fred8033

I agree. I fear, as much as BSA was targeted that, BSA also took positions that were changing. BSA's right choice should have been to get out of the fight and focus on what they do best: outdoors, conservation and adventures such that with each adventure the youth grows and learns.

My experience is parents DECIDE to drop out of cub scouts and kids DECIDE to drop out of Boy Scouts. But, your comments are correct.

"other changes" ... I see little impact by membership policy changes, except that it helped cub scout recruitment. The biggest change I've seen is making Tiger a formal rank and then Lion (K) a formal rank. The program started recruiting younger to keep the kids out of other activities, but kids benefit much less at those younger ages. I see many parents looking at Lion / Tiger and seeing little benefit, a lot more work and a lot more repetition. I've also seen higher drop out in K/1st grade years and lower initial recruitment numbers. This seems to be a key issue.

Nature of the program. Boy Scout families have dived in and need to keep swimming. Cub Scout families are still testing the water to see if scouting is right for their kid. High commitment versus little commitment. Age of the scouts. Older scouts take their friendship relationships much more seriously. And want those to keep going. Amount of work. Cub Scouts is A LOT OF WORK for the parents. Boy Scouts is much less work and more enjoyable. Boy Scouts is a journey with a goal many scouts want to achieve. Cub Scouts has arrow of light that can be earned even if you join in the last 9/12 months. People put Eagle on resume, but not arrow of light. ... imho ... arrow of light is a reflection on parent and den. Less on the kid. Families can drop cubs right now with little loss. Dropping from Boy Scouts has much bigger implications. Friendships. Ranks. Activities. IMHO, kids lose little by missing the youngest scouting years. Definitely, the K, 1st and 2nd grade scouting years. If I could do it over again, I'd start my boys at Webelos year. Maybe bear. There could be some recovery here as after the pandemic, families may be looking for ways to get their kids out and doing things. And rebuilding friendships.

I like how simple it looks. I'm just concerned how much individual bling will need to be added. World scouter crest. Other items. But that's me. I like simple and functional ahead of flashy and decorative.

IMHO, as long as I've been involved, the charter partner model was BSA finding a way to market scouting, extend the program and create more scouting volunteers. It was never about quality control or vetting leaders.

QUESTION ... Perhaps it was written on a previous page. A current life scout, if thy don't complete requirements by May for Eagle, then, they need to complete this badge for Eagle? GTA section 4 says rank requirements are stable once the scout earns the previous rank and they don't change. This topic should just be part of one or more of the existing citizenship badges. ... OR ... merge all the citizenship badges and add this new badge. Scouts should be out doing more active MBs with their rank representing that activity. We've got just too many "required" MBs.

I actually think our council may be okay as we went thru something similar several years ago. we'll have to see though.

Today, Cleveland Indians will no-longer use the name Indians. Washington is no-longer the Red Skins. Will this quickly follow into scouting? OA themes? Local camps named with Indian terms and tribe names? I expect next summer to arrive at summer camp and everything (camp included) will be renamed. My comfort is the camp is the place, activities and the camp fire late at night.

My fear is if you advertise this ... you could get 100 or 1000 or more trees. If you hand out a phone number or email, that phone and email could be flooded with "Can you pick up ?" Private benefit can be argued because you are helping the public handle. But then again, if you keep it manageable, you might be just handling the trees of the scout leaders and immediate family. IMHO, the number one issue is ... is a scout interested in planning, developing and leading the project? The rest can be solved. On the flip side, you don't want to force a project on a scout. I've seen that happen too and it's often when projects go south.

I've watched how that works. It's like stock holders at an annual meeting. The executive board controls over enough shares to roll over any share holder action. Same with CORs. I've NEVER seen a charter org rep effectively make a difference at the council unless they were already a well established council volunteer. Then, it's really that volunteering relationship occurring and not the COR relationship. Saying CORs are voting members seems more like marketing than any meaningful control. When I say the charter org structure is broken, I mean ... Never seen a charter org significantly oversee volunteers (selection, quality, oversight, ...) Never seen a charter org significantly oversee unit activity or significantly affect quality The only time I've seen COR function significantly is when an elder scouter is looking for a role within a unit. So they volunteer as a COR and often function more like an ASM or a MC.

BSA chartering model has been broken for a long time. This is just acknowledging things need to change. My view has been BSA's existing chartering model works as a marketing tool and not really a functional agreement. Only now that people see liability is it an issue. I say marketing because it's a tool to start the charter discussing how they should be involved and how they can help the scouting unit and thus help BSA. I had an experience 15+ years ago with our pack charter org that viewed the unit as an outside community organization. We kept getting kicked down the road in favor of internal church programs. It was a real issue as we were a 3rd or 4th level priority (1st church, 2nd church sub-groups, 3rd church member groups, 4th community organizations). With the charter org agreement change, I fear our best choice would be to simply rent a school cafeteria for each and every meeting. Period. Maybe ask a church to let us use them as an outdoor meeting spot when we need fire or would have fuel or knives on us.

