MattR

That's nice news. Thanks for sharing. And welcome back! And yes, the server is slow. We have contacted the authorities.

I suspect there is no grand plan. Rather, there's chaos, just like there usually is. Another hunch is that for the bulk of councils, like mine, all of the property wealth is really a house of cards. Over the past couple of decades it's been spent. Certainly there are councils with money but it's not many. If my council can get silver jte then there are a lot of broke councils. Consider that the bsa declared bankruptcy when the assumed number of cases was in the small number of thousands, when the expected payout was in the few hundreds of millions. Maybe they're not playing bluff. Maybe there is no grand plan because they're essentially broke and the $300M is not far off. And then there's the $150M the lawyers spent. All I can think of is financial investigations. That's a lot of money to figure out that most councils are broke. Maybe they're assuming a great web of offshore accounts and lots of shell companies when the reality is just like everything else in scouting - ductape and wire. The victims will get some money but no satisfaction. The bsa will be punished but won't learn anything. Kids will keep camping but with less toys. The volunteers will muddle on. That's the plan.

We really need to crank up the contention over this. It might bury the story that USC just agreed to pay over $1B for sex abuse.

All fixed. I'd say wear the knots you'd like. I don't even know if there are any rules. I've heard suggestions before. At this point in time, I don't understand why disagreements should get past just that. Some people like lots of rows and some don't. End of discussion.

Did you hear this as a scout? I told some scouts what we used to do and they get all wide eyed. Nothing like this story but the response is part jealous and part you're out of your mind.

They still have to go through the airport full of, how to say this nicely, a bunch of hung over, indestructible students. I agree that zoom is the worst place to do this. It's as impersonable as it gets. I'd suggest a council camp in Tennessee or some other place where the weather is nice. Maybe seeing a council camp will help explain the perspectives of the two sides.

Especially if the girls want to climb trees.

Who is asking? I was my son's SM. We talked and I told him I was on campouts as SM, not as dad. I didn't actually see him very often on campouts but when I did we had fun. I always enjoyed joking around with all the scouts so it wasn't that hard. As he got older I told him I didn't care if he got eagle and there was zero pressure from me to get it. He was just like most scouts and decided at the last minute that he wanted it. I did not help him other than buying lunch at his project. But my son really enjoys the outdoors. He liked the campouts until about 8 months before he aged out and started cutting back. I still went without him. I did that for several years after he aged out. If anyone asked I said he had something else going on. Nobody could question his involvement or mine, we had more nights camping than most. I'd say that if your son is getting burned out then let him take a break. Scouting is a crazy long haul. It has to be fun or else bad things are going to happen between the two of you. This is where you have to be dad to him before skipper. My high adventure memories with my son, in hindsight, was the best part.

What little I remember of GS is that there were typically 2 or 3 different ages in the troops I saw. It was more important to have friends in a troop than a single age. That might have not been typical or allowed, but that's what I saw. Make advancement a bit more flexible in cub scouts, it's already repetitive, and I think it would help. This is more a change in how and when to recruit than anything else. Friendships and similar personalities are just as important as program. When my son took a break from cub scouts it was more about the personalities. After 2 years of 2 scouts that just ruined too many meetings he said he was done. When he came back it was with his friends, and then he had a lot more fun. I knew what was coming in scouts so I was fine with the break. Not many people understand the change and I suspect that's why there's a drive to keep kids in the program for 12 years. Everyone assumes it's like school and you can't skip grades. The council brings in more money with that mindset so they have no reason to change it. There could be all sorts of changes to alleviate burnout. But they all require the ability to tinker with things. This gets back to the thread about new regions and whether councils have much control over the program.

Good point. Maybe competitive isn't quite the right term. More like time consuming. It's not school sports but more club sports. School sports are much more balanced. My son wanted to keep playing with the advanced level soccer players but he didn't want to travel all over the state for competitions. And yes part of that was me not wanting to drive all over the state. A similar thing happened with band. My son wanted to keep playing trumpet but that meant he had to be in the marching band for football and basketball season. And that didn't include just playing in the regular band, which is all he wanted. So he left that as well.

Totally agree. But the burnout is still there. Here's an idea, borrow from the gsusa: let parents create dens of friends. Don't worry about small age differences. Encourage it for Webelos age. Tie these neighborhood dens to a pack. Allow them to be seasonal. The council could help advertise that. One reason it's hard to recruit is that everyone assumes scouting starts at lions and if you miss that then you're behind. That's what needs to change.

Lots of kids start dropping out of all the activities they are over subscribed to just about the time they would be mature enough to have fun in scouts. Just about the time sports gets overly competitive might be a good time to have a scout membership drive. I never did cub scouts and my son got bored with cub scouts and we took 2 years out of the middle of it because I didn't want to see him burn out. I would have been okay skipping all of it. It had it's fun parts but certainly not all those years worth. Or make it a single season per year for 3 years. But that means less money for the council. Until the council can figure out how to make that work this is all just wishful thinking.

Let's try and get this back on topic: the new territories plan and tangentially how to staff it. It's not about tenting regs and yp. I believe there are other threads on that topic. I looked at the territory map and noticed that mine is bigger than an old area. It goes from Mexico to Canada. I'd hate having to do meetings there. Anyway, I assume it's by population. This territory is probably the leader when it comes to small troops.

Touchè. The future of the bsa, if there is one, is going to require a lot more humility on both sides. Too many hatchets flying around that are not in an approved range, so to speak.

