Cburkhardt

Council Executive Boards and Council Executive Committees (subcommittees of the Executive Board consisting of the principal officers) meet in private with members only, plus special guests who make presentations on pending topics. CORs belong to the Council, which meets to elect the Executive Board during the annual business meetings. Including numbers of non-members in Executive Board or Executive Committee meetings is disfavored due to confidentiality issues. Non-members attending would not be bound to confidentiality and would further expect to express viewpoints and arguments. Well-run boards develop effective ways to gather opinion from the CORs and other stakeholders and respect those opinions. The “Owasippe” incident is a good example of when a board did not adequately solicit and take into account the views of its constituency when dealing with property matters – in this case the attempted sale of a huge property with minimal notice. The story is immensely complex and would take hours of blogging to explain. The bottom line is that the attempted sale was blocked through litigation and zoning moves which greatly reduced the desirability of the property to potential purchasers. Another bottom line is that the inadvisable board moves caused years of deformed relations among council volunteers, professionals and supporters. It can be said that bitter feelings created during the incident was a contributing factor in the overall downturn of the Chicago Area Council, which eventually lost its national charter and was merged with three other councils into the Chicagoland "Pathway to Adventure Council". Interestingly, Owasippe Scout Reservation is now in the best physical, program and financial shape it has been in for decades. As the bankruptcy causes the sell-off of many other properties, this massive and well-run operation is easily absorbing the demand of Troops from across the Midwest.

I posted many times about our Family Camp for Pathway to Adventure Council (Chicago). This is located at historic Owasippe Scout Reservation at "Camp Reneker". While it is a specifically-developed facility and program apart from the Scouts BSA program areas, it is popular and a great offering for our Scouting families. We are in a new era for the business-side of camp operations and will need the income stream to maintain our camps in the post-bankruptcy era.

Active Scoutmaster here. $1,000 per year is an accurate "all-in" estimate of family spending on a year of very active Scouts BSA scouting. We can all differ on just how the resources come in, but that has been our experience over the last four years.

CM: While at Goshen Scout Reservation, my units stayed at Camp Olmsted, which is a Scouts BSA dining hall operation. The reservation has two other Scouts BSA camps, including Bowman (patrol cooking) and Marriott (hot pack delivery). There are also two Cub camps (Ross and PMI) and a high adventure camp (Lenhoc'sin) that offers week-long overnight backpacking hikes in the mountains on the 5,000-acre property.

The Family Camp at Chicago's Owasippe is splendid. The family camp (Camp Reneker) is a 60-year-old operation that was built to accommodate the families of "on duty" Scouters. The Chicago-area Scouters camp with the Troop and the families have their own special program at the family camp. Owasippe hires about 10 college students, who conduct a summer program targeted to 6 age groupings ranging from 4-year-olds through high school. The 40 cabins have kitchens, living rooms, and two bedroom spaces, with nearby shower houses. The family camp has its own pool, activity shelter, tennis court, bb gun range and other typical camp program facilities. Families can also visit and use the facilities at Owasippe's Scouts BSA and Cub camps. Here is the link: Camp Reneker - Pathway To Adventure Council Through the years Camp Reneker has also become a simple get-away place for Scouting families not connected with an on-reservation troop. Families pick "their" week and "their" cabin and visit each year. It is not a luxury operation, but is certainly a very nice family housekeeping facility. At $350 per week for everything (except self-cooked food), the price is right for many Scouting families in the Chicago area. We started attending years ago when I was council president and have kept coming back for this simple experience each year. Now that my daughter is 14, she helps at Owasippe's horse ranch while she is here. A former Chicago BSA professional who later supervised the high adventure bases patterned the emerging family programming at the bases on what he experienced at Camp Reneker. I'm vaguely aware that there are a few other family camps on BSA council-owned properties, but I have never heard of one that has the full-scale family-focused program and facilities that exist at Owasippe. Owasippe's future as a Scout reservation is now quite secure. Twenty years ago there was an ill-advised effort the sell the camp to developers which was defeated through a series of shrewd moves by members of its staff association. Today, the Council added a seventh week of operations this summer and its Scouts BSA and Cub camps still sold-out. So, we will be considering more capacity next year. Owasippe has two Scouts BSA camps in "mothballs" (complete with Olympic-sized pools). As councils continue to sell properties, it is good to know there are places like Owasippe and Goshen (in Virginia) that have expandable capacity and will continue to be available to visit for summer camp.

