BSA Atlanta - "remaining issues"

[jkhny 10]

"To recap, for those not familiar with the situation in the Atlanta Area Council: For several years, DE's in the city districts have overstated troop and individual numbers. It is unfortunate, but it is a fact. This came to light last spring. An auditing firm was asked to review numbers, and confirmed this. The scout executive was asked to resign, which he did. An interim executive was brought in over the summer. The Atlanta Area Council hired a new executive in August, and his first day on the job is today.

 

The council recognized the problem, the head of the organization resigned ( it happened on his watch ) and new leadership has been brought in to complete the reorganization.

 

Atlanta, like other large metropolitan areas, struggles with ways to effectively bring scouting to innercity youth. Simply put, there is a lack of adult involvement. Many of the scoutmasters are paid professionals. While scouting is 'boy lead' it requires dedicated adults to deliver an effective program"

 

The ISSUE is that the LOCAL UNIT LEADERS involved in this program openly dispute even the GREATLY reduced claims of 5000 "enrolled members" - saying THEY - from first-hand knowledge - see more like 500 (five HUNDRED) boys in this program. The LOCAL BSA leaders see an UNWILLINGNESS to look closer to determine REAL numbers, a CLEAR attempt to deflect BLAME to low level paid staff and a continunace of "business as usual". Those questioning the numbers have been EXCLUDED from efforts to "fix" the problem. Why exclude the MOST familiar and knowledgeable leaders if you really want a SUCCESSFUL program? Why EXCLUDE those that ARE successful? This make sense only of you want the cover-up to continue and are unable to refute their claims of EVEN LOWER numbers.

 

Again, the whole issue has shown BSA being less than open and transparent in the original FRAUDULENT overstatement, the "investigation" and the "committment" to "improving and FIXING the problem. THOSE on the FRONT LINES in Atlanta are the ones saying this, not me. I'm simply reporting THEIR words. Feel free to contact those involved - their web site welcomes comments and questions. I've spent a fair amount of time correspionding woith them via e-mail and on the phone trying to fully understand what has happened there. Has anyone here done the same?

 

As far others go, despite their protestations, I doubt they will ever "get" it.

 

If your organization claims to teach moral and ethical "decision making" and makes "character" its core value, you should show those "values." It is hypocritical to say "these problems only happen in a small number of cases" and make excuses for the INACTION of NATIONAL leadership that allows these incidents to continue - without ANY consequences for those breaking both the Scout Law and US Law. THAT is the crux of it all.

 

Spin away, excuse away.....what is wrong is wrong.

 

If you simply want to "obey" mindlessly and could care less about the "values" being espoused there are many organizations that are far more open about their goals and consistent about achieving them - showing no hypocrisy at all.......

[evmori 11]

The Smith issue has nothing to do with this thread but from the articles I have read Smith didn't step down until after he was charged with kiddie porn. And membership falsification, regardless of the percentage, is just wrong and should not be tolerated.

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[BrentAllen 10]

I am in the Atlanta Area Council, and I have had first-hand conversations with the parties involved. I am Cubmaster for Pack 494 in Dunwoody, Activities Chair for the Hightower Trail District, and serve as Cub Scout Chair for Scouters Academy for the Atlanta Area Council. I am a volunteer Scouter.

I have done my own investigating, and from what I have seen and heard from both sides, I don't believe anything posted on boyscoutsfortruth.com. The AAC may have some problems, but these guys are just out trying to pull a Jessie Jackson-style shakedown. As they say, follow the money...

This all started when this group went to the AAC CSE and asked for permission to use Boy Scouts, in uniform, to raise money for a mentoring group. If you know anything about Scouting, you know this is a huge no-no. The group didn't like the answer, and started a war. Yes, there were inflated numbers. One of the DE's who was directly involved in reporting false numbers is made out to be a hero by boyscoutsfortruth.com, when he is anything but. This is a simple problem of DE's trying to keep their jobs, by lying about the number of Scouts in their area. Is the CSE supposed to go out and verify the number of boys in each Troop? I don't think so. David Larkin was a very honorable man who loved Scouting. When he found the numbers weren't accurate, he resigned. He fell on his sword to try to protect the organization.

