MattR

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.

Why not buy all the patches and pins now and keep chugging? Irrespective of what happens have the B&G and make it fun. The scouts don't care about all of this.

It's the Yiddish in me. When everything looks hopeless and grim, make a joke of it. Subtle is better. Honestly, it's the only way to accept what you have no control over and move forward. The only question I have is will I have the energy to help in whatever scouting is after all this is over. It's easy to talk on a forum. It's a lot harder at my age to stay warm on a cold campout.

Just curious, is there a competition to see who is the last eagle? The boys could play this game as well.

Okay everyone, it's time to chill out. Things are getting a bit intense. It's late. Get a good night's sleep. This crisis will still be here in the morning.

Yeah, you're probably right. But they still don't have to worry about being sued.

Welcome to the forum, @SilverPalm. I made my scouts dance for lost items. Honestly, I got tired of picking up their stuff all the time. But, whenever a shy scout had to dance it was known among all of the older scouts to dance along with him. It worked. Soon the shy scouts realized it was nothing to be afraid of. A couple of times I had to dance as well. The scouts loved that. It all depends on the attitude, not the task at hand.

What are the judges priorities? I ask because all of the discussion about how the BSA is getting hit by this when few others are brings up a really good counter point. Only the BSA is in the position to improve youth protection. BPSA and Trail Life have little incentive or resources to do any more than they are because they have nothing to lose. The school districts, too, can give lip service to this subject because of whatever government protections they have. Only the BSA can improve things and has the motivation and resources, but not if they're liquidated. If I were the BSA I'd be pushing real hard to let everyone know what they have successfully done in the past to mitigate abuse, admit what has failed, talk about how they want to improve and let everyone know they are uniquely set to do so. If they honestly believe they have something that works then they should use that. Granted, the response might be "then why were there 11k abuses in the past so many years?" There response should be it's a lot better than the 2000/year we used to have and we'd like to improve it again. Make it part of a settlement proposal. If the judge is interested in reducing abuse in the future, throwing out the baby with the bath water might bring pause. But then again, I looked and there is no user name of Mosby on scouter.com. Oh well. It was a thought.

We don't know. I used to buy cars by walking away from the dealer. If they know you can walk away then you have leverage on the final price. The bsa put out an initial offer and the TCC started walking out the door. That's all we know for now. I wouldn't start pushing scouts to get eagle or selling your gear. Besides, I think the eagle brand is taking a huge hit - what's it going to be worth if you're afraid to bring it up? Keep working on what you have control over. Teach scouts the Law and Oath.

@skeptic, I'm going to pick on one of your posts a bit. Please bear with me for a bit. That's about one sexual abuse per day. Given that the G2SS won't even let scouts use electric screwdrivers it's hard for me to see how one sexual abuse per day is acceptable. How responsible is the secondary overseer if they know their barriers are being avoided? Far worse then child rape? The only thing that fits that category is murder. I think this is your real question. First, we're never going to make that number zero. But one per week is a lot better and one per month is even better still. So maybe a better question is what does it take to reduce that number? It starts by looking very closely at every one of those 11,000 cases and start looking for commonalities as to how the barriers were avoided. Pick the low hanging fruit and work on that first. It's not a lot different than how Toyota became so good at quality. If you compare that approach of always pushing towards zero compared to the current approach of throwing training over the wall for the units and assuming it's the greatest system there is, there's a really big change in the mindset. Now, given that Toyota still makes higher quality cars than most everyone else, they can charge a premium for that, and they started working on this about the same time the sexual abuse exploded in the 60's, it implies that a) there is no simple solution, b) this takes a long time and a mindset of constant improvement, and c) that is the only way to create a system that everyone else wants to emulate and sign their kids up for.

Had Moderna #1 yesterday. Had a bit of a headache last night. Coffee took care of that this morning. And suddenly I just don't feel like doing anything. It's really good I made all that chicken stock yesterday.

No worries. I guess my point was that their main defense evolved from a group of people telling themselves it's fine. The term echo chamber comes to mind. That seems to be a common problem in failing companies and armies.

Shoveling deep and wide or just too naive to understand the situation they were in? BTW, the ais map is not correct. Unfortunately, I noticed that the school my son's pack was in was listed as a CO and it is not on the map. And I checked another database, it is the only school in the US with that name.

I started replying here but realized it belonged in the thread I already split off about YP/Quality. I'd suggest, to keep this thread focused, if people want to talk about how to do scouting after ch 11 they start a new thread.

I was responding to the ch 11 thread but thought it better to put it here. National's (non) management of ch 11 has been no surprise to me. Quality has never been a serious interest. Also, the numbers of abuses by year is what I feared. I agree it's proof that yp in the bsa needs to improve. I think the ypt issue and the lousy management are related. Rules alone won't fix these issues. The bsa, if anything, thinks simple rules will solve every problem. But most problems are people problems and the top down rule dumping that the bsa has will never be good at solving people problems. When and if it gets time to pull an improved scouting out of the ashes I think changing the top down model to a real servant leadership structure is one thing that has to be done. That is the only way I see abuse events will decline. It's too easy for units to ignore rules.

Is it possible we're overreacting? I mean, follow the money. If the TCC doesn't get a 66% vote then all these lawyers working for the TCC get? Much less than going after each individual case.

I tried. I failed. Someone told me my pay grade doesn't cover this. I have to go get a vaccine shot and make chicken stock to make it through the upcoming storm. I locked the thread. If you really think you can move this thread forward, please just start a new one.

I would have thought about it, except @ThenNow said it was addressing an important concern. Namely whether everyone in general and you in particular understand the process by which many youth get sucked into a soul crushing situation they don't know how to get out of. Given that he has been there before and that you care deeply for your students it might be good to let this continue. I was hoping we can get past the simple insults like "psycho babble" (or whatever it was) and into something with a bit more experience. In the old map maker's lingo: There Be Dragons - and just possibly a deeper understanding as well. But, you're free to not participate.

This was pulled off from the Ch 11 thread. However, it seems to be going towards the rails. And to be honest, for once I understand why. Human dignity is the cornerstone of my definition of right and wrong. I'll leave it at that.

I'm locking this topic until after I pull out the YP sub-thread. @RememberSchiff @John-in-KC The new thread is: This thread is about chapter 11 stuff, like lawyers and money and filings.

I suppose it is a corner case but given that I was in the Transatlantic Council I'm good with it. 😁 The fact that there are 2 Belgian patches also helps. That's where I lived. Good luck.

Just some comments. Yep. This is why I think it's a push. The culture between council and units needs an overhaul. That's beyond my abilities. This is what I mean by program quality. Eagle is a method and not a goal. Heads on pikes is the atomic solution when all else fails in tough love, so we probably agree. The BSA just seems to let everything go until heads on pikes needs to be used. I refuse to be a commissioner because all they do is step in when it's heads on pikes time. They have no authority to fix things until it gets that bad. They can deal with drunk scouters but they can't deal with troops where nobody knows what patrol they're in, including the patrol leaders. YP issues? As mentioned above there is no control. I agree completely. This idea would require a big change in culture that would only happen if it was driven from the very top. The volunteers can not patch up the existing culture. I don't think there needs to be much change in the rules, but the mindset of councils and units needs to fundamentally change. The main goal of councils and districts has to be developing stronger units. The mindset of units has to be subordinate and trusting of council. I've seen companies turn themselves around and it always starts with someone at the top seeing how it should be and pushing hard for it. The only way I see this happening is if national becomes weak enough that some councils figure this out on their own. Unfortunately, most councils are broke and all they see is money. That seems to be the root of all the problems.