yknot

I think it would be easy enough to tie YPT to the recharter date for all perhaps with the caveat that you don't have to renew that first year if you've taken the training within the past six months. A lot of memberships, etc., have paperwork that has to be refiled by an annual date. Obviously, BSA needs to up the IT end.

That's what I thought. Surprised there are Councils that can get around it, but that would speak to how serious BSA is or is not about YPT. I think annual makes the most sense. However, that's another area where the BSA is not serious enough because a significant number of people had extreme difficulty accessing and completing the online training. It also needs to streamlined so that it is easier for people to take in areas where internet access is limited. I tried for two months to complete it and finally gave up since I was not being rechartered anyway. I had simply wanted to maintain it because I still assist.

I'm confused. Maybe it's just our council, but we cannot recharter unless everyone on the charter has a current YPT through the coming year. It will get kicked back. At the unit level, we further require every parent to have YPT or we will not accept registration. I would not hold us up as any great example though. There is a disturbing history of leadership not taking YPT or G2SS all that seriously. But at least everyone has been through the training. Parents have to take the training in order for them to understand the rules.

I don't think that's true. Otherwise we'd have 150,000 claims filed. Claims dropped once the BSA started putting YP measures in place although certainly plenty of abuse cases still occurred.

Social media is where it's at to reach families today. In our area, one Troop is up while a few others are slightly down. Packs have been hard hit though. A lot is going to depend on what happens with Covid. Lots of places opening up despite the fact that we've stalled at a pretty high level of community transmission. I just hope it doesn't come back around to bite us and ruin the spring and summer with another surge after Easter and Spring Break.

STOPit is utilized by a number of school districts in my area. Some have been hesitant to sign on with it for those reasons -- the implementation is not perfect. However, it does give kids an access point and a voice. It's been out several years now and the districts keep renewing it so it can't be that useless. I just used that as an example though. More than any specific app, there doesn't seem to be a clear communications channel for scouts to self report in BSA and given the history and the scope of the issue, I think it's a missing piece. All I've ever seen is "tell a trusted adult" or language like that. I know there is a national reporting hotline that is publicized to adults, but I have not seen where that is also made clear to scouts. Something like that could suffice.

I agree. I was not aware that was not comprehensive BSA policy. Every parent in our units have to take YPT in order to register their scout. They have to include their YPT certificate in their registration packet or we won't accept it.

Almost every church has their own YPT program. I am most familiar with the Catholic Church and Methodist programs. Virtus Protecting God's Children program. UMCs Safe Sanctuaries program. Babe Ruth League child protection program is a youth sports example. One component that some of these programs have that BSA does not have is a self reporting capability. For example, the Catholic Church thru Virtus offers the STOPit phone app that allows youth to anonymously report abuse of themselves or other children. To my mind, this is a key piece that is missing in BSA. In the sports programs I've been involved with, and I realize this is anecdotal, management of YPT infractions are dealt with far more swiftly and in a matter of fact way. I attribute this, again anecdotally, to the fact that league organizers routinely need to quickly resolve conflict of all kinds as part of their roles. Yelling at kids on the field, you're out. Repeatedly ignore two deep requirements, you're out.

Here are a few ideas: - Don't recharter COs that aren't actively involved in overseeing units and verifying that YPT is being followed. - Clarify certain vague YPT BSA policies so they are less open to creative interpretation. - Encourage integration of units to break down insular unit "cultures". - Streamline volunteer roles/provide better support so units are not so desperate for volunteers that they accept questionable people or are reluctant to confront issues.

That is what I have been trying to figure out. To my recollection, I'd already seen estimates that we'd be around 1.2 million before Covid hit; I was expecting a lower number after Covid. If this is December 2020, I don't think it would capture that. I don't know if we have to wait until next year to find out. If there was an even more substantial hit than this, though, I expect we might hear more in the months to come because that would certainly affect operating cash flow for BSA and it might come up in the bankruptcy case.

I can see where that would have some basis in fact, at least as far as how that data could be a reality. In the BSA YPT system, there is no oversight. COs are supposed to be the overseers on paper, but in reality that often does not happen and there are multiple reasons why Districts, Councils, and the BSA turn a blind eye to that and don't enforce it. There is a lack of clarity in many BSA YPT policies. There is great variation in how different scouters and units interpret YPT. In those ways I think it is less effective than the YPT programs administered by some of the churches, sports leagues and other youth activities I have encountered. There is a lot more clarity and direct oversight in other youth organizations. That might also be a function of the fact that many of those activities are less fraught with problematic situations than scouting is.

That is great for you. That must be something your population really wants and you are doing well at meeting that need. Our summer events are always barely attended. Taking a break over the summer works for us. We do a couple limited things but don't go full bore.

