MattR

I wish there was more focus on quality rather than quantity. The number of quality programs is probably a better indicator of the future then the number of current youth.

The topic is a cub and dl/parent visiting a troop. Can we leave it out of this as, I believe, there might be other threads on that topic?

While I agree I also think both sides of the bsa needs to be seen. Nobody is perfectly good or perfectly bad. Some of the best lessons come from grappling with the good and bad in people, or organizations. Nobody is ever simple.

We did it on our own. I'm not sure there are any guides. It's fairly simple. But there's really no way to resupply. Our only mistake was the timing. Go later when the skeeters aren't around. It was absolutely beautiful, and just as steep. My GPS said we were doing 500' vertical, up or down, per mile. Even if that wasn't too accurate it was stunning scenery.

Worst night's sleep I ever had was at a camporee in the middle of 3 train tracks. Trains went by all night long. Needless to say, we never went back.

I would not tell the judge anything, seeing as how she hasn't asked me for my opinion. I would, however, invite her to join me at my imaginary bar on my imaginary island for an imaginary mojito with all my imaginary friends and band because, well, nobody honestly cares one wit for my opinion so I may as well make this game productive. Scouting is a game with a purpose? Besides, that would be more fun than arguing the minutiae of the BSA charter.

Welcome to the forum, @Eagle1970. My impression is there will not be one amount to everyone. I'm not sure of the process and I assume others can better explain.

I've seen similar things. Elections are great way for a scout to get some good feedback. Adults can say anything they want and it might not soak in but watching someone else get elected by one's peers for something a scout wants can be very inspiring. I also learned voting is much more useful than adult decision making. Once I asked some scouts why one scout didn't get elected and the response was very elegant. "Well, Mr R, some scouts act very differently when no adults are around." Pure gold. Glad you're having fun.

That could be one interpretation. All of these rules assume national being able to decide whether they want to recharter a council. Is there anything that explicitly mentions what happens if national no longer exists? If not then it's a corner case that hasn't been considered. If so it could be that's what the judge gets to deal with. In other words, we won't know until it happens. What will be will be.

It is about trust, but trust is earned. It's also not binary. Some scouts and adults are never fully trusted while most are. That's the challenge. Once the scouts earned my trust to go off on their own I'd let them. When other scouts asked why they couldn't do that I'd tell them that I didn't trust them, yet. Until then they had to follow the more restrictive rules. That encouraged some scouts to step up, some to just accept it and a few to leave. In the end, I was still responsible for their safety and that's why the parents trusted me.

And a mighty fine story when it comes to improved airline and auto safety.

That sounds like a challenging ticket This is mostly in jest, but if you figure out a way to slowly move adults in the right direction I think it would be great. At the same time I understand your reluctance.

I've never been to a HA base. Backpacking lots of places in the Rockies and Oregon. Rafting the Green River. Kayaking in Peugeot Sound. Backpacking the Grand Canyon. Biking in the Black Hills (there's lots but we did the Mickelson Trail). There are also programs, kind of like Philmont, at a lot of scout camps - and they cost less than Philmont. Tall ship sailing out of LA with the Los Angeles Maritime Institute. I've wanted to canoe the Apostle Islands but the scouts voted and I lost. These all start by asking lots of questions and making lots of phone calls. There are good times to go and bad times (like 2 weeks after the first thaw in the Wind River area in Wyoming when the mosquitos are horrendous (we should have asked)). There is gear to be got, organized, rented, whatever. Just know your abilities. We've fortunately had a lot of river rats in our troop. That's one place I wouldn't do it on my own unless I had someone with considerable experience.

Sounds like the making of a fun game. First, teach everyone how to send and receive the gps data in a photo. Next, play some sort of tracking game. The "fox" has to send images/gps info to the "hounds" every 5 minutes. The hounds try to run the fox up a tree while the fox just tries to get away.

It's easy to push a rope. Get it wet before going to bed on a cold campout. They push just fine the next morning. And that's about all they do. The same idea holds for boot laces and tent lines.

That's what makes scouting fun. Well, one thing. Enjoy!

Just one idea, make committee meetings fun. End the meetings on a social note. We used to have a beer after the meeting was over. It sure helped end long winded speakers. We also had a quarter to a third of the families represented at the meetings, which were every month.