The bsft.com group thinks only inner-city black boys can be "disadvanteged" and don't understand that is an economic term, not a racial term. They only see what they want to see - race. There are plenty of "disadvanteged" kids in Scouting in Cobb, Dekalb and surrounding counties. This bsft.com only sees things through their district, and can't seem to grasp the concept that the AAC is made up of 13 districts, covering probably around 15 counties. They are in downtown Atlanta, and think everyone in the surrounding areas are rich, white folks, which is certainly untrue.

The BSA does not track Scouts by race. The United Way asked the AAC to give a break down of numbers by race. The AAC explained they did not require this information, and did not have the numbers. The UW asked the AAC to make an estimate, so the AAC took census tract information and overlaid it with their membership numbers, and came up with an estimate. This was acceptable to the UW. The AAC, to my knowledge, has never made any other claims about the racial numbers other than this estimation. The bsft.com people do not know anything about my district, based in Dekalb County. For those that don't know, Dekalb County is the most racially diverse county in the entire state.

My still-unanswered question to this group is why are they trying to set up Troops at housing projects? There is no successful model to follow going in that direction. Where are the inner-city churches, and why aren't they chartering Troops? This model has been successfully followed all over the country. To me, this is the only solution to the problem of getting inner-city youth involved in Scouting.

If you want to discuss the situation in Atlanta, please do so from a knowledgeable standpoint, and don't go quoting this group, who has NO RESPECT FOR THE TRUTH! I know more about brain surgery than they know about Scouting in the AAC, and I never even took college biology.

[Prairie_Scouter 10]

Well, sounds like what we've got now are two opposing views, both of whom seem to have credible sources. I suppose there's a good chance we'll never really see all the details of what was going on. If nothing else, BSA needs to come up with a better auditing system than they currently have in place. Didn't they turn down an opportunity to have outside auditors come in and try to figure out what was going on?

[BrentAllen 10]

They DID have an independent law firm come in and check the numbers. The bsft.com group didn't have a problem with the audit, until the numbers didn't come out the way they wanted. Since they don't agree with the numbers, they now claim the audit was politicized.

This is Joe Beasley's (Rainbow/PUSH coalition) 15 minutes of fame, and he is riding it for all he is worth. This guy writes David Larkin a personal letter, in which he admires our new Service Center/Scout Shop, and then turns around and says it was a racist act to build the new center just outside the perimeter (where most of us live, and can get to it) rather than downtown, where the "disadvantaged" youth can walk to it or take the bus (and none of the majority of the population ever travels to). The only reason anyone goes downtown is to see the Braves or Falcons. In Atlanta, all you have to do is CLAIM racism, and you can get plenty of coverage in the Journal-Constitution.

From the AJC:

"A former Boy Scout executive said the practice of inflating African-American membership in Atlanta was common among staffers who feared being fired for not reaching assigned quotas.

 

Kevin Tullis, who worked for the Boy Scouts of America-Atlanta Area Council for 2 1/2 years as a district executive, said staffers were under pressure to increase Scout membership and boost charitable donations.

 

In an interview this week, Tullis said the methods for inflating rosters ranged from recruiting black kids from summer activity camps with no intention of getting them involved with a troop to resubmitting previously registered membership rolls.

Tullis, who is black, said he was forced to resign last July because he didn't achieve membership goals. Another district executive, he said, also was asked to quit last year because he fell 68 youths short of his goal, despite reaching his fund-raising target.

 

Tullis said he wasn't aware of a written policy requiring employees to fabricate the numbers."

 

This guy has admitted he lied and falsified and inflated numbers. He admits others did the same. Here is your problem, plain and simple. The false numbers came from the bottom - not from the top. How does this turn into upper management inflating the numbers to get more money from United Way? Someone please answer that question! To the bsft.com people, Tullis is a hero. He is a liar, and should have been fired. I used to be a stock broker, and when I didn't reach my numbers, I was let go. If you don't do your job, and don't produce the numbers, you get replaced - it is that simple. David Larkin trusted people like Tullis to honorably do their job. They didn't, and Larkin suffered because of it. David Larkin wasn't out there at the housing projects, promising single mothers Braves tickets if they signed their son up for Scouting. It was DE's like Tullis who did that.

