MattR

Okay, it's pinned. @ThenNow, If you go to the home page you'll see that the forum is composed of numerous sub forums. This thread is in the issues and politics sub forum (why, I don't know but it is). Anyway, if you click on the I&p sub forum there is a list of threads sorted by last mod date, except for those pinned, which are kept at the top of the list.

High Adventure trip anyone? What are the prettiest couple hundred miles with plenty of camping. Is this one of those start in Florida in March and get to the end before fall gets too cold.

I'm assuming it would help survivors when they're ready to talk, to whatever level they're comfortable with. You were the first to have the courage to speak up and there have been a few more since. We can pin the thread so it stays visible when people look through the forums. Just let me know if you think that would help.

It would likely get lost in that thread, especially in the next few days. If I could I'd set up a sub thread for everything related to the bankruptcy to keep some of the many subjects cohesive, but I don't have those powers.

How is that possible?

You must have gotten the newer ones. Mine have no elastic. I do find the buttons difficult to work when it's cold and I really gotta go, but wool is great in the snow while active. Mine cost $15 army surplus but the price went up once everyone realized how great they are for snowshoeing. But, back to rain. It's all about breathability. I'd think the skirt with summer weight gators might do the trick.

Interesting. I'm always more comfortable in snow than rain. Now I know why.

I had the same thought months ago. If it could help then I'd be in favor. Not sure about the electrical hook ups, though

Unfortunately, any feedback is just speculation. We don't know.

Fun fact. Thanks.

@MGinLA, welcome to the forum and, uh, sorry about losing your first post.

I forget, what's after Storming? That reminds me. In another thread I asked what people needed for their kids to enjoy scouting. It was yet another attempt to get people to focus on being constructive, and it was ignored. Anyway, I thought of one more thing that would really help. Leadership. From the very top. Someone that has a vision and can get everyone on the same page. I read about this somewhere. Or maybe it was in a class I took. Something about animals and parking tickets? It's surprising how difficult it is to find a real leader.

Has anyone considered that .07% is a really bad number when it comes to quality? That's 1 in 1400. If 1 in 1400 cars had serious failures, to the point where it goes to court, people would be really upset. We should do better for our children. When it comes to quality there is no acceptable failure rate. There is, however, an acceptable change in failure rate.

Unfortunately, that money is gone. It's time to let it go. How about a small fundraiser to get you through the rest of the year?

Maybe not. What is it that your child needs/needed to enjoy scouting? I'll answer for me but I'd like to hear your and other people's opinions on this. My son needed a camp that was big enough for a bunch of scouts and not too far away. He needed a bunch of like minded kids and adults that also enjoyed the outdoors and the ideal of scouting. Finally, the adults that did all the work needed a program that they could follow. I'm not sure there's any priority to this list. One more thing that needs to be added to this list moving forward is a YP protocol that will keep us from ever coming back to where we are now. For us, the camp we most used was the biggest but the rest, as far as we were concerned weren't nearly as important. They made it easier to put on a monthly camping program. That was nice but we spent most of our campouts at one place. It was an easy place to go camping and big enough that we could do a lot of activities at. We camp in a lot of places but many have nothing to do with scouts, so occasionally traveling to find new places is also in the mix. Those were hard assets. The people and program were soft assets but they made it much easier to create a calendar. If we can keep a nearby camp, can still attract families and have a documented program that we can argue about here, then we'll do okay. We don't need HA bases. We don't need OA. A district would be nice but we certainly don't need council other than taking care of the camp. We don't need a lot of things. Put the scout store on Amazon. We also will continue to have the same problems we had before all of this came about. Kids still want to do more than be lectured at. Adjusting or tweaking the program will do a lot more good than saving Summit or preventing the loss of some of our smaller camps.

It was the "to darn bad" comment I was referring to. You could have just left that out. I agree that "just because others are doing it" is not a good defense, mostly on moral grounds as I don't understand the law.

I'm not sure comparing rates is much help. Youth were/are being abused and the number is significant. I did a search on school districts sued for child abuse and the exact same subject came up for a few districts as for the bsa. In the one case I saw teachers were passed around much like priests in the Catholic church. Maybe a better question is when/how will what we see at the bsa turn up in school districts.

This is the type of commentary that doesn't help.

Thanks for the feedback.

