BAJ

13 minutes ago, malraux said:

While the BSA has a monopoly on BSA patches, they really don't have a monopoly on patches in general

This was my first thought in response to this thread as well.  I made a patch recently for a troop activity.  I went to a licensed provider, they looked at my design and told me what changes I’d likely need to make to get it approved in the BSA review process.  I grumbled a little, but in the end it got approved and so it has the Scout logo on it.  They also told me if I didn’t want to make changes, I could take the Scout logo off and it could be made that way without review, my choice. 

Having been on this board for a bit now, I would be willing to make a substantial bet that if a patch was made with BSA’s logo and name, and something viewed as explicitly political — whichever the end of the spectrum the political element came from — there would be critical discussion that was not appropriate for Scouting.  Unless everyone is cool with seeing patches that associate things they really don’t agree with and Scouting being worn on uniforms at Camporees and Jamborees, we should probably support patch review processes(even if that support involves some grumbling.)

1 hour ago, elitts said:

This depends in large part upon the Den Leaders and Cubmaster.

I second this — my daughter only had a year or so in Cubs based on when she could join, but she had a great time and was never bored.  Awesome and dynamic Cubmaster who knew how to connect with the kids, and an amazing den leader who programmed great meetings.  Very focused on doing, not telling or talking.  She’s been den chiefing pretty much since she got high enough BSA rank to do so (both for a young den, I think they were Tigers and for an older den as well who just crossed over to Scouts.). Two other great den leaders who came up with great “doing” activities.  Even the “talking” one I remember was compelling for the age group (he was former military and had someone he knew who was a former astronaut come in and talk).  

I would also add that a SM should not feel any guilt about (and it was unfair of the old SM to criticize) the need to cancel activities when there is insufficient scout interest.  We are a small troop and have found ourselves on the cusp of making the decision to cancel an event because we can’t get confirmed participation (or frankly get scouts… or even their parents… to respond to scheduling emails yay or nay.).  We’ve been close to having to cancel things because of leader coverage, both just coverage overall and (since we are a female troop) female leader coverage.  We haven’t had to cancel things yet, but our last event was very close (since there were fixed costs with the program associated with the campout where, if we didn’t have enough participants, it would end up being very expensive for the few that did commit to go.). 

14 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

In other words, will victims vote for a number (insurance contribution to the settlement fund) that is unknown at this time/to be litigated later? Or will they hold that against BSA and demand that number be decided before they vote yes?

I am neither a lawyer nor any sort of expert in this litigation, but reading the threads on this over the last year, it seems like the mismatch of interests between the insurance companies and BSA has been a driver of delay.  BSA wants out of bankruptcy fast, but insurance companies interests may be served by simple delay.

It has sort of felt like a catch 22 — if insurers feel like they might pay less by dragging out, it is really is in their interest to do so.  But dragging out could lead to the ‘BSA running out of money’ scenario that has been posited.  If that happens, that clearly hurts BSA’s interest in the bankruptcy process and there has been discussion if that scenario results in victims being worse off as well.  I interpreted the Hartford deal as BSA trying to cut that knot, but the only way it could entice the insurer to give up a delay strategy was to cut a deal that was much lower in total settlement than many believed it should be.  

But if a scenario goes where a deal covering BSA is made, leaving out the insurance companies, could that change the calculus on their part regarding whether delay is the right strategy anymore?  

Let’s say for this hypothetical scenario that BSA (using that generically for National and local councils) comes up with a number and gives up enough assets (camps, HA bases, etc.) that the number is viewed as significantly better than the first proposals and the sacrifice of assets sufficient to address the (personally I think legitimate) desire on the part of individuals harmed by abuse in scouting that the organization not seem to walk away from this without significant losses on its part.  That plan is approved, and the trust opens with those assets and the ability (and legal responsibility) to fight with the insurance companies for their (substantial) contribution.

Would the outcome of that fight between victims representatives/trust and the insurance companies be known when the BSA deal was made? No.  That means that there would still be a lot of uncertainty and a vote to approve it would likely be a tough vote to cast.  But it would turn the insurance issue into a one-on-one fight between victims representatives/trustees and the companies, and it would potentially change the calculus around delay — since the pressure point of BSA running out of cash and the possibility for that to shift the landscape around the insurance companies costs would be gone.  Would they (the insurance companies) then be likelier to agree to higher numbers to settle?  I don’t know, but it does seem like a two stage deal might untwist some of the countervailing incentives that have been tying this up for more than a year now.

