yknot

Which is why my watch formally expires in 9 days.

I don't know that this badge will be the death of scouting but it has been so poorly implemented that it certainly hasn't helped. We lost several families over it. The ones who had issues with gender or orientation issues have been long gone, but this time it was families with connections to LEOs. It was really ill advised of BSA to throw this out there when they did. Instead of taking the time to do something more thoughtful and measured, it came across as a knee jerk reaction at a time when people were reacting very badly to reactionary things. While it can't hurt for scouts have discussions about some of these topics, it is to some degree overkill with what they are getting in every other aspect of their lives. The biggest problem for youth will be the confusion that results when their adult leaders and COs really aren't that tolerant of aspects of the badge that require tolerance. In this way in many cases it's going to be a very different situation in scouting from what they hear elsewhere from outside the scouting environment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh8BdQkHI-k You can rent it on youtube

I just watched some of this on the Methodist scouting page. Was anyone else struck by the guy's comments about youth protection that it's not just two deep that's needed but more like five deep? In a way, he's right if you want to be covered for all situations. That's pretty how we try to staff summer camp. But if that is becoming part of UMCs child protection policy then I guess it would have to also be adopted by the units. One of my churches is not a CO but we allow scouts to meet there with the understanding they follow the UMC YPT policy although it's currently largely the same as BSA's.

You are always positive ParkMan. Thanks for kind words. If I thought I could make a difference at the local level I would stay. I'll still be kicking around here though. I can't help myself.

Nutritious food is important at camp outs, not tail gate quality meals that take forever to make and clean up after and leave residues that attract wildlife. I'm tired of kids bringing bear "crack" -- meals like salmon in foil -- along on camp outs.

Yes. I agree. It wouldn't be so bad if it were more practical in the out of doors and cut down on the wording that seems to lead kids to want to make full meals for breakfast and lunch. And for so many kids to have to make meals. It gets difficult to fit them all in.

I know it's mystifying. It's almost as if they've gotten kickbacks from Dutch oven manufacturers. All it does is make camp outs more sedentary and creates all sorts of food handling and wildlife safety issues with kids trying to transport ambitious food items to camp sites or on trips. .

I would respond that I leave scouting as a volunteer as of 12/31/20 because I don't have a way to answer those questions. An organization that has so many good people in it can't be evil but I have lost faith in its ability to manage itself and prevent more crises in the future.

I wish they would get rid of Cooking. It has turned so many camp outs into tailgating in the woods.

I think it's OK for scouters to feel that way but I think we ignore the broader public perception at peril. People who are older tend to have better views of scouting and some connection to it. Younger people do not. BSA, or whatever survives bankruptcy, has a huge PR question ahead of it that can't be ignored.

I think if BSA had been more true to its core statements, it would have avoided becoming such a lightning rod. Be a good citizen, be of good moral character, on my honor, do my duty -- those tenets should have resulted in a more inclusive organization from the beginning. I don't know why BSA became so closely aligned with religious connections to the point where it lost its independence and ability to follow its own moral code, but it has certainly caused a lot of strife.

I think over the decades scouting became such a stalking horse for so many social issues, whether religious or otherwise. Instead, it should have just stood on its own and focused on being relevant to children. A lot of these headaches never would have existed if so. We could have easily staked out the outdoors/conservation ground and never did. It's not necessarily too late to still do so.

I think there is so much discussion and hand wringing on this site but it is focused on the wrong things. We're all talking about organizational structures and what we think kids need, but what scouting needs is to focus on is why kids don't join in the first place or drop out if they do. If kids loved our program, it would survive bankruptcy and abuse scandals, but the reality is that it's hard to recruit kids.

I think we need to be careful about overlaying our adult opinions on things. Part of the challenge with scouting is figuring out why so many kids drop out. I am/was a completely gung ho scouting parent, although my focus was more on outdoors and service. I had kind of a shocking moment with both my kids recently, now 20 and 15, when they both told me they loved cubs but mostly hated troop. It just stopped being fun. So you might think kids aren't getting anything out of cub scouting, but our target audience -- kids -- might have a different opinion.

That's today, or at least this December, but next year or the year after might be different. Cubs have no commitment to a larger scouting goal that would motivate them to stay involved. Few Tiger scouts or their parents are thinking I have to keep my kid active in Cubs so that he can make AOL. The higher retention at Troop levels is like due to scouts and their families who are a couple of years in and are focused on making Eagle. That same motivation won't exist a year or two as these scouts Eagle out. My point is that the lower attrition rate isn't a function of the Troop program -- it's likely attributable to Eagle. We have a number of scouts who have moved up their Eagle timetables to be finished as soon as possible. So while Troop numbers have a minimal decline this year, next year won't be the same story.

I knew John Wayne's cousin. John's real name was Marion; his cousin's name was Maurice. He used to play the piano for us at the Farmer's Grange for our 4-H Christmas parties. Somehow both an artist and a mountain man type. He was famous for his snapping turtle soup, which he caught himself. Interesting family.

