AwakeEnergyScouter

Perhaps I'm not the average parent, but I'm signing my child up for scouts explicitly expecting some actual camp life at a camp site with 100% nature and 0% amenities. If there's running water it's cheating. And if you never get the chance to fail at charting your own course, you never really get to know yourself or the value of avoiding procrastination. When I realized cub scout safety guidelines require us to never stray far from civilization, I thought ok, they're still young and vary in commitment to backpacking, I get it. But older scouts in the proper program? They should know where and how to dig a latrine off the top of their heads. They should know how to cook outside in bad weather and how to stay warm and how to amuse and organize themselves. That's the whole point. And the relief! Finally somewhere where you really get to be in charge. This whole sleeping in cabins thing can be had in lots of places. Real adventures are what scouting offers that not a lot of other organizations do. I seem to be in the minority in this view since both BSA and GSUSA are heavily into cabins and amenities. But in my heart, scouting is wild and free. The kind of free you feel when the wind tussles your hair and the sun kisses your very cold cheek.

Well, isn't that what you would hope they'd do, though? I have no idea what the proportions are between councils like his and councils like yours, but passing the buck on organizational functioning to CORs seems like abdicating leadership to me. Then again, this COR thing seems like a complicating layer in the middle to me, so my view may well be a bit weird.

@Brannigan, this is all on the open Internet. Both threads you've started are visible publicly, because they're not in the few restricted forums. Most of scouter.com is visible to everyone and anyone. You can verify this yourself by logging out and then going to scouter.com. Right now, I see your reply above highlighted next to the New to the Forum? forum. Sorry you felt so attacked. I didn't post in your first thread, but wish you well and am glad that you got the help from your council that you hoped for. I'm not new to scouting, but I'm new to BSA, and it's nice to hear a story about a council stepping in to remove someone who's just mean and destructive to the organization but not a criminal. May you find happiness and the root of happiness.

Meanwhile, seasoned project managers: NOTHING IS EASY EASY IS A FANTASY

Absolutely. But how long is known, as is the fact that trees don't grow well on reclaimed land due to salt levels, and the organizers were repeatedly told that. They were quite aware and proceeded anyway. I don't want to jump to conclusions or judge someone unfairly, either. But spending millions of won on touring tourist sites with only brief occasional visits to scout-related places, the organizers clearly having identified the risks that did occur without taking any action on ROAMing them - as evidenced by that they were not prepared - and also being told point blank that their plans weren't good (by other Koreans) doesn't paint a pretty picture of the Korean government organizers. Korean media isn't exactly making excuses for them, they're going after them. South Korea is a developed country. The place is full of educated professionals who can make a risk register and manage risk, and a free press that holds their government to account. (Consider, for example, what happened after the Sewol capsized.) Things started improving once the president and the big chaebols started sending help - just goes to show that these problems weren't because Koreans aren't Americans, these problems were due to more specific bad planning. Bad planning that it's fair to criticize, especially when Korean media are already doing it. WOSM's role, though, I'm also curious about. Who knew what when is my question. Trees not being there, for example, isn't exactly buried in paperwork filed in the basement in a cabinet labeled "Beware or the leopard". And typhoon season hasn't changed.

Well, I'm going to do my best to serve my scouts, but I'm definitely not getting invested in the organization itself then. I mean, there's a definite theme to what people say about the "professional" overlayer. While people complain even in well-run organizations, charges brought for embezzlement without an embarrassed purge of criminals and enablers from the ranks is clear objective proof of that there are some serious systemic problems. Edit: just realized this could be misinterpreted - I mean that even in the best case where one person truly fooled everyone else around them, then financial systems must have been lacking to not detect the fraud. No matter what happened, it can't have been just one person who failed to do their job. I served on a nonprofit board for a professional society for a while, and they'd just dealt with something similar (severe and systemic misuse of funds by president and crony friends). They needed new people, because the offender was barred by the professional organization from ever serving as a chapter anything and all his friends resigned in protest. Good riddance, of course. So, the professional society let him keep his outward face, but quietly disbarred him from all leadership and in the process flushed all the co-conspirators and enablers out. And that wasn't even reported to police, let alone prosecuted, and that was here in the US. IMNSHO a leader in your organization being prosecuted for embezzlement is a black mark on your honor. My god, how embarrassing 😳

This sounds a bit like a good old boys network where performance is irrelevant and you don't want to be too talented or you might make someone feel bad so that they target you. Lack of financial transparency, clearly a problem if embezzlement charges were brought, sounds like a general and ongoing problem for the BSA. Demoting someone who brought embezzlement to light is very problematic, especially for an organization that's supposed to have honesty as a value. If heads didn't roll in that council, then that's an indication of the general culture.