Ours do a separate sign off for the requirements, but the AOLs who have bridged can do that quickly.  Doing that gets them familiar with the process of getting things signed off (and their being the ones driving that process) but since they already know pretty much all of it it’s a “quick win.”  Then the SM conference can happen and talking about that process is part of talking to them about how Scouts is different than Cubs. 

While it won’t hit everyone, I would reach out to the Scout Districts that are close to you (not sure what the district structure is in the relevant Council) to mention the event in the announcements at their monthly Roundtable.  Whether that will be effective for June events will depend when in the month Roundtable is held though.  Not all troops have someone go to Roundtable, but we do in our area and have gone places and done activities based on ideas that came from there.  

(While we aren’t on your side of the country, my family lived out there for a while and loved your aquarium very much — my daughter had multiple “grandpa-granddaughter days” there.)

5 hours ago, GrubKnot said:

Drop lion & tiger ranks

Keep the Bobcat requirement

Have Wolf, Bear & Webelo ranks

That sounds a lot like the Cub Scout program I went through.... I think Tiger had just sort of become a thing then...

I also came close to falling out of my chair reading that quote.  A number of times on this forum, people have pointed out that BSA’s past actions have “hurt it from the right and left” — from the policies about sexual orientation and perceived prominence of Duty to God/“A Scout as Reverent” alienating more liberal audiences and the subsequent reversal of the policy on sexual orientation, admittance of women, and discussion of diversity alienating more conservative ones.

In the last six months, we have demonstrations that continues.  In the discussions of the Diversity and Inclusion merit badge, we had people point to National’s use of specific words and tagging BLM as evidence supporting a perception that BSA has a liberal agenda/bias.  A National figure making jokes like this in a broad and official forum will give audiences that see diversity and inclusion as important something to point to and argue that recent statements about an inclusive BSA must just have been talk, and support a continuing perception in some other audiences that BSA has a conservative agenda/bias.

Setting aside the other discussions about whether BSA will make it past the bankruptcy proceedings, it cannot be good for long term survivability to potentially have multiple political subsets of its (shrinking) constituency simultaneously arguing that the organization is is really “the other” justifying disengaging from it.  Not good at all.

2 hours ago, MattR said:

I wouldn't start pushing scouts to get eagle or selling your gear. Besides, I think the eagle brand is taking a huge hit - what's it going to be worth if you're afraid to bring it up?

The reason why I might push more now is really for the scouts who are very close and can “see the finish line” for something that they have been working on for years ... but haven’t gotten that one last merit badge or got their post-project report written and signed ... because, really, what person of any age is really excited by post project paperwork?  

If things fall apart and do so rapidly, that Scout having to watch the trail getting dismantled around them and losing their opportunity to get to the end would add an additional heartbreak for them on top of the heartbreak of this situation for everyone involved.  If some additional reminders, some “more insistent” mentoring can prevent that, it would seem a worthwhile investment to make.

3 hours ago, scoutldr said:

Also explains why the first class of female Eagles were in a sprint to the finish line.  May not be another class.

I suspect you are right for a subset, though certainly not all of them — for the same reasons others have already talked about in this thread: the narrative at the District or Council level that this was only about National, that local scouting wouldn’t be affected, etc.  That was certainly what we heard at the FOS presentation right after the bankruptcy was filed.  Of people I spoke with that had other daughters in Scouting, this wasn’t a topic that came up frequently or where I heard much concern when it did, I think taking what we were being told pretty much at face value.

While I didn’t really push my daughter much (she was pretty advancement driven from the beginning), the discussions on this forum and the statements from the court discussions about BSA running out of money by summer, led me to start doing some of the sort of contingency planning others have described doing for their Life Scouts now and to do some calendar calculations for when she might be able to finish up.  Project paperwork should be signed off this coming week, and another few weeks of calendar time and she should make it.  But I don’t think that sort of risk assessment was that common, at least in the small slice of Scouting I’ve had visibility into.