Which BSA properties have you been to this summer and how did it go? No serious discussion allowed in this posting! No bankruptcy, YPT, membership standards, COVID, fingers-getting-severed, "I don't like the professionals", "they sold my camp" and other potentially distressing discussion allowed under penalty of getting jello thrown in your face! For me, I have had two separate one-week stays at the spectacular 5,000-acre Goshen Scout Reservation in Virginia, just south of Shenandoah National Park. The first week was with our all-girl Troop. My wife (an ASM) and Star Scout daughter came to that. A bit hot, but the week restored my faith in the great things we are doing in Scouting. The second week was with my Sea Scout Ship, whose members had not been there before. They spent nearly the entire week on the 700-acre lake. Next week my family will stay in the family camp at the equally-spectacular Owasippe Scout Reservation near the cool-breeze locale of Muskegon Michigan. America's oldest Scout property is equally huge, wonderful and features 40 housekeeping cabins for families throughout the summer. This will be our seventh summer in a row doing this. These pristine places could easily be small national parks. I hope you have had similar experiences this summer.

For me it is just six knots. The top row has three favorite service award knots from my years of adult service. The bottom row has my AOL, Eagle and Quartermaster from my youth years. These knots are conversation-starters that help break the ice with new friends. Other than that, just my Scoutmaster or Skipper patches. I find the guide is pretty good on limiting excess quantity. Maybe after the bankruptcy we will all be wearing blank polo shirts!

The BSA policy is clear. When a Scouter becomes aware that actual abuse is taking place, action should be taken to cease the immediate abuse, followed by a report to law enforcement, and then the Scout Executive. Whether a fact is abuse or not would depend on local law.

The policy still says to go first to law enforcement (for actusl reports of abuse) and then to the local Scout Executive. The national 800 number was intended to be a place for BSA employees to report personnel problems with their BSA bosses. Generally, it is still not intended for YPT issues or volunteer/youth matters. I presume the practice of the 800 number contractor referring volunteer/youth matters to the local councils is just a sound administrative referral practice.

I just spent the week at summer camp and read this only today. I am familiar with the BSA process. As a technical matter, national has an 800 number originally intended for persons to report misbehavior of employees. The service is operated by an outside HR contractor. Complaints can include any HR-related matters as well as abuse situations. People became aware of the 800 number and began phoning-in complaints about volunteers and even youth. Rather than ignore these reports, national's contractor makes local councils aware of the volunteer/youth complaints and follow-up is largely the responsibility of local councils. I believe this might be why you were told this is a "national investigation". One case I am familiar with involving Troop adult volunteers was dealt with locally in a manner that did not require law enforcement involvement, because the local council concluded the accusation did not fall within a mandatory reporting category. The national contractor simply closed its file when the local council reported that the matter had been successfully resolved (the accusation was proved to be unfounded). If you are contacted to provide your son's side of the story, my suggestion is to cooperate and put in writing the exonerating facts as confirmed by your Troop's eye witnesses and submit this to the local council executive handling the matter. Do not overstate or slant anything. When this matter is ultimately dismissed for want of any behavioral rule violations, this written statement, along with a written indication the the investigation was closed, will be the only documents to memorialize that "nothing happened". The BSA contractor and local council is not in the position to affirm that "nothing happened" and will merely discontinue the investigation for want of evidence of a violation. Serious violations end up being adjudicated by the Scout Executive, who determines whether the person should be placed on the ineligible volunteer list. If that happens, there is a two-level appeal process to the Territory (used to be the region) and then to national. Those appeals are all done via paper and should involve an attorney on behalf of the ineligible volunteer to get things right. Generally, these appeals are conducted cautiously to avoid re-admitting potentially abusing individuals. Once on the list, it is difficult to be dropped from it.

My views about non-viability are limited to Venturing only. Mashmaster, so you know of current, well-run "outdoor adventure" Venturing Crews of long-standing that exist without significant professional or commissioner servicing? I don't see many of these based on many years of engagement, including the predecessor "outdoor adventure" version of Exploring in the 70s-80s. Sea Scouts is in a different 'circumstance and should survive relatively as-is for reasons beyond the scope of this posting (many of which have been previously discussed). Sea Scouts has smaller numbers but is almost 100% serviced by a passionate stand-alone corps of volunteers from Ship through National. It is nearly unaffected by the controversies and financial deformations of recent years, but needs to recover numerical strength due to COVID losses.

