MattR

I've always thought before that having a wider age range in scouts helped promote the magic of older scouts working with young. To me that magic was what scouting was about. And yet I can see how splitting that age group could help the scouts see the transition from younger scout to older. I had a lot of conversations with scouts along the lines of you're no longer the young scouts, it's time to start helping out. Something about the UK group system could also help that as well. The BSA also struggles with the transition between age ranges because they're separate units. If the same leadership ran through the entire age range then maybe those transactions would be easier. It's nice to talk about it but speaking of an uphill battle ...

Lamb is vegetarian?

I think I might hijack this thread again. The topic of trailers is a type of hot button issue for me. It's not the trailer so much as the mindset it creates. I'm fine with a trailer to make it easier for more scouts to get in fewer cars. What I dislike is the attitude of "we have a trailer, just bring all the gear we could possibly need." I'd talk about Thrifty and it just never resonated with anyone. What people want vs what they need. When I did a lot of backpacking I got really good at knowing the difference. I forced the troop to dump the huge patrol boxes that did take four adults to move. We replaced those with a patrol tote on wheels that two scouts could easily deal with. I wanted to go one step further and do similar to what I did as a scout; divy up all the needed patrol gear at the meeting before we went camping and leave the rest behind. Nobody understood. I'd point out the cooking requirements that included making a list of gear needed and, again, it just never connected. Now, I just feel like I'm getting in the way. I don't participate anymore, because of things just like this.

I can only tell you what my troop does. Decades ago we wrote a document explaining the process of selecting a new SM or CC. We've followed that ever since. If that doesn't exist take this as a learning experience. Since there seems to be only one person willing to take the job, as seems to be typical anymore, most of this is moot. However, if the new guy is not acceptable to enough people then the committee should have a discussion about how to go forward. This all said, the behind the scenes talking to people to figure who is interested is the unofficial part that's going to happen. Best of luck in these tough times.

My observation: Nobody enjoys cleaning. So everyone should help. The scout in charge doesn't actually clean anything. Instead, he or she is responsible for finding tasks and delegating them, making sure they get done. Next observation: a patrol that understands teamwork has no problem with cleaning or anything else. A patrol that has poor teamwork won't be helped by a duty roster or even a fairly good PL. It takes a rare leader that can create good teamwork from bad.

We need a watermaster as we have to bring our own water. Either way, it's typically hard to cook without water. To me, the whole point of the duty roster is to get the scouts out of the idea of "we just do it all together". It's a tool for the PL to learn how to delegate - grubmaster, cleanup, eventmaster ... Maybe it would help to sit down with the plc and have them make one with some adult questioning.

But if we had one then we couldn't place bets on the next time you'd remind us we didn't have it.

Depends on each individual. Some will, some won't. I'm not sure how this is really different than asking about any alumni. They should and will likely do what best motivates them. Again, depends on each individual. Depends on how whole they are. My father, who left Germany in 1939 when he was 12, never became whole. He never forgave German society for what it did to him. He wasn't too keen with Christian society either. Individual Germans and Christians he would like but as a whole, he was always guarded. Trauma can run deep. But there were many holocaust survivors that did fine. It seems to me it depended on the support they got from family. My dad's family was not great. As for the CSA survivors, I would expect something similar. Some will be able to forgive and some won't. As long as there are survivors that are not whole, of course. Maybe a better question is will the BSA and volunteers be perpetually humble about what happened? Tonight is also the first night of Passover. The story is about people escaping slavery. Not just physically but emotionally as well. We're all slaves to different things as well, so this is a fairly broad topic. It's also complicated. Truth be told, Moses was never going to live to see the promised land. And yet, Moses still had a good life. Lots of lessons to be had. Sometimes it is all about the children.

This thread has been locked until tomorrow morning. I asked nicely for people to get back on topic. As court is not in session, there's nothing to talk about so this shouldn't be a problem. If this makes no sense to you then please read my previous post.