If this does go as many here (including me) fear it might, I really feel for the scouts that came in with the expectation of a journey more like the ideal folks here have described... more about adventure, gradually accumulating advancement to Eagle as a pinnacle after a few years in Scouting.  Particularly for the young women that saw the chance to join Scouts BSA as a great door to new opportunity opening, only to watch the walls around that door cave in soon after.  

3 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

Every time I read "heads on pikes" I get this image of them being along the road at the entrance to the Summit as scouters are bused in for summer re-education camp! 🤪

Though how to square that with the principles of Leave No Trace...

Much of this discussion is being shaped by interpretations of why BSA National issued the statement that it did during the protests triggered by the death of Mr. Floyd.  Reading that statement, I did not see any of the suggestions made in this thread that National was saying units or leaders or scouts are racist on a broad scale.

What I focused on was the statement that BSA had not been sufficiently “brave” about issues surrounding race.  I know that Scouting has had a complicated history regarding race issues, though it was not something that I had searched for information about before.  I had heard a piece on the radio about an African American troop — many years ago — where swimming at summer camp was an activity where their scouts were singled out in absolutely unscoutlike ways.  Swimming is an interesting case to consider, since swimming — because of segregation that prevented access to pools — is a core scout activity where the echoes of past overt racism still lives on as I understand it.  So I dug a little.  

In historical discussion about segregation and desegregation in scouting, I heard things very similar to elements of the discussion we are having here.  One concern about the inclusion of sexual orientation in the MB requirements is that it might spur discussions of that topic.  In an article (written from the perspective of philanthropy that funded some of the early desegregation efforts — https://resource.rockarch.org/story/who-belongs-in-the-boy-scouts/) talks about the question of pushing for the integration of scout troops, particularly in the South, and that some had concerns “that such a move might bring on a racial discussion.”  And so, decisions about integration were largely left to local councils — and as a result, the last segregated troop did not desegregate until 1974, within many of the lifetimes of members of this discussion, myself included.  

I saw the letter from BSA as a rapid response to a set of nationwide events, shaped by the view that the past history of the organization was not unblemished on this issue.  As many in this community have cited, the approach to the issue of sexual orientation of scouts and leaders was initially done similarly to the way BSA approached desegregation, and I have read compelling posts from people on both sides of that issue that the approach chosen ended up with the BSA ending up criticized from all sides.  My reading of the initial letter is that National had reached a similar conclusion about their past efforts, and felt action needed to be taken in the wake of the protests, and that past “leave the issue to the local councils/units” approach would not be viable.  

That historical article linked above also echoed some of what I see a the best ideas of the discussion happening here, that the principles of the Scout Oath and Law can provide the basis for taking on these issues in a productive way, and - as a result - that Scouting could be positioned such to make a unique contribution to addressing these issues even at the current polarized time.  The most dramatic demonstration of this was another story relating the history of a black troop in Virginia that experienced a cross burning at summer camp (quoting from that history): 

Quote

During the 1925 or 1926 encampment at Camp Mishawakwa, an integrated scout summer camp near Stone City, Iowa, a KKK cross-burning attempted to intimidate scouts and camp staff. Rather, the next morning in a show of unity, white and black troops at the camp mounted horses and rode together through the town to show their solidarity and to eliminate any thoughts that the intimidation worked.

I took from this story a productive meaning of the discussion of “upstanding” without any of the negative connotations that some seem to connect to it.  People did something horrible, and Scouts stood together to push back as Scouts.

Before commenters — legitimately — point out that these examples from those articles happened a long time ago, I don’t agree with the suggestion made in many comments here that these are solved problems, as much as I hope there will be a time when everyone in the country is judged as individuals, without bias from their race, creed, sexual orientation, and other factors.  I have heard personal stories from leaders about much more recent events, about the tying of nooses at summer camp, and what that meant when minority scouts found them.  As an ASM of a troop of female Scouts BSA, I witnessed some, thankfully minor, flak incoming to them because of their gender (though I have hear rumors about other leaders who might not be the best choice to send our scouts to for MB counseling, given their opinion on whether young women should be in the BSA).  And I have read secondhand accounts of issues around issues of sexual orientation focused bullying happening within Scouting.  