Ahhh... well the days when everyone who was born in a village and then stayed in that village are long gone. I think the difference I see in BSA vs. other youth organizations is that in other organizations every adult is actively, visibly, and continually answerable to someone else. That kind of supervisory relationship doesn't exist in BSA because they kind of farmed it out to the COs but then provided no managerial follow up. You cannot blame a legacy CO, that has been in operation for decades for having no idea the extent of their assumed responsibilities if BSA doesn't inform them and try to correct it.

IMO the chartered organization model should never have existed simply because it had too many fatal flaws. I can't remember all my early scouting history, but I hardly think having churches use scouting as youth ministry is what BP had in mind. And not to say that we should be overly concerned with what BP had in mind because what worked then doesn't always work now. But if the general concept is that scouting is a game with a purpose, where does scouts as perpetual Sunday School fit into that? Some COs exert too much influence on scouting to suit their own needs, to the point where units can be wildly different experiences. If you walk into a McDonald's, you ought to be able to get a Big Mac no matter where you are. I think the idea of CO as benign sponsor and provider of space is the right one simply because BSA can't oversee anything more than that. I don't see it as COs not understanding their responsibility; I see it as BSA long abdicating its oversight role. The CO model was neglected for a variety of reasons although mainly financial and numerical and it should have been retooled long before now. The current panic may well result in turning scouting into a hot potato for many chartering organizations, not just churches.

I think BSA needs to stop relying on infrequent Bryan on Scouting blogs to kinda sorta clarify unclear YPT issues. I think the online training module needs to be condensed and redone for higher impact. I think some kind of regular communication on YPT issues needs to come out of BSA. There are a lot of things that come up that BSA could educate on or use to reinforce YPT more than take this test and you're done. And, of course, fix the tech issues. There are times that YPT seems to defy common sense such as when you see a leader bolt out of a meeting of 30 kids because they suddenly realize they are going to be the only adult in the room for 20 seconds. On the other hand, I don't ever want to hear about another case of abuse in scouts ever again.

Troop seems down maybe 10 to 20% but Pack is decimated.

I think it's probably a desperate move borne out of the fact that so many COs have dropped units this year in the wake of the bankruptcy filing. I think it was a rude awakening to many COs to find out they actually may have some liability for sponsoring a unit, especially for the many many legacy units where the role is already viewed as simply providing a place to meet and benign support. In some ways, the "rental" agreement isn't much different than reality. Where the problem is going to crop up is for those organizations that have utilized scouting as an extension of their individual mission, whether it's a church or a community organization like an AFL hall. BSA has always tried to give a lot of local latitude as to how COs run their units, with the extreme example being LDS that was really more of a tailor made program within a program. Under either type of CO arrangement, I don' t see how that could continue to be possible, so that would probably result in, as you say, a CO ditching scouts to simply run their own youth group. Of course then they would be assuming full liability for their group and all the headaches that would entail.

BSA undoubtedly has major issues with the care and feeding of volunteers, training and tech support just being a couple of them. The parts you can't blame BSA for are the inexorable and widespread changes in liability issues over the past few decades. Liability issues are not just driving BSA's policies but those of virtually every government, business, nonprofit, or community organization in the United States. It has become an ever escalating game of gotcha that is increasingly pervasive in every area of life. BSA has been reactive rather than proactive, largely due to having very entrenched, incestuous leadership with a history of organizational arrogance. As a result, we kind of bumped along in a bubble for awhile while the rest of the world was adapting to this new paradigm. The abuse scandals and other high profile liability cases abruptly burst that bubble. BSA is aggressively trying to protect itself from claims with all these measures, which are largely being driven by insurers seeking to avoid settlement of claims by proving negligence, just as they are doing in this bankruptcy. Almost every legal document you sign or contract you enter into has so many clauses designed to push liability off on the other party. I don't know where it's going, but it's going to be very hard for organizations like scouting that offer an activity with higher than average risks to the public to continue to operate. At some point, it will be impossible to get volunteers unless the BSA pays for additional insurance to cover volunteers for such inadvertent personal negligence incidences as described in another post.

Do you mean the email reminders? I get them. I started getting them in August for an October renewal. However, I can't seem to access the training.

I wouldn't be worried about the tinsel but the chemicals are an issue. You might want to talk to your local watershed association first before you do it. Christmas tree growers spray their trees extensively with pesticides and other chemicals. In addition, many people add chemicals to the water to preserve them which stay in the tree's phlegmatic system long after disposal. Neither of those practices are good for healthy waterways and fish. Another place I've seen them used is to help prevent beach erosion. But again these are not random "clean" trees or brush from a property clearing or power line clearing -- they are an agricultural product that has been treated with chemicals. Since it's not a product that people eat, the application of such can be pretty liberal.