We discussed this a lot in another post and demographics vary widely unit to unit. A lot of our families have vacation homes or do extended and multiple vacations and clear out for the summer. We also have a lot of kids in private schools and the end and start of school is all over the map. Let's not beat people up for not doing things "our" way. What works for you is great. May not work for someone else. We do offer summer pack events and we always send a small contingent to cub and troop summer camps but you can't run meetings. I will also say the volunteers sometimes really want a break.

Frankly, that's what I hope for most. That some of these larger properties, either HA bases or larger council properties, somehow get converted into federal, state or county parks. One thing no one is talking about regarding a total or partial liquidation is that having that many large acreage properties come on market at around the same time would only lead to fire sale prices. There are only so many entities in the U.S. that would have the financial means or interest to purchase large tracts, many of which are in depressed, inaccessible or less than marketable places. It could lead to fire sales, which also does not benefit claimants. One way I could see the federal government assisting would be to put together a package deal of purchasing a collection of plum BSA properties to add to the national parks system, or for states to do so more locally on a case by case basis. I'd love to hear from some property folks about whether that is a viable possibility. I'm kind of more concerned about making sure some of these really historic properties remain wild and accessible and don't wind up being condo enclaves and golf courses.

I think we need to reboot. BSA was facing a situation that was not survivable: huge multi million dollar payouts on a limited series of lawsuits. When it became obvious BSA was facing not dozens but hundreds of such lawsuits, it sought bankruptcy protection in order to survive. It now appears it may be facing thousands of such cases. Whether it's 8,000 or 80,000 almost doesn't matter. I think the poster who said BSA should assess what it needs to survive and offer everything else was right. This isn't a situation where you survive and get to keep the Ferrari, this is a situation where you survive and get to keep some tires, an axle, and some wood.

Except BSA taking that position is the same rationalization that led to a lot of abuse cases being covered up in the first place. You can't be dispassionate about how the public will view your actions in a situation such as this.

This is the crux of the problem with YPT. There is no real, effective oversight of it. There are still some very gray areas in YPT and local commitments and viewpoints about what it is varies. As was pointed out, the reorganization plan doesn't address any of those aspects and I fear never will because BSA clearly wants this in its rear view mirror. I think it believes it's fixed the problem but it hasn't.

That was me and that was what I meant: A PR war focusing on program benefits in the court of public opinion, not in court with the lawyers. Funny how much your thinking can change in 24 hours though. This is such a negative move I doubt BSA will recover from it. If this is the strategy BSA has adopted in order to try and move forward by summer, it is not going to play well with the media and public. It comes off as arrogant, unrepentant, and inadequate. I think the time where we could have tried to do some image repairing is past. That USA Today article will seem pretty retrained in retrospect as we get further into this. One of the comments about BSA acting like it needed to get back to business as usual was dead on. It's just so tone deaf about the situation and the environment that it is hard to believe

Completely. The kids are the best and the reason we put up with the parents. Glad to hear from you.

Hey! 5thGenTexan! How you doing out there? Haven't seen a post from you in awhile. Worried about you, bud. Post up on something. Hoping things are looking better.

I am not sure what you mean by the pipe part but I think your story shows the tragically complex and long lasting effects of abuse. I have occasionally in the course of trying to recruit scouts encountered immediate, visceral and terse reactions from men about how they would never allow their sons to be involved in scouting. Before the abuse scandals really broke, I would persist and maybe try to talk to their wives because some of them were dads and families who seemed ideally suited for scouting. Now I wonder if some of them may have been victims and no longer persist. This was an interesting article in the wash post if you can open it. Surprisingly, it doesn't talk about scouting much, but it does talk about how pervasive abuse of boys seems to be. So sad. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/02/22/why-we-dont-talk-about-sexual-violence-against-boys-why-we-should/?arc404=true

Thanks. I thought that but wanted to check because I've always been a little fuzzy on how BSA tracks membership. I had the 1.2 million in my head all year for some reason, so I was worried membership as of today would be worse. I thought we'd be down to 800K due to Covid but it's apparently not that low. So kind of good news to me...

Cynical Scouter, can you clarify something for me? Are these retroactive results, meaning that they reflect the loss of the LDS units last year, or are they a current snapshot of who reregistered in December? Are these current numbers? Thanks.

Hikes where you go out and look for stuff are always good. Bird walk. Tree walk. Indian lore. Fish nets in the stream. I generally would scout the trail out ahead of time to find stuff to point out and sometimes even plant stuff for them to find. I personally think there is too much "indoors" in the program and it makes them fidgety, so I tried hard to get them outside. I can't remember exact years but we did the police department, the fire department, and the public works garage to see the big trucks. Maple sugaring. Farm visits. Double A baseball games. I never had Lions but every rank year we learned something about our rank namesake and I would try to take them somewhere to see some -- tigers at a zoo; wolves at a wolf sanctuary; bears at a wildlife rehab center. Webelos we took them to see real live scouts during troop visits (-"

Well said.