While many of the stories shared on this thread of very inclusive and diverse troops are similar demonstrations to the story above about the potential power of Scouting and its core ideals to bring people together in diverse groups, I do not believe that all troops meet that standard — no matter what commentators, pundits, or online videos argue that racism and bias are things of the past and that they believe that people who experienced decades of discrimination (even in something as simple and tangible as the swimming example above) wouldn’t reasonably have consequences that persist.  The legacy of past treatment of different groups of people in this country affects all sorts of parts of our society.  To cite an example closer to my professional area, the protections that are in place for all of the people who volunteered for COVID-19 vaccine trials largely exist because of the mistreatment of minorities in the Tuskegee experiments decades ago — and that same legacy shapes the trust of those minority communities in the vaccine itself.   

So, as a result, I do believe that this merit badge could be a positive contribution to a Scout’s career, in spite of it seeming rushed in development.  On whether or not it should be an Eagle requirement, the requirements levied by BSA defines the minimum that a scout needs to accomplish to achieve that rank.  That BSA has included this in that set says they think it is important enough that every scout who reaches Eagle should have this as part of their program.  I don’t think its addition says “the program is lacking,” just as others have pointed out that having Camping and Cooking a required merit badges doesn’t say the program is lacking in those areas either.  But the requirements do define a floor for the amount of those scout activities a boy or girl will have done before they earn Eagle — they are the standards that are the counter to the concern also raised in this forum at various times about standards dropping, merit badge mills, etc. etc. 

As many have mentioned, whether this will truly be a positive will depend on what exactly the requirements end up being and the quality of the MBCs and how they run the discussions involved.  I have had many flavors of diversity and inclusion training over my professional career, and the best experience I had was actually part of scouting... in a discussion moderated by an NYLT trained scout that was part of Woodbadge.  It consisted entirely of questions that we discussed as a diverse group of patrol members, and which let us explore these issues in a really productive way.  If this badge gives Scouts the experience I had there, it will be of value.  Like some others, I fear implementation like that described earlier using commentaries that many view as one sided, and adding blue lives matter to “balance” the fact that the BSA letter mentioned BLM.  Going that route will mean that those at the other political extreme will likely view themselves licensed to bring resources into their MB discussions that could paint specific words used by Conservatives as systematically racist, or pull video of protestors carrying thin blue line flags behaving violently and illegally to paint “the other side” with as broad a brush as they see “that side” using to paint them.  Ironically, that could make more likely the very outcome that many of the commenters on this thread are concerned about.  I frankly don’t believe having competing political flavors of this MB serves the nation’s interest, or will help achieve BSA’s goal of producing future leaders and good citizens.

Finally, in my view some of this thread is not contributing to the chance of BSA coming to a truly productive conclusion here.  Words have been used here like “evil” and such a broad brush has been used to characterize what “the left” believes and the reasons why “they” are doing what they are doing, it’s hard to see some posts as attempts persuade.  In other threads on this site, I have heard many commenters express frustration about how they may be characterized.... whether their using specific words will automatically lead them to be called “racist” or whether there is bias or discrimination against people of their faith, or people of faith in general.  Yet in this thread, the use of single words in BSAs letter or the leaked draft requirements are treated as in incontrovertible evidence of National’s bad faith, political agenda, and more. 

I resist the use of such broad brushes and try to push back on their use by others - right, left and center.  There is an element of the Golden Rule in this... argue unto others as you would have them argue unto you.  If you think citing one internet video by someone on the Right is evidence enough of reality that it should bury someone who disagrees with you, someone posting one from a talking head on the Left is evidence of equal weight and validity and should be expected to bury you.  And then we just end up all buried.

Looking at the history of segregated Scouting, BSA National has been juggling Politics since the beginning of Scouting.  At some points, perhaps people with one opinion were happier with the results of that juggling than others.  I personally think that a “negotiated settlement” around this MB that tried to integrate many perspectives would actually be a valuable outcome, but that assumes that there are compromises that can be made ... and given the number of posts I have read here recently that essentially begin with “I realize this isn’t going to change anyone’s mind” and even my own reticence to even post something, I don’t know what the chances are of that negotiation even really happening.

My daughter’s issue arrived in the mail today.  It got a very positive response.

