qwazse

About the same for us. Some of the old guard were called back to Heritage Reservation. Some had stepped down from the scouting pro's to staff the camp. Also, we absorbed some of the staff from the now sold Camp Twin Echo. They are passionate about the camp and are pretty sharp. The new staff seemed competent and engaged the scouts during slack time. (E.g., a female staff asked my ASPL his opinion of girl troops and got a respectful earful.) I think that was partly because our scouts, in spite of their personal opinions, felt like the female staff and female Scouts BSA were just like them. Seasoned staff, however, have the skills to work anywhere for more. Certainly the scout from our troop who was a back-office manager making schedules and advancement tracking hum could be doing the same in industry for much much more. So, when times get tough for any of them, they won't be available. The facilities were improved.

That’s what I had thought. But if the scout finishes a hike/catches the minimum/swims the day’s laps … whatever … in two hours? Would you let him/her go back to camp or visit another program area? If you would, then that’s not a block schedule. Regarding the three hours of fishing … I remember fishing with my father-in-law. I’d just get to relaxing and he’d pull anchor. If they weren’t biting after fifteen minutes, he moved on. More than three of those in a row, and we were on our way to the nearest sausage egg McMuffin. The good news was that we generally had bait leftover for the evening.

As I do at the end of the week of camp, I take he evaluation form that the CD gives to me and hand it to the SPL/ASPL to complete. They usually gather a few scouts and ask how they should rate everything. This year, they worked very hard to spell out what they felt didn’t work for them: block schedules. Instead of a 1-hour classes for five days per MB, the camp switched to 3 hour classes for two days, with Friday as an open program day to wrap up MBs. (There we’re also open evenings at aquatics and shooting sports.) My scouts knocked it, a lot! For starters, many MBs did not require that much time — especially for older scouts. But, scouts were told that they could not be dismissed from the program area. The camp commissioners told us that they would try to help the staff fill the time. But scouts told us a different story … They emphasized that it was not the camp staff’s fault. Most MBs simply do not require six hours of counseling. Furthermore, we always counted on some older scouts being back at camp during slack times so that they could teach crossovers and first years. The camp provided a Trail to First class program. But we do not send our crossovers to it. Imagine being committed to one area for 6 hours! That’s grade school, not scout camp! Anybody else camp on a block schedule? Different experience?

And it feels like you are writing an ad hominem, which violates forum rules. I respectfully advise you to relent. Meanwhile allow me to restate … Plaintiffs get help in acquiring large sums. It doesn’t matter how vile the holder of those sums is, it doesn’t matter how righteous the plaintiffs’ cause, the party who helps will reasonably expect half the award so as to continue their agenda, whatever it may be. If this is not neutral enough language, I’m happy to revise further.

If you were to ask me to extract some billions from anyone (legally or otherwise), I would expect about half the take. It really doesn’t matter who you are or how tough life’s been for you. I’d need that much in order to arrange the resources for the next attempted extraction on behalf of whoever else for whom I may be asked to raid a castle.

Would you accept zero dollar payout in lieu of reimbursement for counseling? I have no idea how that would play out. I can’t imagine it being healthy for a claimant to continue to need BSA to do anything for them. A trust would be a better way to go. There’s also the broader question … What’s best for future CSA victims? My gut says a more robust federal mental health infrastructure.

With coaching, we have our SPL and PLC do this. I’m still trying to figure out who decided to put my tent adjacent the snoring SM!

I’m always on the hunt for fresh examples , of which about one in ten I may apply. It’s like I said to the SPL today, he is to fill his little black book with other SPL’s numbers. That’s partly because I enjoy the look on their faces when I put it that way. But mostly because it’s through our youth talking to other youth that really fun outside-the-box ideas begin to trickle in to the troop. Do SPLs take me up in that little bit of seasoned summer camp advice? Not always. But if I didn’t repeat it, the would do it even less frequently.

As long as National is on the hook for every deviation from policy and perversion of the program, expect more rules.

I admire the optimism. And, in fact, when folks start posting vulgar impersonal messages, I typically leave the conversation. As long as this guy isn’t using base rhetoric to other parents it could blow over. On the other hand, arm-chair quarterbacking is the easiest sport in the world thanks to modern media (thus why my campfire is miles into back country and nowhere near cell towers). So it’s even odds that there’ll be a repeat. I once came on a committee (not scouting) that was beleaguered by parent criticism. Not just any parents … These were seasoned, well qualified adults who should have known better than to expect more from staff and volunteers than they could provide. It took some firm, positive communication to get everybody on the same page. I got help with that so it didn’t sound like I was just randomly spouting off (again). It boiled down to a letter to parents saying: We will provide x you are expected to provide y. It went to every parent, even though much of it was designed to bring dissenters to a better place.