It's not you, it's them. You're asking the wrong question. The question is what specific confusion about not just scouting, but how you build a good society that they have going on. But that's more of a philosophical question, because practically speaking you probably can't help them remove whatever is obscuring clear seeing, especially not at this point. I'm from a country that has produced a nobleman artist whose most (in)famous lithography is called "Desecrate the flag". Apparently even our military is loosey-goosey in the authoritarianism department. So when I say this, it's definitely not an expectation of that scouts be ROTC or that I think the Galactic Empire is a great idea: order is essential for a good society. Including but not limited to scouting. You can't have groups of young people destroying property and/or assault (maybe, maybe not?) willy-nilly and expect a good civil society. They can have wild hair and safety pins in their noses and whatever. They can be rude, they can be disrespectful, they can desecrate the flag. (Not while also being good scouts, of course, but just looking at the bare bottom level of strong civil society, and they're not free from the consequences of other people's reactions to doing those things.) But you absolutely can't have violence become the tool of order. Rule of law is essential.

Somewhere, there is a Korean civic organization saying "I told you so." Organizers of the Jamboree would have been well aware of weather dangers. The documents of the organizing committee list the readiness against the extreme heat wave and inclement risks from storms and typhoon. The representative of a local civic group three years ago called the idea of tenting out on a reclaimed swath of land as plain crazy, because such a location turns extremely humid after rains — and after the steam rises from the wetland under the scorching sun. Defiant bureaucrats claimed they would plant trees and build greenery tunnels to create shades. They promised sufficient restrooms and shower booths, but they did not keep their promises. The venue was tree- and shade-less. Shower booths and toilets were slack and short. Typhoon shelters were loosely designated in nearby school gyms. There were no specifics on exactly where the 40,000-plus scouters should sleep, rest and clean upon evacuation. The visitors eventually had to be relocated across the country due to a typhoon forecast. (...) A K-pop extravaganza is being readied in Seoul in hopes to make amends for the sufferings in Saemangeum. We hope global youths at least can return home with one memorable experience. Still, an idol-studded concert can hardly make up for all the mistakes. Nature and brotherhood are the scouting spirit, not the sensational culture. We are truly ashamed and very sorry to all of the young visitors. https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2023/08/09/opinion/columns/Jamboree-Saemangeum-pull-out/20230809192556254.html

Just wow. I was wondering why a site with absolutely no trees was selected. Guess they did consider that 🤷🏼‍♀️

The Korean reporters are digging. Records suggest dubious overseas trips prior to Jamboree Records show that officials from related local governments and agencies traveled abroad 99 times over the past eight years purportedly to prepare for the ongoing 25th World Scout Jamboree. (...) Broadly speaking, the trips found in the records can be divided into two categories. The first includes 54 trips related to securing the bid, mostly in the two years leading up to Saemangeum's final selection in 2017. The other trips were generally listed for the purpose of "exploration of advanced cultures" in preparation for hosting the event. While seemingly legitimate at first glance, upon closer inspection, some of the details in the reports filed by officials appear questionable, including cruises and tours of overseas hotspots unrelated to the scouts. https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2023/08/07/national/socialAffairs/Korea-World-Scout-Jamboree-business-trips/20230807173928902.html

W H A T ? ? ? Absolutely not normal in the scouting movement as whole. Massive red flag. I have never heard of this joke category. That's pretty insane. I mean... WTF. Rape is nothing like wet socks. Even if this was just your local scouting environment that would still be super damning. Going to stop typing now before I lose my composure and generate unmeritorious karma myself by acting in anger. May all survivors have happiness and the source of happiness May they be free from suffering and the root of suffering May the not be separated from the happiness devoid of suffering May they dwell in the great equanimity free from passion, aggression, and ignorance 🙏