19 minutes ago, yknot said:

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

One of the things that surprised me on my return to Scouting was the prevalence of cooking requirements.  Rank requirements, Cooking MB, cooking requirements in Camping MB.  Taking numbers of requirements as a proxy for importance, it is clear that BSA believes that it is really important for scouts to be able to cook.

I bought one about a year and a half ago.  Definitely a good hat.  One complaint was the nice wool felt was very warm at summer camp in the hot and humid, and had to get a cooler model.  But am back to wearing it for cooler weather.

Our scout troop is trying to do a toy collection to feed into the Marines Toys For Tots.  The thought was that because of the economic fallout of COVID there may be lots o kids not getting much of a holiday this year, and that was something the Scouts really related to.

According to a New York Times article, the total number of claims is now above 82,000.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/15/us/boy-scouts-abuse-claims-bankruptcy.html

3 hours ago, carebear3895 said:

Day 1, DE's are told to prevent units from merging at all cost. All it does is weaken scouting. Two units merge....all you end up with is one week unit. Instead, put all your resources into helping that weak unit get back on it's feet. 

Is this the case even for really small units?  In our troop (still small through growing some), I’ve been very aware of critical mass effects — for example, that we don’t have enough adults to share leader load, that when we are small there’s the risk of an activity getting scheduled and then only have 1 or 2 scouts end up actually participating when the day comes, etc.  I’d assumed that there would be a benefit in merging two units that were weak that way (vs. being weak in terms of putting on a bad program), but would be interested in hearing more if that hasn’t been the experience.

Though I don’t tend to come to a scouting board for the politics, if this is the discussion of the hour, I would submit for balance that there were apparently calls to boycott the Girl Scouts because Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez had been a past member.  Let’s at least appreciate that we have diversity in rage stoking mobs, even just in the niche market of “rage aimed at scouting organizations.” 

https://www.newsweek.com/ocasio-cortez-ridicules-writer-girl-scout-cookie-boycott-1355802

15 hours ago, Sentinel947 said:

BSA Scoutmaster training and Wood Badge is supposed to teach this balance, but it fails to.

Having gone through both recently, this is an absolutely true statement.  There was some discussion of the need to stand back and the need to let scouts fail/failure as a teacher, but that was a small part among a large swath of other material.  One person in my WB class mentioned that they’d taken back the lesson and in the weeks between weekend 1 and 2 gone from being a mostly adult led troop to a youth led one, because the amount of information provided, so that is evidence of “success” for extreme cases.  But I really think @ynot hits the crux of it:

8 hours ago, yknot said:

  I myself struggle with what the guard rails are. What is an acceptable mistake? If you don't store or cook your meat properly and make everyone sick, that is certainly a lesson learned but then that camp out has not been fun. A patrol where the Type A personalities constantly over  shout the Type B personalities until the Type B's eventually leave is maybe a lesson learned for the Type A's -- be overbearing enough and you'll eventually get your way -- but then we've lost some more reserved scouts who might have actually been the more scout like scouts and better leaders. In my reality, I don't see adults dealing well with this. They either overcompensate and take it all over or they are gleefully and completely hands off.

Failure of the scouts to successfully build a fire on a beautiful summer evening for the campfire is different from failure to build that exact same fire, on that exact same day on a polar bear campout.  Failure of a scout to bring enough clothes on a early spring outing is different than that same scout not doing so on a winter campout — which coupled with failure to build that same fire becomes an even bigger issue.  The food issues are another — the scout who forgot to bring the cookies that his/her patrol requested in menu planning is one thing but failure to do things in a food safe way, or forgetting the food allergies of the quiet scout (who maybe mentioned it once and thought they had been heard) is different.   There is also a line somewhere between Type A scouts being Type A scouts and Type B scouts being Type B where “overbearing” starts to look indistinguishable from bullying, and the consequences for a patrol or even troop could get much more serious... and so there is a responsibility to act there too, though no clarity where the line should be between “”let the kids continue to argue about the rules of kickball, perhaps with a reminder that A Scout is Friendly” and intervention.

