently use it for tomato stakes. Not sure how much you'd be able to sell though.

I think you have to adapt to your demographics. I hear about troops in other parts of the country that are very active in the summer but it in our area it's almost impossible to pull off. Very few people are around enough to do much more than summer camp and some ad hoc stuff. We are also perennially short of adult volunteers, most of them are two career families, and most of them seem to want to kick back some over the summer. Summer is really not that much of a break in family activity anymore. As far as the OP, I think the key is to set expectations ahead of time. Our unit has never