I would like to not lock the thread but we seem to be in a rut that we need to get out of before any progress can be made. Here are some observations that might help. First, human dignity is the cornerstone of the Bible. (yep, hang in there.) It is used to resolve conflicts. It is the goal of how to treat each other. The level of evil or sin is based on how much indignity one causes another. Shy of murder I can't think of anything more undignified then an adult chronically abusing a child. The main subject is child sexual abuse but we also heard about parental abuse yesterday. Next, PTSD can cause people to boil over with anger. I've had scouts in my troop with PTSD and I've volunteered at a veteran's support organization that dealt with a lot of PTSD. All I can say is their anger can take over any rational thought. It just is. I can't fix it. I can't change it. All I can do is control how I respond to it. At the same time this forum is mostly people that have spent a lot of time donating their time and resources to scouting. When your year pin only measures decades then you've invested a lot of time. We're dealing with the shock of the upcoming change, which nobody knows at the moment. While I respect the pain of watching something one has built getting washed away by the court system, it does not compare to the indignity of chronic child abuse. Everyone says they understand that and yet, when emotions boil up, there's the stray comment that starts with "I understand, but ...." All I ask is that you please try and understand how this comes across to someone that has suffered a horrible indignity. We can't control the outcome of the legal process. We can only control how we react to each other on this forum. There are people here that struggle with controlling their anger and we need to be Kind. Right now things are going really bad. Let's live up to what we believe in. Now, for the important points being made. Yes, the BSA has done a lot of good. Yes, most of us have donated a lot of time and don't want to see that thrown out. Yes, the claiment side is not perfect and deserves some critique. Yes, the 85k cases are not at all well understood. Yes, constantly posting the same thing over and over is like shouting to someone that doesn't speak your language. Yes, the legal system is like operating with a chain saw. And yes, no matter what anyone says, Strang still bothers me. But, what can we do? Does anyone honestly think they can change the outcome? What's coming will be. All we can do is control how we react to it. That's it. This forum, however, we can control. Just a suggestion: This thread is about chapter 11. I would be fine saying any post not related to that will be removed. And I mean anyone's opinions as well. The 1000 links posted above would be removed as they don't contribute to understanding what has been done in the court. One link to one website with the reports is all that's needed. We can start another thread about what is fair and what you'd like to see related to chapter 11. How do we keep that civil? How do we deal with comments that just grate on some people's nerves? I'd like to just ask everyone to be more scout like, but that won't work. I barely have the time to read them. If people want to talk about how they want to rebuild scouting once this is over, that's easy, go for it. But don't try to change someone else's opinions or discount them. The only way out of these disagreements is to better understand where people are coming from. I learned something yesterday from @Eagle94-A1 that surprised me and it probably took some courage to put it out there. The same goes for @ThenNow. As I understand what people have experienced it's easier to appreciate their point. Some comments are just trying to get in someone's face. The most trouble I get into is posting late at night when I'm tired. Again, any ideas on how to control it? Some people react well to me hiding their post and telling them what's wrong. Not sure about others. If anyone has constructive ideas on how to keep things civil and moving forward feel free to post. I don't know what the other moderators think about all of this, and I clearly haven't considered it too long. Maybe we can discuss this elsewhere.

Okay everyone. Let's all step back for a bit. I can lock the thread and force it but I'd rather not.

Well, then maybe the SM has to take the training on how to deal with adults that get in the way. In my experience these people are not that common. Most reply positively to gentle coaching. And for the ones that don't get it, remove them. I had a dad that was much more disruptive than any parents you've described. The rest of the troop backed me up. After a month he was gone and we could get back to scouting. A month after that another troop had removed him and his son became a lone scout. Part of the sm's job is teaching adults. Granted, this isn't explained anywhere but that's more reason to have training at a campout for adults.

I like the idea of a patrol focus to teach that skill. Give patrols a bunch of options rather than a camporee style program. It could be advancement, skills, or just fun with boats, shooting, hiking or whatever else the camp supports. But the same thing should be done for the adults. They need something to do to keep them from annoying scouts. That might solve @Eagle94-A1's concerns. Training for patrol method. Put them in their own patrols for doing some fun/skills. Maybe roundtables and all the commissioner stuff could be done as well? And get troop committee meetings out of the way as well. Or help work on the camp. Scouting is best when done outdoors, so this idea has some merit.

Now I understand. I was confused as well.

There are comments about STEM, women, school, etc. that are missing something. Scouts would enjoy a program raising chickens in their back yard if they actually got to make a chicken coop and raised the chickens rather than talked about the different types of chickens, safety requirements for raising chickens and presented a report to their patrol about different types of chicken coops. It's not what they work on, it's that they do something. The real challenge to this program is coming up with all of these ideas that have scouts doing something every single week that builds into either a campout every month or some other major event. 4H has a project. Robotics have a big competition. Sports have some sort of playoffs. They're doing something constantly. Scouts have a lot of boring meetings because that's the easiest thing to create. Standing up and having a scout recite finger printing MB requirements is really easy to set up. I use that example because I just heard my troop did that. If there was one thing I'd change it would be related to the MB's. They all have great potential for doing fun stuff. I would rewrite all of them and greatly reduce the "school" part of them. I would make all of them have the option of doing a 3 month project for scouts that really want to dig in and do something more. I would also make them so an entire patrol can work on them at the same time. If a patrol wants to make a club house by lashing poles together over a week, that would be a great way to do pioneering MB. It might take a month or two to get the poles and ropes but it would make for a fun memory. One more thing, the outdoors is still quite popular. If I want to hike on a popular trail I have to get up early if I want to find a parking spot at the trailhead. The nearest national park started an appointment system to go for a hike during covid and we're afraid they're going to keep it. Camp grounds are booked months ahead. Skiing is so popular it has priced many people out. People like the outdoors. It's what made the pandemic tolerable for me. The question is why can't the BSA use this interest? I'd say that what's driving the kids away is our lack of imagination in getting them doing things. I know how to teach a kid how to tie a bowline but I don't know how to make a bowline something a kid needs to have fun. The phrase "we do fun" might be a good goal.