The last line above hit home for me “They either overcompensate and take it all over or they are gleefully and completely hands off.”  In some cases the same thing is a safety issue where adult leaders should take over which in others they should let the scouts get wet and cold and miserable and come home from that campout talking about how much wet and cold and miserable taught them.  But it is easy to default to one end of the spectrum: “everything is a safety issue, so we must intervene” or “We are Scout led, and so one of the scouts should really think to call 911 at this point, since we have three with First Aid MB and two working on E. Prep right now.”  

The experienced folks will say “it depends.”  That “your experience will tell you how to thread the needle.”  Which is fundamentally the correct answer and also completely unhelpful to new leaders.  And telling them that they would do a better job if they were experienced Scouters with a capital S instead of newly entered leaders doesn’t help either.  So the real challenge is how to “teach” that — or at least give them some tangible examples to model like @ParkMan cited above — but I expect that would be difficult since it would require a BSA risk person and legal counsel to approve a training where the syllabus lays out “how cold is too cold for a scout to get” before an adult makes a fire for safety rather than letting them continue building a log cabin fire entirely out of all the matchsticks they’ve used in their attempt to get their own started.

8 hours ago, Summitdog said:

It has been streamlined and modernized to build on the extraordinary contributions made by all the dedicated award recipients to date, and we believe the changes will help make these important efforts even more accessible for today’s members.

Does anyone have any inside insight into what this means?  I have a Scout who is a couple weeks away from starting to plan her Eagle project, which she wanted to be Hornaday eligible as well.

2 hours ago, ParkMan said:

 In-person training is usually better than online training.

Sure was in my experience.  I took the online scoutmaster position specific training quickly (since I was coming back to Scouting from a long absence) and there were parts of it that were the worst virtual training I had ever experienced.  Our leadership in our troop still jokes about the module on the structure of a troop committee meeting.

Long time scouter suggested I do the in person if I had the time because the person teaching it was awesome.  I did and am really glad I did.  Definitely validates that in person can be much much better than the online “(not really) equivalent.”

With respect to the recruiting for Woodbadge, there wasn’t much in my council that I experienced.  A couple people mentioned I might like it, particularly since I’d gotten position specific trained quickly.  I remembered that my SM from years ago wore WB beads and I’d never had much of an idea what they were for, but it seemed fitting for me to do it now that I was in a similar role...

32 minutes ago, yknot said:

I would have everyone pack their own MRE type meals that only need hot water to rehydrate.

Prepping food individually is definitely an option (@Treflienne mentioned their troop is doing that in my thread about my project, and some other troops in my area are doing it as well) though it is logistically complicated.

Agree on “just add hot water” options, though there would still be a need to make sure one person was doing the pouring to avoid everyone touching the same pouring container getting their own water.

Our troop definitely settled on the foil meals option early.  We didn’t do it scout by scout bringing theirs from home since we still wanted to try to do something as much like patrol cooking as we could. But the foil pack approach limits risk of cross contamination since once it has been in the fire for a while it is well sterilized, and then the only person touching it between cooking and eating can be the scout who is consuming it.

For something that has cold ingredients (eg a scout in our troop did burritos with cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, etc.), the scout cook prepped the cold ingredient packs beforehand in reusable plastic containers.  Each scout in the patrol got a prepped foil pack with the hot ingredients that went into the fire, and then assembled their own burrito with their cooked hot ingredients and their personal pack.  Did the same thing for s’mores — assembled in a reusable plastic container 4 marshmallows, graham crackers and a chocolate bar, and each scout got one afterwards.  

For the lunch (which in our case was a trail lunch associated with the 15 mile bike ride for camping MB), the scout took sandwich orders and prepped everyone made to order lunches.

An equivalent for breakfast was the “assemble your own zip-lock bag omelet” were all the ingredients they wanted go into a ziplock with egg mixture and get cooked in boiling water.  Then they come out with tongs that essentially disinfected in the boiling water and go straight to the scout consuming them.  Though there are a lot of simple prepackaged stuff that could work for breakfasts.

That “pre portioning” actually worked much better than the next campout where the next scout cook didn’t do as much prep.  Even though initially there was decent adherence to the one cook handing things out to limit contact, that broke down relatively quickly when there was an open bag of marshmallows sitting there.  