Has the judge ever discussed anything about CSA in other youth activities? Or how society has changed, anyone is picking on the BSA, the media or how the bsa is safe enough? I haven't seen it. She has no interest in "the files" so those posts that mention them likely don't belong here. The judge is interested in the bankruptcy case. This includes the claimants, debtors and those getting swept into this like the insurance companies, the COs and the councils. That's it. This may seem too restrictive to some of you but please think about how many posts are in this thread. This is part 9. There are roughly 100 pages per part and, I don't know, 20 posts per page? That's roughly 20,000 posts. If you want to start another thread about the files, the media, and all the rest, go ahead. To be honest, I doubt anyone will and if they do it will quietly die. Every time I've pulled out a sub thread that's exactly what has happened. It doesn't appear that anyone's opinion has changed. Of course, that could be the vast majority of all social media so I'm not mad at anyone. You're all rather passionate about your views and they're all valid. And yet repeating the same arguments over and over again ... isn't going to get anyone outdoors.

I tried and got a 404 error.

We created another thread for this sub topic. This thread is limited to what we think the judge is interested in and I doubt where other CSA occurs is on her radar. In the past I've tried to keep these threads separate. I gave up on that.

During covid I started watching a YouTube series that gets deep into the science of human biology. It's called medcram and the original intent is to help med students learn. It's very geeky but well explained. Anyway, I learned yet another reason why we should spend time outside: near infrared sunlight (the stuff that warms us up) helps create melatonin within our cells during the day, which in turn is used to clean out mitochondria from oxidative stress (caused by creating energy for cells) thus helping our immune system deal with such things as covid. One cool part is that near infrared will go deep into the body, including going through bone. So, sunshine literally helps clean your brain. Another cool thing is that green plants do a great job of reflecting infrared light (but not UV) so hanging out under a tree is great. People that sit inside all day clearly don't get as much sunshine but new, high efficiency windows and lights make it worse because they create or transmit less infrared. Bottom line, spending time outside is good for you.

And when you go to the website the kits are $20 each. I also wonder how those kits are going to get to Ukraine. My guess is it would be better to just write a check to someone that has everything already set up to, say, buy first aid supplies in Poland and just drive them to the border. But to answer your question, this is certainly a duck.

Welcome to the forum, @GeoJeff83

Welcome to the forum.

What are gross receipts? It's in the indirect expenses category. Here's my guess. The fundraiser is to offset some other expenses like the cost of upkeep on the pool, shotguns, whatever. Those other expenses are the gross receipts. The amount of money made to offset those expenses was $128k in contributions - $60k in direct expenses = $68k. No longer inept but not very cost effective. I mean, if half of my donations went to the cost of raising the money I'd not be thrilled. I also wonder how much salary was in the gross receipts.

Four years in a row of losing money while fundraising means either the council is inept or they're writing off other expenses against it so they don't have to pay as much taxes, or some such accounting games. It's likely legit and opaque unless you dig into the details.

That's great. That should help a bunch of troops. Most of my scouts found HA trips the highlight of scouts and the more the variety the better.

It seems like the only lesson to the scout is just tell you what you want to hear.

I never said no but there was pressure to say no when our troop got too big.

@Eagledad, I can't doubt your views, they're what you've seen. What I've seen are plenty of friends that would have thrived with their kids in scouts, that were great about letting and encouraging their kids to try and fail, but had no interest in having their kids in scouts. It's true that the BSA's advertising shows a lot of outdoors but I've never seen those ads in other than links in email I'm sent. Instead, try Google boy scouts and look at the images tab. It's almost entirely scouts in uniform saluting the flag. While I have no problem with scouts saluting the flag, it doesn't conjure fun in the outdoors, or playing. Maybe the BSA is trying to change that perception but they've been failing at that for a long time. I agree that the BSA's program, when done right is a balance between fun and purpose, but the people it attracts and the methods it talks about don't really mention fun. Honestly, why isn't fun a method? If I read the list of methods, without any experience of scouts, I wouldn't have put my kids in it. At best it sounds like a classroom for outdoor skills. Go to the BSA's website where they describe the methods. Search for "fun" and all you'll find is "fund raisers." Maybe we struggle with so many new parents because they actually read the manual.

I'm going to push back on this a bit. I've met plenty of parents and kids that would have really enjoyed the free range part of scouts and yet had no desire to join. It seems to me the perception of scouts is more organized activity than make up your own fun. Advancement can easily be seen as everyone fulfilling nearly identical rrequirements. An expensive uniform that is used for meetings and travel is, well, uniform. The idea that scouts can choose their own activities is buried way down in what anyone sees from the outside. If that's the perception then is there any wonder why we struggle with parents that want highly structured activities? Maybe scouts is attracting the wrong kids and parents.

From my experience, nobody has.

I think 2. Is supposed to be Zero Hunger. Follow the links and 1 and 2 go to the same page.