Tron

Having eagle is a good thing for people enlisting in the military; when I was on recruiting detail we always did the extra paperwork to get the enlistee E4 (not E3 as a lot of other people claim) which was a HUGE pay difference. But there is no seal of approval. We would recognize that a skillset should be there, and we would reward you like we would reward college education or high physical fitness; however, once an eagle shipped to basic they were garbage just like everyone else. There is literally no mechanism to block scouting from operating on military bases; none, why do people keep saying stuff like this? The on base school PTOs, the FRGs, the USO offices, the Legion posts off base, the VFW posts off base, are all the charter orgs. "Derpy derp derp, can't meet on base." -- Random Politician, "Why not? Is there a youth based risk to the garrison that we need to evaluate that we need to assess multi-dimensionally across all youth groups?" -- Garrison Commander It's all about the money. Plain and simple. Where is @Armymutt on this, he's still serving.

Breaking people out into different groups does not solve the problem. Since the beginning of the movement we have used things such as uniforms to make it easier for everyone to blend in together. We're supposed to be on the same team; however, it would appear that we're not. Special interests have been trying to create special sub groups for a long time and it has repeatedly floundered or outright failed. We've had all these other groups, and all these other groups are barely hanging on. If all the trans kids wanted to be separate they could be, over in Rainbow Scouts; if all the hardline religious scouts wanted to be separate they could go join Trail Life or one of the other church based youth groups. As bad as things are in Scouting America, the other groups are worse and they are all an example of how division into sub-groups only weakens the opportunity to youth. We don't need separate groups, what we need is equal opportunity and a focus on the true mission of the organization. Notice that no one is being kicked out of Scouting America; Hegseth didn't demand it, Roger Krone didn't say anything about that in his letter. What is clear is that in order to maintain millions of dollars of support from the military we have to re-align towards the military; that is what was clearly said by Hegseth and Krone. I think that's the real problem here, that's what people are really angry about but too cowardice to state. The scouting movement is born from Western military tradition, and scouting in America just got it's wake up call.

Could it be that the number of eagle scouts has stayed consistent because the number of adults is consistent and thus the support inside the program that is needed to get a scout to eagle is still in place regardless of total number of scouts?

Read this and see if you agree with your previous statement. https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2014/12/03/individual-scout-accounts/

If giving away 2 million in free memberships is cheaper than paying for things like the West Point Camporee and JAMBO it's still a win for scouting. Not really, there is no such thing as "ball in our respective courts" in a franchise based organization. Councils, districts, and units either align to the national program and directives or eventually get burned. I would suspect that if the national debt is retired at the end of 2028 as planned we will see significant changes in how national responds to all of these rogue councils doing their own thing. Right now national is too busy trying to keep the house from burning down to worry about the outhouse.

So my understanding is that the West Point Camporee is a go but we don't know much except that the formal sponsor has changed to the cadet association (from what I have heard). It is also my understanding that the military is going to continue its support of the national jamboree. There are not clear military membership numbers from what I can see at my level; however, I have some visibility into the European Command and Indo-Pacific Command memberships because of the special BSA councils set up to support the accompanied families. My hypothesis on the free memberships for military families is this: The DOW basically told Scouting America that the DOW costs to support just the jamboree were SO high that they want something back for the military if the partnership was going to continue. Part of the give back is the free memberships for military families. I estimate that BSA is going to give up around $638,000 in membership fees each year; however, I also estimate that the cost of the US Army providing a 9-line to the national jamboree (just that 1 line item of support) is going to cost the DOW $880,000. I am thinking that this was all a money issue of "Give us something or you can go out and pay for what we give you for free". I will say this, the free memberships for military families is a great thing. There are a lot of junior enlisted families that have ZERO disposable income to put towards a program like scouting for their children. BAH and BAS barely cover living expenses for married junior enlisted. There are E1s out there trying to cover all other living expenses for their families on pay lower than what McDonalds flunkies get paid.

This all comes down to quality control. District Executives need to have enough strength in their spine to kill the charters of known bad units. Reading what you wrote makes me think Scouting America needs some sort of relegation program where unit review (JTE or whatever) is mandatory and the worst unit gets de-chartered every year. In my area, all of the little Lord Farquaads would soil their pants with fear of losing their fiefdoms and actually get trained and run the program as designed. To both of these statements I can only say that there are a lot of things in scouting that are not scouting. People want slingshots, and trebuchets, and yadda-yadda but we really need to figure out why we can't do back-to-the-basics things like pioneering a watch tower (which goes back to BPs original program). I am not advocating for an anything goes pioneering program like in the movies but I think we should focus on fighting for things that have been safetied out of the program that really are part of the program.