Barry, My thoughts start with my regretful view that the stand-alone program will not survive. These are for the reasons already well-discussed above related to lack of demand, lack of focused volunteer resources to keep it going and a general failure to thrive for multiple factors. I wish it were different. Assuming that to be the case, my thoughts focus on repurposing the concept in a way to continue providing an older youth program that can function in a practical way. Girls in our Troop stay because we offer a rigorous high-adventure program for them that is unavailable any where else in the District of Columbia. We would simply brand that activity as Venturing and offer the girls the ability to do the advancement program. The only things we would gain is use of the advancement program and and a rationale for older teen girls to join us (without having previously been active in the Troop).

Our Scoutmaster Staff Supports “Crew in the Troop” Concept. We had a large Troop campout last weekend and asked our Scoutmaster Staff what they would think about adding a Venturing “patrol/crew” to our Troop. We have 51 girls and are sending 14 (two trail crews) to Philmont this year. After 3.5 years of operation, we now have a normal distribution of ages across the Troop. The consensus was that it would be a good idea to have our older girls and especially our Eagles (we have 5 and will probably have another 5 this next year) in a Venturing Crew that would be internal to our Troop. For practical purposes, it would function as a Patrol, but we would assign a couple of ASMs to it and they could work the Venturing advancement program (presuming it survives). It would be an all-girl Crew, but we have a close relationship with a nearby all-boy Troop that would do the same thing. That way, the two Crews could do co-ed things together. My read of the postings and practical sense is that Venturing cannot survive as a stand-alone program and its potential future might be as a specialized and optional component of a Troop. I wish it were different.

So what is your fix for Venturing?

94-A1: I do not question your experience or representations. However, since starting as a very active adult scouter in 1981, I have not witnessed yelling, screaming, cursing and other such behavior you discuss. That does not mean I have not witnessed or personally experienced deep conflict and disappointment. We each have our own experiences and viewpoints about things that are troubling, but I believe we do not have fundamental disconnects because most of us understand each other. When I was council president of a newly-merged council I had to lead evaluation and ultimate closure of 4 of our 7 legacy camps. We had vastly too much property and just could not fund it. I personally interacted with thousands in the process and emailed with every adult or youth member registering a viewpoint (many of whom disagreed with what they accurately assumed were decisions I would lead). However, throughout the entire process there was not one single negative media account, raised voice or disagreeable incident. Yes, the camps did close and many were personally disappointed, but there was no “disconnect”, because people understood everything that was happening and why. I find this to be in the DNA of Scouting.

Fred: You are kind to say those things. I certainly have been told and know I am not perfect. But, if it is one thing I think I do right in Scouting and elsewhere is to offer to fix things. I am careful about how often I say this, because the result is that I am often taken-up on my offer. These end up being unseen tasks that are usually time-absorbing, but the satisfaction in seeing the anonymous fix in-place makes it worth it. This is not the formula to get the Silver Buffalo. However, it gets around that I am a positive man of my word. Maybe that is why people generally return my calls.

Inquisitive: No offense appears or is intended in my posting. I only told my own story without reference to you, so I fail to understand the rage you expressed toward me. The mysteries of human interaction are such that I would never try to advise on your negative relationship with your Scout Executive. I don’t profess to know much about humanity, but one thing I do believe is outside of intentional, repetitive criminals, nobody is 100% wrong or evil. It looks like you have established the guardrails of your relationship with the man with your views on FOS. I hope your Scout Executive and you can develop a better relationship.

Disconnect between local-national and volunteer-professional has been vanishing. I am sure you have good reasons to say some of these things. We all form views based on experience. My experience is that there is not much disconnect across the movement, whether it is the local-national or volunteer-professional issue. I am a dual unit leader (Troop and Ship) and yet have very productive conversations with volunteers and professionals across all levels of the movement. Of course I restrict my communications to matters appropriate to the person I am conversing with and watch the frequency. I am also broadly known as a person who performs. I am known as a person who offers to “fix things” rather than complain. Those are just my approaches, but my calls are always welcomed and returned. They respect me as much as the mother I just Emailed to share I just arranged a scholarship for her son. Now is a great time for people to re-evaluate these issues and how they personally operate. We are moving from survival mode to work-out mode, all on the way to normalcy in a couple of years. The only logical way to behave during this is to be flexible, positive and helpful. We can all do this and will be better for it.