Should upper management at AAC have done a better job supervising their DE's? Yes

Did upper management falsify and inflate the numbers to gain more funding from organizations like the United Way? Sorry, I just don't see it.

 

 

[jkhny 10]

IF BSA has nothing to hide in Atlanta, why not shut up the critics and publicly muster even the 1000 scouts Beasley challenged them to?

 

So, WHY NOT allow an independent adit of membership? Analyze race AND income. Other groups do so.

 

Again, openness and transparency are not to be feared when there is nothing to hide.

 

Funny, but Girl Scouts keeps track of race. So do other groups - in detail. BSA seems to deliberately AVOID doing so - perhaps because (as many say) they have done such a poor job in serving minority youth.

 

BSA claimed variously to serve 23,000, 15,000 or 10,000 "disadvantaged" youth in Atlanta.

 

THEIR OWN AUDIT showed just over 5,000 youth enrolled - with 3,400 "active."

 

THAT is from BSA's HANDPICKED auditors. Others claim that number is overstated.

 

If the argument is made that race does NOT define "disadvantaged" then why did BSA itslef so regularly focus on the black boys in the few real inner city units when talking about this program - they felt themselves to be regularly marched out for photo-ops but otherwise ignored.

 

Frankly, those behind BSFT made a point of not wanting to be confrontational about this and have been trying to resolve this OUT of the media.

 

Like it or not, there seems to be more than enough to support their claims. United Way is still witholding funds.

 

And given BSA's history in dealing with disadvantaged youth in my Council, I have no real evidence to show that any of these efforts are anything but pr - lacking real substance.

 

BSA's history has too many cases of DE's pressured to lie about numbers and SE's more than willing to fire those that did NOT do so - instead of punishing those that did lie (well as long as nobody found out).

 

It is clear that there were MAJOR problems in Atlanta. Are they over? Has the truth come out?

 

Given the current closed mouth atmosphere, skepticism is warranted. Again, transparency and openness - an independent audit - would defuse this situation completely. Why WON'T BSA allow this?

 

Pretty simple solution.

[BrentAllen 10]

It is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS you know nothing about the Atlanta situation, except what you have read at bsft.com - you have their talking points down pretty well. Do you have any other source of information on the subject? I didn't think so. Come on down to Atlanta, and I will show you all the Scouts you want to see. Notice I'm not so afraid of the truth that I have to hide behind a screen name. If you are so big on transparency - "Again, openness and transparency are not to be feared when there is nothing to hide." - then why not use your real name and location?? What do you have to hide?? I'll respond to you again when you follow your own words, requesting openness and transparency.

[Bob Kent 10]

Too many personal attacks here.

 

1.Joe Beasley of the Rainbow Coalition is a retired military police superintendant who works for a church. He doesn't get paid by the Rainbow Coalition. He supported a troop in a housing project because he believed in the moral values of scouting and only got involved after the situation got completely out of hand. He gave the Atlanta BSA leadership plenty of notice and time to deal with it but got stiffed - so he acted.

 

2. Kevin Tullis was only one of the many junior African American DE's who fabricated the numbers. He was the only one who came clean about it. Sadly, the numbers were also inflated in the white suburban areas. The system was run and enforced from the top by people who were fully informed many times about the problem. There was nothing honorable abvout it. To say that it was the fault of only the lower level grunts who had to do it to keep their jobs is not right.

 

3. The housing project group did not go to the Boy Scouts for money. It was the Boy Scouts who went to the housing project group way back in 1992, to use them as an example to start and raise money for Operation First Class - and they raised millions. Unfortunately, there was no accountability and the situation got out of control not only in Atlanta but in many other cities as well.

 

Fortunately, the situation seems to be moving in the right direction in Atlanta but - let's be real -only because Joe Beasley of the Rainbow Coalition stated raising hell. This is no shakedown. Neither the Rainbow Coalition nor Mr. Beasley nor any of their buddies are getting anything out of this. This is just an old black military man standing up for the little guy who was being used. Joe Beasley is the real Boy Scout in this sad story.

 

A Scout is Trustworthy.