This could well be. @Eagle94-A1, I didn't have any particular report in mind when I typed that, no. It was just my overall impression of the scandal, but it's quite possible that I'm wrong. I didn't follow the unfolding of the scandal in detail, since it wasn't my old NSO and also didn't think I'd be involved with it. I'd imagine whatever faults someone might find in this characterization, it's almost certainly more accurate than mine, and my point wasn't really so much about re-litigating the details of the scandal but rather that introducing a bunch of side tracks to that the BSA put organizational reputation above taking action to protect children is not taking action to protect children in the future. That also applies to observations about problems with rule of law in some of the posts above. It's non-actionable, especially when it comes to the past. Bad stuff happened. Ok, what are you going to do about it? Conclude that it was too bad, so sad, but there's nothing to be done? Surely not. That's how the scandal happened in the first place. To actually protect children in the future, we need to accept responsibility in the leadership way. By that I mean that you accept the responsibility for cleaning up messes that weren't your fault and apologize while doing it. I doubt anyone here on this forum causally did anything to contribute to the scandal. (If nothing else, odds are in favor of this.) So on a personal level, nobody here has anything to apologize for. But now, every single person in the BSA has an opportunity to do something about this, including the vast majority of people who had no idea, especially not of the scale. And a key part of doing something is looking at what went wrong without being defensive and fixing it. Own the failure, commit to continuous improvement. This could include pointing out that "pillars of the community" can and have committed serious crimes, and that this is exactly why rule of law is so important. The BSA as an organization can't fix weak legal institutions, but the individual voters in it can advocate for strengthening rule of law politically. The rape report and prosecution rates at least in Sweden have gone up quite a bit compared to where they used to be, and that's because people in general started to expect the police to investigate and prosecute rape once people started to realize how common it was, yet rare for perpetrators to be held to account. There was a slow collective WTF reaction. So even those kinds of cultural factors beyond anyone's direct control can change after shared societal experiences like this CSA scandal. This is the nuts and bolts of actually building strong, transparent institutions. Even when you get unfair criticism or even plain made up criticism, getting all defensive as a leader makes you ineffective. Let's face it, part of leadership is always having unfair accusations lobbed at you. In your role as a leader, you can't be responding to every unfair accusation with a point list of why it's unfair. You can complain privately to your spouse and personal friends, but in your role as a leader you need to have a stiff upper lip. And when there are real problems, your job is to fix them whether you caused them or not. YPT is a concrete answer to "what are you going to do about it?" That's constructive. Is there more? Are we all implementing it well enough for it to be effective? Are there potential holes in it? Those are all productive directions to take the scandal. "It was the Illuminati" isn't, especially when people don't agree on whether the Illuminati even exist.

Occam's Razor suggests that the lawsuit was the result of the BSA failing to take appropriate action on rape and other sexual abuse reports to protect scouts from further abuse, much like the Catholic Church's own pedophile shuffling scandal. Alleging the lawsuit is just a malicious attack by groups that include fellow scouts and scouters, but had nothing to do with the fact that 92,700 scouts were sexually abused under the auspices of the BSA, is dividing the scout "sangha" while also declining to accept the BSA's responsibility for allowing pedophiles to continue abusing. This just isn't complicated. Pedophilia is really bad. Covering for pedophiles is therefore also really bad. If you do it, expect people to be very angry when you get caught covering their crimes up, especially the victims. People don't really need any additional reasons to be mad at that point, pedophilia 105% covers it. Leftists definitely didn't make scouter pedophiles rape anyone, or prevent the BSA from filing police reports or proper banning all suspected pedophiles from the organization. Leftists didn't tell abused scouts not to tell their parents. You may be sincere in your belief in this attack, but the BSA was in full control of itself when it comes to dealing with pedophiles. The BSA's karma has ripened. Looking to put the blame outside is just going to create more bad karma that's going to ripen in the future. Please don't sow more seeds of suffering. The good news about karma ripening is that it becomes easier to move into a more meritorious direction, so let's take this opportunity to create bliss instead. The truth is out; we can do our best to help the victims and make sure that we handle any future pedophiles and their crimes right. We have no more reputation to lose. This is how we burn up any remainder of bad karma and prevent more of the same from accumulating. But it starts with not blaming others for the BSA's faults.

You are of course entitled to hold and express this opinion, but now that I understand the context here I feel obliged to point out that expressing it within the container of scouting is throwing culture war bombs within that container. Is this really helpful? Is this a productive place to say this? Scouting is civic, not political. We are building a better world, are we not? And when we say 'better', we don't mean according to any ideology, we mean in the hands-on fix obvious practical problems sense, taking responsibility for the community one lives in kind of way from a perspective of kindness and compassion.

Thank you, @InquisitiveScouter. That's some great context. I read and watched the links and did some searching on some of these terms. This view was almost all new to me, no doubt in large part because of the different political context I came of political age in. These kinds of political narratives always rely on the hearer having had certain experiences for it to feel true. A fair few of the experiences referenced in the long march through the institutions I've never had, nor heard anyone I know complain about. A number of labels are also used in ways I've never seen or heard of them being used before, either. So I would never had made any sense of this 'shadowy forces are attacking the BSA' argument without all this background.

Maybe this is because I'm not US American, but this seems completely out of left field to me. Nothing I've seen or heard anywhere connects to this. Would you be willing to explain more about why you believe this? For example, what makes you say that scouting is a pillar of traditional American society? I don't think anyone in Sweden, including scouts and scouters, sees scouting as a pillar of Swedish society, so it's not clear to me why it would be here. Would you be willing to explain? Who are these activists, exactly? I have never heard of anyone anywhere consider pedophilia anything but morally repugnant.