A lot of that has to do with your age at the time. Memories are often vague or clouded for experience under 10 years old. Definitely more clouded / vague the younger you are.

I grew up Catholic also and went thru CCD in the 1970s. It seems that there was similar opportunity. For us, we met in the volunteer's apartment. My parents would drop us off in front of the building and we knew which apartment to go to. My wife grew up in an evangelical church and there were constant youth ministry activities and things happened. I agree scouting had probably more opportunity, but other programs had similar issues.

@ThenNow ... I question the motivation of the attorneys involved. This feels much more like an attorney get-rich-quick-scheme than a real effort to help plaintiffs. Plaintiffs will get some funds, but it feels like only the attorneys will truly be better off. I don't believe anything new will be learned or changed because of the lawsuit. I doubt the funds will be significant to those damanged.

@ThenNow ... I appreciate your insight and regret your experience. My apologies. Truly, I am sorry. I'd like your thoughts on scouting specific versus broader societal problems. I can't speak to your specific situation as it sounds like the worst case, a trusted leader inflicting abuse over a long time with multiple youth. My thoughts are scouting issues paralleled most organizations where youth were present and reflected a society that was not educated or prepared to address the abuse. My understanding is scouting tried to address the issues before many other programs. Clearly, not perfectly, but with an attempt. ... But church camps to music and sports programs to YMCA programs experienced similar issues. From what I've read, society in general did not handle this well before the 1990s. A few examples I think about was a local music conservatory that did not have glass windows in their practice doors. In 2003/2004, the conservatory added windows to all their doors after one of their instructors was arrested and charged with abuse. I think of rumors about several of my teachers. I think of my 1970s elementary school that had showers turned into storage because of abuse that happened. I think of a roller rink employee / instructor in my state that abused hundreds according to his testimony. I'm not trying to excuse scouting as there is not an excuse for abuse. I'm trying to put it in the context of the society that existed at the time.

Our old SM used one for 20 years and swore by it. Not my style, but a great hat.

I'm hoping by next summer that we can begin to do things. Our troop has been mostly suspended for the last six months. My family caught covid through my son's job. His co-workers follow the rules, but he deals with 15 - 20 customers a day that don't believe it's real and refuse to wear masks or stay home and quarantine. By the time we knew he was sick, we were all infected. Most everyone in the family had minimal symptoms. I've been the hardest hit. I was very sick for two weeks (fever, cough, exhaustion, etc). I'm still feeling fatigue and other minor symptoms after five weeks. This needs to be taken seriously. I'm sad our troop has not been very active, but I'd hate for our troop activities to be a cause of a parent or relative getting sick.

Outstanding. Kudos. I appreciate the info. In some ways, I could see individually chartered patrols as a nice option. I think several of my sons would have liked that. The only challenge would be as youth drop out or age out, how to keep the patrol alive for the remaining scouts. It's the issue girls scouts have. Girls that want to continue often are left without a Girl Scout troop because so many have left.

I wish you the best. Your kids are only young once and you have to decide what is best for them.

It's about money. Pure and simple.

Maybe advocate for Biden / Trump to designate Philmont a national historical landmark.

This cries out for higher court intervention. I don't understand how a few states can retroactively open liability for things that happened in other states. Retroactive? Across state lines? Organization existing in another state? Seems like this cries out going after the laws that opened the liability.

From a fair number that I read, the cops were called. Not all, but a good number. Things did not happen in isolation. As for "secret files" ... people need to think about technology. There was no such thing as an easy background check until around 20 years ago. Even worse, it was very hard to tell if the person was the same person. Joe Carson of Kansas versus Joseph Carsen of Tampa. These files existed to block volunteers and from what I saw, it did work. The real problem is these are being turned around against BSA instead of being held as an example of BSA trying to do good.

"Should" have been, yes. But no one understood the need and ... from what I understand ... no other youth program had an effective YPT before BSA. This is an understanding change that has happened continually since the 1980s and has only become well understood late in the 1990s to early 2000s. IMHO, BSA did a good job. Consider these cases go back to the 1960s ... if you assume 3 million average members (assume turning over every ten years ... some more ... some less) ... that's 18m youth members. Abuse is never good, but I suspect statistically it's about the same as any other youth organization of the time.