[BrentAllen 10]

A Scout is Trustworthy.

 

Bob, please recall the conversation we had over lunch on Saturday, June 11th, I believe. Did you not tell me the purpose of your group meeting with David Larkin was to try to open the doors to Home Depot, so Scouts could raise money for your mentoring group? Did we not discuss this, and agree that Scouts could not be used to raise money for any other group? If I misunderstood, then please explain the reason your group went to meet with David Larkin. What was the purpose of the meeting, and why did you need his assistance?

Another question, if I may - Why doesn't Joe Beasley's church charter a Troop?

There were other ways to fix this problem. One of the DE's in our District found ghost troops and inflated numbers when he took the job. Most were there because of sloppy record-keeping, not some deep sinister plot. He went in an cleaned the rolls, which is what the other DEs should have done. Why they didn't, I don't know. I do know some like Tullis who lied about the numbers got fired, while the DE in our District (a black man) who cleaned the rolls was promoted. Put that into your current AAC problem paradigm and tell me how that computes.

You say you can't find any Scoutmasters who will vouch for the number of black Scouts in the AAC. Tell me, how many Camporees has your Troop been to in the past, say, 5 years? How many summer camps have they been to? How many other council events have they participated in? Remember, a Scout is Trustworthy.

[jkhny 10]

I smell a troll - BSA Atlanta finally realize others are talking about this?

 

"Sloppy record keeping" does not account for the VAST discrepancies in counts here. From even 15,000 to 5,000???? C'mon. And NOBODY saw this......nobody noticed THOSE kids weren't at Council events?

 

Even the current situation shows a 30% overstatement between "enrolled" and "active" USING BSA'S OWN AUDIT NUMBERS.

 

BSA shows plenty of "diversity" in its literature. If only reality matched the marketing. If you had something to be proud of you can be sure BSA would track thise statistics. Again, the LACK of hard numbers ANYWHERE in BSA's annual reports is too typical of an organization "playing games" in ALL areas. BSA is NOT open or transparent. Why?

 

Again, TRANSPARENCY would end this and all the other concerns expressed about BSA.

 

But BSA REFUSES outside audits and REFUSES to open up its books - even to its own members.

 

Sure seems like there's alot that needs hiding.....all the other symptoms of corporate fraud and failure are here..... faked results, whistleblowers punished or slandered, overpaid executives focused on holding onto their jobs, NOT doing them.....

 

A house of cards can only stand for so long.......

 

Will "Scouting" here survive a collapse?

[watercub 10]

Geez, you guys need to settle down. I'm in Atlanta Area Council, and I'm a Unit Commissioner in Hightower Trail District. Incidentally, I'm also the Commissioner for Brent's unit. I've been following this and connected threads for quite a while.

 

As a Commissioner, I've had the opportunity to recharter numerous units in this district. Guess what? Ghost units are everywhere, and not just confined to AAC's "Operation First Class." They are minority units, majority units, Packs, Troops and Crews. It is a huge undertaking for the "volunteer" Commissioner Staff in an urban district like Hightower Trail and fully research the existence of what may turn out to be a paper unit. It's also a huge challenge for people I know to be good DE's under a faulty compensation program. I know our DE's were working to purge the paper units well before this story got regional and national attention.

 

Is there a story here in Atlanta? Sure. It's also a story in every urban area served by Scouting. Birmingham, Dallas, where else?

 

We are not doing anybody any good by bashing BSA National or individual councils. Focus on the mission - which is carried out by volunteers with the support of their Council. By the way, Atlanta Area is one of the nation's larger Councils that does a good job serving large numbers of youth in a heavily populated 13-county area in Metro Atlanta. Are volunteers upset? Yes. Have they gotten over it? I'm not sure, but we all seem to be getting on with the job of delivering the program. Frankly, if I have a summer camp to go to, and district and council activities to work into my program, the council is doing its job to support me.

 

Nice try, Brent, but they aren't going to listen. People so deeply wedded to their positions tend to avoid listening to another point of view. Outrage isn't healthy for anybody when it is sustained. Translate it into action - then you'll get my attention. By the way, don't accuse me of having my head in the sand - my eyes are wide open.

 

Have a nice day, y'all.