The more I read about this, the less I feel like I know what's going on. In other words, I will be waiting for the postmortems to decide what I think. It's difficult to get a full picture from these kinds of shorter articles and NSO updates when they only partially overlap in what scouts are saying. I doubt any of the scouts are lying or misrepresenting, but the Finnish scout's mention of that the US scouts had had it worse than the Finnish scouts makes me wonder about the village-to-village differences. The Swedes are hosting cultural dinner exchanges with the Australians while the Americans are suffering and evacuating? Can't quite get clear on the overall picture here. The event could be poorly planned even if some scouts are fine and having a good time, and the event could also have been fairly well planned except for a few impactful planning misses that impacted a minority of scouts very severely. I suspect neither of these is quite what happened, but we shall see. I saw this article from The Korea Times with a pretty long list of problems, mostly the ones already mentioned in other media posted above, and pictures from scouts that definitely don't look good. I am not familiar with the Korea Times, and the tone of this feels a little sensationalistic, but I'm sharing it anyway because Korean media are the most likely to report on the Jamboree as a whole as opposed to a specific contingent. https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=356442

Yelling angrily over something as petty as taking out the trash is definitely a red flag. It's not hitting, but it's certainly inappropriate to go through with if they don't, and very unbecoming for a scout or scouter even if it doesn't violate any specific policy. If I were you, I'd tell someone in a position of doing something about it and/or needing to know of unscoutlike behavior going on. You do have an ethical duty to do something with the red flag, but if you are needed to physically protect scouts the answer isn't for you to be a martyr but for the CO and/or the BSA to either fix it or disband the whole thing. If a single particular person is needed for physical safety, then it's definitely time to just stop. So many things have gone wrong at that point. This unit is just a dumpster fire, huh? It seems you made the right decision not just for you but also your scout.

Both Scouterna and Partiolaiset have posted updates after the US contingent pulled out to reconfirm that their contingents are in good spirits and medically fine, intend on staying, and that camp conditions are improving. https://www-partio-fi.translate.goog/ajankohtaista/jamboree-jatkuu-suunnitellusti/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-scouterna-se.translate.goog/aktuellt/wsj23/uppgifter-om-deltagares-halsotillstand-pa-jamboreen/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true

😳😱😞 May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness May they be free from suffering and the root of suffering May they not be separated from the happiness devoid of suffering May the dwell in the great equanimity free from passion, aggression, and ignorance

Interestingly, the Finnish contingent is doing fine, and thinks the organizers have been very thoughtful in taking care of everyone. Apparently breakfast is at 5 AM in part to beat the heat. The Swedes are also staying, and mention additional cooling resources the organizing committee has provided such as buses with AC. Sounds like the organizers doing really well, actually. The Swedes' top complaints are special diet food availability and bathroom cleanliness, not related to the heat at all. https://www-hs-fi.translate.goog/kotimaa/art-2000009761311.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true https://www-scouterna-se.translate.goog/aktuellt/wsj23/uppdatering-om-uk-scouts-deltagande-pa-jamboreen/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true

Yes, of course, this was the original idea I posted. A lot of attendees have never camped in constant 30°C heat, let alone 34-35°C heat, and when your constant camping problem is cold you don't even realize you need to prepare differently for heat. I can tell you a few stories myself. But Siberia extreme wasn't referring to 35°C at Jamboree in Korea, it was to 50°C somewhere in the Middle East where the US was conducting combat operations, I assume Iraq, and where soldiers could only stay outside for 20 minutes at a time and asphalt was melty, see above. InquisitiveScouter's story sounds like the inverse of "your spit freezes before it hits the ground" to me. Hence the joke.

I feel like they should reconsider. Even better, perhaps it could be a chess game with A/C, or if it must be more physical, the World Cup. ⚽ All joking aside, though, that really is pretty extreme. In terms of what you have to do to adapt, it's Siberia extreme.

That's because 50°C is too hot for human habitation and so no planes will need to fly in that kind of heat. ☠️😳 Actually, just operation of certain electronics starts really suffering whether people live there or not. I worked on a project to ensure even performance both at high and low temperatures, and 50°C was off our chart because it would have been very, very, very hard to find a material to do the whole range from -20°C to +50°C. We stopped at +30°C. In that sense it doesn't surprise me, especially since any older planes would have been engineered at a different time when the max temperatures one could routinely expect were noticably lower. My impression is that the Middle East is only still habitable thanks to A/C, and this story isn't changing my mind. (I'm guessing "the sandbox" is Iraq? Or Kuwait?)