Best to wait a while before attempting to re-write a “general” program for young adults? Perhaps because our society is going through such an extreme political and social upheaval, it might be best to wait a bit before attempting to write a program focused on a broad spectrum of young adults. It would be good to have a thorough understanding of what societal challenges need to be addressed before designing another BSA structure of activities. Simply re-designing badges, uniforms, structures and titles to fit immediate BSA circumstances would not bring the vision needed to help our country in its upcoming epoch. Thoughtful BSA responses to societal changes have worked before. For instance, in the early 70s the Exploring program established an elaborate system called the “Explorer Presidents Association” to provide advanced leadership experiences at the district, Council, Area, Region and national levels. It went far beyond the earlier Explorer Delegate leadership system, in that it provided significant financial, volunteer and professional time to operate leadership cabinets of Explorers (active year-around) elected by their peers in political-style conventions. The conventions (called the “National Explorer Presidents Congress”) were huge and constituted the principal above-council program for Exploring. Youth elected to the national cabinet would take a year off of school to serve. What many don’t know was that the system was expressly intended to respond to the political upheaval of the country in the late 60s. The conventions operated using modified nomination and election rules of the national parties, and the political leaders of the country were involved, including the White House. They really thought the BSA could impact the outlook of young adults. To a degree the effort succeeded, but the need for it began to fade and BSA professionals wanted to redirect the resources and energy elsewhere. The aftermath of this BSA effort was that many Explorers elected in this system went into successful political careers. Others used the higher-lever leadership training to great use in corporate, military and BSA professional careers. This generation is now entering retirement and had a good track record in contributing to the success of the country, including helping us process the conflict and confusion of the post-Vietnam era. Does the BSA have the bandwidth and will do do such things like this again? I think so, but I also believe it needs to wait so it can better understand the fundamental factors that will most impact our country over the next 25 years. Maybe there is something about the dramatic and always changing circumstances young adults face that somehow require these young adult programs to evolve. Finally, a waiting period would allow us to recover organizational health.

My predictions on the older teen programs. Thanks for the many thoughtful comments. For a while there were only a few of us posting, which by itself was indicating lack of overall interest in continuing Venturing. I have deep personal background in the older-teen programs since I was both an “outdoor adventure” Explorer and Sea Explorer (sea Scouts was called Sea Explorers for a temporary period and reverted back) from 1973-1977. As an adult Council Exploring Chairman in the late 1980s I spearheaded formation of 14 career-oriented Explorer Posts in Illinois — some of which are still in operation. I served as adult National Vice-Chair of Venturing just prior to development of the current advancement program. Cubs, Scouts and Sea Scouts have had remarkable consistency in program and operations through their histories, with the exception of the Improved Scouting Program of the early 70s. In comparison, the older youth programs have been substantially re-written about every 20 years or so with mostly unsuccessful results. The big exception would be the career-interest launch for Exploring in the early 70s, which became wildly popular with the corporate and educational establishments of this country. It was based on solid program and marketing research. At its height, that program had a half million enthusiastic participants. These re-write efforts seem to always have been forced by a perceived legal or membership issue. An example was the killing of the hugely-successful career interest Exploring program by putting it in “Learning for Life” in order to allow Exploring to have gay members who would not be considered members of the BSA. Once transferred into non-BSA status, it was instantly abandoned by any professional who had ambitions to rise within the profession. Other difficulties were caused when small groups of visionaries dominated the program re-writes, forcing changes that might have satisfied intellectual constructs, but which were not capable of broad implementation. The elaborate and whipsaw-changes to Exploring and Venturing advancement are in that category. We are at another of these junctions, with obvious legal and membership issues greatly weighing-against continuing “stand alone” Venturing. The Venturing numbers have entirely imploded and there is a scramble to rebuild the core Cub and Scout programs. There is little apparent energy and interest at the local levels in continuing the implementation of Venturing aside from isolated pockets. My view, based on experience and numbers (and without any inside information) is that “stand alone” Venturing will disappear. An potential legacy of the program would the “Venture Scout patrol/crew within a Troop” concept. However, most of the unique leadership structures and advancement concepts that grew up around Venturing would likely be dropped. Today’s non-BSA Exploring program is a echo of the career-interest Exploring program of the 70s. The Explorer Posts that have survived the program upheavals are probably in-demand by current members, especially in the law enforcement and medically-related fields. It might survive as long as it does not drain resources. Sea Scouts is in an entirely different category. Much closer to Cubs and Scouts in aspects of program and operation — and with a sustained, hard-core group of adult volunteer leaders. The Coast Guard Auxiliary involvement is a positive game-changer. It will survive.