I don't know, your estimate makes as much sense as any other. Everyone was surprised by the number of claiments and I mean everyone. It is nearly 2 orders of magnitude greater than any other case. Given that and the fact that the bsa can make a case that it has been trying to reduce incidents, how is It that the bsa was negligent to the same level found in these other cases? They weren't moving scoutmasters around like the diocese were moving priests. In the MSU case reports of abuse were ignored. Given that nobody had any idea how many bsa cases there were, nobody was being ignored. The negligence isn't as clear to me. I have no idea what the number should be and maybe looking at the value of the bsa is not right but that's exactly what everyone is using.

i.e., the scouts don't trust the adults. That both sounds like human nature and one of the bigger challenges holding back troops. When a scout says "I just don't like that" it might mean "I don't know how to do that and don't want to make a fool of myself" or "I tried that once before and did make a fool of myself" or "I'd really like to do that but 'they' told me it's not cool" (and 'they' might also be afraid of making fools of themselves) or "I'm more worried about getting cold/hungry/wet/etc" or "I don't have the money for that" or "I don't want to miss the dance at school" or .... For some scouts they just don't know how to talk about things that bother them. Figure this out and you'd have a lot more happy scouts and parents.

I don't think it's the only thing left. Now, it is if the only tool they have is to write rules. But maybe they could think a bit wider. Consider my first point way up above: shooting sports, water sports and climbing. Given that those are always popular activities at summer camp maybe we should be doing more of that. I would be willing to get tool certified to both allow my scouts to have more fun and, just as importantly, make the g2ss more realistic so there's less cutting of corners. Now, before you say a certification process is expensive, just make an online training for it. Considering that the most important training the bsa has, YPT, is done online, this should be easy.

No. We first moved to our current house some 25 years ago, have never paid for cable and are just a bit too far away to pick up any channels. Hence, my last point about TV. If they trusted 90-99% of units then those units would be able to use electric screwdrivers and climb on rocks above 6 feet.

Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing anyone?

There seems to be a few issues in all of this. The use of simple rules to avoid danger rather than, say, training as used for water, shooting and climbing activities. Creating rules for problems that don't really exist, such as holding a scout upside down. For those that don't want to be held upside down, just ask the scout and take their word for it. National doesn't trust units and vice versa. Units can do as they please because the only corrective action is drastic and therefore rarely used. It doesn't take many bad actors before we all suffer. Is that a reasonable summary?

Actually, if those scouts belong to that church what's wrong with taking them to anti-abortion events? Some churches do use the BSA program as their youth program. Period. I can't even imagine what your point is other than the two of you don't like each other. Why are you getting so upset about little details if, in a few months, this whole organization is going down the toilet?

If you need a name and a face I'll volunteer for that. I don't mind getting in anyone's face if I believe in something. How's that song go, freedom is just another way of saying you have nothing less to lose? The Buddhists have a slightly different version of that. Freedom comes from wanting nothing. I have a good story about that but maybe later. As for letter writing, you make a good point. My guess is the councils are screaming about their camps, but yes, we could join in on that. Mosby never returns my calls, though and I don't have any other contacts. Got any addresses? I can write letters. As for recommendations, that's a bit harder. What I think is needed is beyond coming up with some simple rules. It's a different culture. That's going to take real leadership. How do you suggest finding new leadership? My guess is there are people that have good ideas that are already around, if they haven't been laid off. How do you enable them? Actually, what about sending ideas to the TCC? They're in a negotiation so what's wrong with them saying they want so much money and they want a training program that measures results and publishes numbers, or whatever they would like to see to ensure progress? Talk about leverage. Honestly, if you could pull off encouraging the TCC to both get the money they want, leave enough of the BSA to survive and fix it's major problems so it could grow, that would be the best long term scenario I can imagine. Anyway, back to the funny story. I had a scout that just didn't care for scouts. He finally decided he wanted eagle just to get his dad off his back. He was being a major butt so we had the talk - straighten up or I'll never sign off on eagle (before anyone complains I was violating the rules, you're right, save your grief). This scout got very big eyes and went home. I got lots of email and phone calls from people all over the council saying: You can't do that, this scout's dad is on the national board. I said so what, this scout is in my troop and that's all that matters. Long story short, this scout wanted eagle for more than what he thought, he got serious, he became a roll model for all the other scouts and both he and his dad thanked me. It doesn't always work that way but usually it does and every scout that wanted eagle got it. Well, there was one scout that forgot to send the paperwork in, but that's a different story.

Probably not the mothers, either. I once had a parent that was so bad I had to engage with his idiocy so he'd leave the other parents alone. I finally got him out of the troop. However, this issue of COs not ensuring a well run, safe program has been going on for decades. This might be a good way to explain the quality control issue. The BSA's model has always been they provide the program but the CO ensures the program. That's just not happening anywhere.

That is way cool.

Many responses jammed into 1 post: If this thread suddenly becomes 5 pages shorter because I pulled all the YP sub topic out please don't be offended. It's just getting harder to figure out where the line is. That said, one aspect of YP is training the scouts. Whether leadership or First Aid, I've noticed that in the heat of the moment scouts are not prepared to deal with serious issues (an unconscious person or an angry scout refusing to help). There needs to be "muscle memory" to lean on when your brain is screaming WTF. So we did exercises that tried to recreate, with game playing, some of those emotions at a very low level. We talked explicitly about what would be going through one's head. The scouts said it helped. I'm just wondering if this wouldn't help scouts identify and recognize a bad situation. Related to this is improving trust between scouts and adults, or even scouts and older scouts. All in all, bring the subject of child abuse out and shine a bright light on it. As it becomes easier to talk about it will become easier for scouts to ask for help and thus reduce incidents. @ThenNow, in response to your question about recommendations, I'm not sure we know enough about this topic. What I see that prevents solving problems is that national does not have a good process for improving much of anything. I started a thread on this but not much came of it. My recommendation would be change the mindset to constant improvement. Zero is the goal but that's unattainable. Certainly it's a contradiction but as soon as national groks that, they will start improving.