Wherever there are adults that can charm insecure youth, which includes all those places you mention above, there is abuse. That mindset is one ingredient to reduce abuse. Just like car safety, look at the FAA. If everyone dies on a plane the first thing they look for is the black box. Learning what exactly happened is another important ingredient. Rather than general, vague rules about safety, very specific rules based on known cases can address specific ways that failures occured. Next, there's an understanding of the paradox that zero failures is the goal and yet there are failures. This means there's a constant drive towards improvement. Finally, there is no conflict of interest. The organization responsible for safety is not the one making the money. Failures are not hidden. They are public. One other aspect, that I'm not completely sure of, is that an organization can't be sued if it was following the safety organization's rules. Now, compare that to the bsa. Their mindset is that there is no abuse. They have no idea how many abuses there are and for those they do know about they haven't dug in to figure out what caused the failure. Without a doubt, there is a huge conflict of interest as the the safety side of the bsa must compete with the money making side. Cases are hidden. There is no drive towards improving the failure rate. There are all sorts of possibilities. However, there's also a conflict of interest with the legal system that's driving this. The lawyers have goals only related to past failures/victims. They have no interest in preventing future abuse, or they think that threats of a lawsuit is enough to make things better. Worse, there are those that believe that liquidating the bsa will prevent future abuse. That's like the FAA saying we should eliminate airplanes to prevent airplane disasters.

It would be a whole lot easier to solve this problem if those deciding the value of eagle understood that eagle is nothing but a tool to achieve a higher goal. "So, your resume says you're an eagle scout. Tell me some stories of how that has taught you something useful." A nice, open question. If they talk about specific skills they've been tested on that tells the value of eagle to that applicant. If they talk about taking younger scouts under their wing and helping them out, it tells a very different value. As my son told me, eagle will get you another look, but it's not worth anything if you can't talk about the experience.

My observations are: 1) These groups want to keep their kids within their group playing with their kids. They are very tight knit. 2) The bsa does a bad job of training so the only way to learn the program is to watch it up close for a long time. That, along with 1), makes it hard for minority groups to get involved. 3) Camping and the outdoors is not the same as what most people that immigrate here think of. We have bears, snakes and crocodiles and other ways to die and we're used to it. People in South America and Asia don't really camp nearly as much as we do. 4) The bsa is known to be "All American." Unfortunately, this means different things to different people, especially to minorities that regularly see abuse. One crazy with a gun kills a bunch of Asians, in the name of God no less, and it makes it that much harder to convince them to try scouting. The solution to all of these problems, I think, is to spend a lot of time creating relationships with minorities and helping them where they are, rather then asking them to join some unit. For example, I've noticed a lot of Korean churches in my town and that might be a place to start. Create units that support their community rather than conflict with it. But who has time for that?

What I took from the quote in @Eagle94-A1's post is parents are worried about safety, cost, and the uniform. The council people focused on safety. Maybe that's because they had an answer for that. Cost, however was ignored and the parents only saw the equipment and uniform costs. Nobody mentioned the fees.

We always have lightning in the forecast so we pick our campsites accordingly. If I've ever had a sudden surprise lightning storm at 2am I slept through it. I don't doubt they happen but it would be unusual. In the summer, where I camp, storms are normally over by the time we go to bed. As for shower houses, wow, most I've seen are leaky with lots of grounded pipes and wires sticking out of them. Furthermore, putting 40 or so people in one is not likely in the ones I've seen. Given there's a shower house there are also cars. They would be safer, assuming they're not too far away. All in all, I'd say stay in the tent. People are spread out and should be in a reasonably safe location, if they picked a safe spot. We had a storm in South Dakota that was unusual. It sounded like one continuous thunder clap for about a half hour, amongst a big hail storm. We were much more worried about the hail. Given that we were backpacking the best option was to get under the sleeping pad. Surprisingly, no torn tents but a number of bent poles. BTW, who camps within cell service? Maybe I'm just lucky but it's rare to have service.

That is one 13 year old with incredible focus. I should call him to see if he does window trim.

The question seems to be where was the line? Rather than specific actions it might be better to think about the impact on the child. A child is embarrassed vs a child is traumatized resulting in PTSD and lifelong scars (or somewhere inbetween). Rape is clearly over any line and it's always been there. So would enslavement. Being asked to change in front of an adult in the privacy of their living room is also clearly wrong but some kids might be traumatized and some would just go along and never mention it again no matter how weird it seemed. When I was a scout and another told me that an adult wanted him to sleep in the tent with the adult we all said no and we never saw that adult again. As far as I know none of the scouts told anyone. As wrong as it was it wasn't traumatic.

The timber hitch should be the "learning the tautline hitch"