I agree that the corps of adults in these specialized programs really believe in the programs and bring their professional expertise to them. They are typically active or retired military or law enforcement people who are encouraged by their professions to be involved. This has not really changed -- the Skippers of the Sea Scout Ship of my youth were WWII combat vets from the Navy and Coast Guard who belonged to our local Coast Guard Auxiliary and veterans organizations. Now that Sea Scouts is the official youth program of the Coast Guard Auxiliary (which so far operates 27 Ships) I can see that potentially taking off in a big way. Law enforcement and the military are in tight cooperation with these specialized programs for very good reasons. They provide very stable COs. The current day "stand alone" version of Venturing does not have these factors going for it. If our counsel asked me to go form ten 'stand alone" Venturing crews, it would be a really tough job.

Drop the dark green shirt and grey pants? A commenter on last week's post suggested the dark green shirt and green pants be dropped. It might need to happen anyway, as the post-bankruptcy organization cannot afford to stock separate uniforms for the now-tiny Venturing membership. Should Venturing Scouts wear the Scouts uniform with a different color shoulder loop and distinctive patches?

A related issue is what to call Venturing in the future. I believe "Venturing Scouts" or "Venture Scouts" is the way to go. We are probably going to brand the national organization and the current "Scouts BSA" program as simply the "Scouts" after the bankruptcy and GSUSA cases are concluded. It makes no sense to have any of our programs not expressly identified as "Scouts" in some manner.

I favor the Venturing "patrol in a troop" format, because that would allow the current Venturing groups to continue their outdoor adventure programming in association with stable "feeder" troops that also focus on outdoor adventure. If I use my own Scouts BSA Troop for Girls as an example, that would mean the scouts would continue their twice-monthly Saturday morning all-girl meetings and monthly all-girl campouts as they currently are. A co-ed Venturing "patrol" in association with our troop would meet separately on other days and have its own separate campouts. I could foresee having a few joint activities, such as courts of honor and large-scale service projects, but nothing that would disrupt the single-sex approach of the all-girl troop. If the Venturing 'patrol" was all-girl, then I would have a much tighter coordination with joint events. Incidentally, if we put the issue up for a vote in our Troop, the overwhelming preference would be to go the all-girl Venturing patrol route.

Should co-ed Venturing Crews be folded into Scouts BSA as Venturing “Patrols”? My posting last week sought ideas to upgrade prospects of “stand-alone” Venturing attracted little interest except for some good comments focused on diagnosing the problems. This is not a surprise, as membership numbers and program support structures have plummeted or entirely disappeared in many councils. For purposes of this posting we will assume that Venturing is no longer sufficiently numerous to continue as the current “stand alone” program. Assuming non-viability is the case (even if you disagree with the assumption): What do you think should be done with Venturing? It occurs to me that the principal options include: 1. Terminate Venturing entirely and focus financial and leadership resources elsewhere. 2. Convert Venturing to an optional program like STEM Scouts. Allow the remaining Venturing Crews to continue, but reallocate council resources elsewhere. 3. Convert Venturing “Crews” into Scouts BSA “Patrols” attached to a Scouts BSA Troop. 4. Spin-off Venturing into the non-BSA “Learning for Life” entity and allow them to function under the support structure for Exploring. 5. Continue as-is and see what happens. My personal leaning is that Venturing can best be positioned as a “Patrol” attached to a Scouts BSA Troop. There are a number of interesting program and operational issues that would need to be considered, but I think it is doable. Converting Venturing into a council-optional program or folding it into Exploring might be a formula for a continued slide into oblivion, but perhaps there are advantages to those approaches I am not aware of. What say you? I think this is an issue that will be dealt with within a year or so. I have simultaneously posted a different thread asking what factors keep Sea Scouts and Law Enforcement Exploring functioning well. If there are lessons to be learned from those programs that can be applied to Venturing, please use that posting to share your thoughts.