I have on my list doing some more prospecting around scout and outdoor cookbooks for more recipes and cooking options that are COVID friendly... but I am guessing the basic theme is things that can be pre-portioned before cooking (and there is a practical way to do individual cooking under camping conditions) and other options where contact can be minimized.

The next best option down for risk reduction seems like it is what is in most of the checklists for restarting scouting — having a cook that does good infection control while cooking (masked, gloves, attentive to minimizing the potential for respiratory droplets) and serves up individual portions that scouts pick up one at a time to not have a cluster of people gathering around the food others will eat. 

On 10/9/2020 at 11:38 PM, 5thGenTexan said:

Packed up my stuff and came home tonight while everyone was crossing the bridge the first night.

It was not fun at all today, in fact it was mentally draining.  Its not that there was alot of information, it was just a bad experience.  My personality type does not favor being a WB participant.  

I am so sorry that it wasn’t a good experience for you.  I feel bad now for the cheerleading that I did before you headed out.  While I wasn’t always having fun and did periodically roll my eyes at portions of the proceedings, I did find the overall experience a positive one (though having gone through both weekends now, I felt like I got more out of Weekend 1 than Weekend 2).  

It also sounds like I had the benefit both of a patrol that clicked (to the point that some of them were rolling their eyes at the same time I was) and also a much better staffed/run effort.  Our troop guide was extremely good, such that I felt like I got a lot out of the small group discussions — and we did do the introductions and getting to know each other stuff very early.  And our food was great too, in spite of some of the restrictions that were put on the proceedings as part of COVID management. 

1 hour ago, TAHAWK said:

"results"?   Complex factors in her life got her to that state, most beyond the control of a training course staff.  Some people are simply more emotionally vulnerable than others.  Routine life is harder for them, and they need friends who can shelter them from day-to-day stress, like competitive candy throwing or singing in "public."   They find it hard to engage in unfamiliar activities amidst strangers.  She was possibly "talked into" attending against her instincts. The lady mentioned needed to just leave if her patrol mates and TG could not help her successfully cope.   I have never seen the gate locked. 

Having just gone through the process myself, I would respectfully push back on this view, largely because I think that treating something like Woodbadge as a survival of the fittest exercise isn’t in the interest of the BSA.  

The sample of people who go to Woodbadge is a group of people who are interested enough in Scouting to spend a nontrivial amount of money and time doing something to try to enable themselves to be better contributors to BSA.  Complex factors in all of their lives go them to that state, but also to a willingness to invest in BSA.  And so creating a process that “weeds out” a measurable percentage of them and risks them leaving not just feeling bad about the experience but potentially disenchanted with the whole organization seems like a poor outcome for BSA.

It also isn’t entirely fair to put this on individuals who might have “gone against their instincts” to participate.  Having just gone through the decision process to participate myself, my suspicion is that no one really knows what to expect since it isn’t like there is complete transparency about what you are “getting into” (yes, there are some syllabi that have been posted on line, but there are also lots of people who say not to look at them, to go into the experience without expectation, etc.).  It also makes sense that it is hard to clearly describe to people what it is, since (as others have said in this thread) it is somewhat of a mix of things trying to be many things to many different audiences simultaneously.  

Woodbadge also includes some elements that are designed to rub participants the wrong way — e.g., the point of some of the “competitive” exercises wasn’t what my patrol mates and I thought at the time, and so we got rather exasperated during the process at some points.  Using that sort of thing as a teaching tool increases the burden on the staff and troop guides a lot... since the benefit of those sorts of exercises is bringing that experience back to a lesson where the exasperation becomes appreciation for how well the activity taught something that would have otherwise been  difficult to communicate.  If the “after portion” can’t bring it around to that point and the exercise just leaves everyone ticked off, then it’s done more harm than good.  (In my view, some of the exercises at WB did that better than others).  

So I wouldn’t settle for an explanation that someone who left WB disenchanted or unhappy to this level wasn’t good enough or shouldn’t have been there in the first place, even acknowledging that not every activity can ever please everyone.  Unless there are a lot of troops and packs with a serious surplus of engaged adult volunteers out there that I am not aware of, I don’t think I would settle for a program that is supposed to strengthen, energize and then cement enthusiastic volunteers to the organization for the minimum of the next 18 months instead resulting in giving people a hard shove away from BSA...