Comingling is a huge problem at every level in scouting as I can tell. Comingling is what is going to get every scout account using unit in trouble eventually. I think it's poor legal judgement. Personally I think the accountants and legal at national know we have an accounting problem at every level but there is not enough where-with-all in the national team to do something about it at this time. I am tepidly optimistic that once national retires all of the debt related to the settlement and restructuring that the national leadership will force the accounting and legal leadership to deal with the comingling issues at all levels in the organization to avoid any situations of the IRS crushing units or councils like a tin can.

For me the issue was a two point problem. First of all the Citizenship in Society Merit Badge requirements for Merit Badge Counselors were the most stringent and only MBC leadership requirements universally enforced in scouting. To council the merit badge you had to have your MBC training complete prior to the special MB train-the-trainer session, and you had to sign a special contract above and beyond the MBC requirements attesting that you would not add to, remove from, or steer, or alter the merit badge materials. A fine process; however, no such process for any other merit badge. The fact that national knows that the merit badge program is compromised with unqualified and incompetent councilors and did nothing to improve or ensure quality control on the rest of the merit badge program pissed me off. Second of all the Citizenship in Society Merit Badge itself is the only merit badge without a test of knowledge or skill. As structured the merit badge simply did not have the legs to stand on to be considered a merit badge and never should have been in its structure and condition entered into the merit badge program. This is the weak minded straw argument of the left. No one, not even Hegseth or any of choogy boys have said they want to kick girls out. What has been stated publicly and everything that has leaked has literally only been about concerns about political indoctrination and deviation from the true purpose of the program. Trans kids have always had this dilemma. Scouting Americas policy has always been that registration must align to gender within the confines of the state and federal laws governing the geography of the area of the unit. This argument is a nothing burger, this is a no change. NOTHING IS CHANGING in regards to this for anyone in Scouting America. This right here is actually part of the problem that Hegseth and his toadies are rallying against. The mission statement of Scouting America has somehow deviated quite a bit from our congressional chartered purpose [which is]: That the purpose of this corporation shall be to promote, through organization, and cooperation with other agencies, the ability of boys to do things for themselves and others, to train them in Scoutcraft, and to teach them patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred virtues, using the methods which are now in common use by Boy Scouts. Our membership is down to 1946 levels. 50 years of experimentation and deviation from the core mission of the program led us from a membership peak of 4 million scouts in 1970 to 821,000 scouts in 2026. With the doors open to male and female scouts our membership should be at a new record level, not collapsing towards mediocrity. Trying to push all of these other things, secondary mission statements, tertiary vision statements, derivative after derivative after derivative; all these watered down straying from the roots things are what are killing this organization.

This is basically an advertisement to not become a legacy fellow unless/until a person is in the OA.

For several years the OA has had official language to the degree that adult selection is based on what the adult can do for the OA. What that means in my council is that if you have something (meeting space, money, connections, etc ... ) the OA wants or needs you get offered membership. I would actually go in a slightly different direction and make OA simply about camping and supporting council camps. Instead of a rolling camping nights requirement I would set Ordeal, Brotherhood, and Vigil levels at numbers of nights camped and numbers of summer camps attended. Something like Ordeal (12 nights, at least 5 of which must be resident camping), Brotherhood (24 nights, 10 of which must be resident camping), Vigil (36 nights, 15 of which must be resident camping). I would also create some sort of maintenance requirement such as must camp so many nights a year in subsequent years to maintain Brotherhood and Vigil. I think we all need to just accept that when you set a higher level of membership, whether that be rank, honor, merit badges, etc ... it sets goals for people to achieve. When you tell people that they should just achieve Vigil or Eagle or Summit, etc... organically on the journey you are also telling them that once the experience has been had nothing else matters. Once someone has had the experience and they have no goal to achieve they move on. I think the overall membership numbers reflect that. How many car camping experiences can a person have before they decide that they can have a higher quality experience with fewer rules outside the program at a better price point?

OA in my area is basically a joke as described by Eagle94. I know that Jan 1st a bunch of changes went into affect and it's blowing up what was already a barely hanging on for relevance program that OA became.

I don't get the BOR thing. Scouts should lead the meetings. Adults don't have to be registered to sit on a BOR. Adults should be in the back/outside/under a rock STFU. That means if a scout needs a BOR, there shouldn't be a problem grabbing 3-6 adults and doing a 15min BOR at any moment.

I'll jump on the pity party. 64% of my town lives at or below the poverty line. $237 is not a lot of money.

I would just raise the issue as is. Hey SM, the last SM popped smoke after being accused of favoritism, etc ... what you just did screams favoritism and we need to address it before the unit gets hurt. What's the SM and CC going to do? Kick you out of a troop you're already thinking about leaving?