The local CO has just given you a free pass to lean in to other things that you are passionate about. You can still be a loyal scout parent. Keep up that YP training. Train others on doing your job. Give them chocolates and flowers regularly because they stepped up. Your spouse will find something to do with that time you’re not in a committee meeting. If scouting is now your thing and you just gotta kick in that “1 hour”, contact your district commissioner, and see how you can volunteer there. Otherwise, there are refugees, immigrants, and homeless who could use a friend for an hour.

It really depends on the scout. Sometimes we go over the board of review process. Sometimes we go over how to respond during an interview, Sometimes we review a little paperwork. But, by and large, a positive, relaxed, reflection on the scout’s career is what we’re here for.

Understood and, frankly, envious — runny coffee aside. I was referring to the Seabase captain, not crew captain, i.e., the director of Seabase.

Welcome, @lildancr73!

My ugly mug doesn’t make it on the manifest either. I would never bring instant coffee. Espresso or bust. Seriously, I think there would be no problem. But, this is the kind of thing the Seabase captain would weigh in on. They might be provisioning your crew with coffee anyway. Drop him/her a line and find out.

Or, as the text from a scout alumnus said, "Oh wow. This website might be the best thing in existence" (Yes, I've kept that in my flip phone for years.) And @MattR, that is precisely where CALTOPO says, "Hold my beer." The ability to add overlays -- or remove all overlays to create a blank map with only your controls -- is priceless. What's really nice is that from the same map you can make print to .pdf's at different scales. You can only save so many maps on their site, but you can download the .pdf's of the one's you like before they expire. A scouter can do a lot with the free subscription -- enough to tailor it to most, if not all, troop activity. I've started a community map of all Eagle projects. I put my brother onto it, and he's mapping hemlocks for his conservation district. I shared it with a Life scout so that he can map out a watershed restoration project.

To be precise, Big Tobacco knew the general use of their product would increase risk (as opposed to generally not using it). I attended Kessler's lecture on the subject while he headed the FDA . It wasn't merely that smokers got cancer (among other things). Lot's of people did. It was that, in company-funded studies, multiple times the percentage of smokers got sick than did non-smokers, tobacco -- especially concentrated nicotine was likely to be addictive, smokers who started as youth were less likely to quit, And the corporate response (documented by whistle-blowers) was to begin ad campaigns targeting youth. With regard to scouting and CSA, there are no such smoking guns. BSA had no evidence that CSA is more frequent as a result of the scouting program. That is why Kosnoff and others who've posted here hypothesize that BSA should have more victims. They are generalizing from what they know to be the background rate. Take 130 million, multiply by .07 (proportion of US males reporting that they experienced CSA), multiply by .1 (the proportion of time youth would be scouting as opposed to other activities like religion, school, sports) ... there should be 910,000 victims. (How we adjust other assumptions will make that number go up and down, but by rights there should be at least a quarter million still alive.) So either: The TCC is an abject failure at finding victims (Kosnoff's point), The majority of victims don't want any part of this action, or Hundreds of thousands of "other" victims don't exist. And, at the moment we only have each others' anecdotal experience (and all the personal biases therein) on which we can base how likely each is.

I rely heavily on CalTopo.com. The ability to customize maps or aerial photos, coupled with a layer of existing trails, makes it a go-to when I need to generate a .pdf for our troop. Not sure if it’s shareable, but here’s a link to one that I train our scouts on https://caltopo.com/m/D202. I’ve added markers for insertion points, geocaches, campsites, and distance radii.

There’s still hope for us for GS/USA cookie gluttons: https://text.npr.org/1006373856

Well, if somebody is sending a scouter angry texts, that could explain shorter-than-average terms.

In terms of promotion, charter certificates were often framed and placed on an institution's wall. It was (and for many organizations, continues to be) an honor to host a scout unit. Many people found out about scouting because they saw scouts doing good works in their building. Where I grew up, the scout's meeting times were in the church bulletin. Chartering a scout unit was (and continues to be) one way of showing you are doing good in your community. When it comes to actually pursuing CO's, it seems that there will be no one-size-fits-all. A CO could be a group of parents who coalesced to form "Friends of Pack ABC." It's difficult to say what you could sue them for if no victim comes forward from that unit. How would they be liable for abuse that happened in another unit? Would any personal coverage they may have apply to this? A denomination, on the other hand, may have liability coverage. I would not be surprised if it traces back to the same insurers who backed BSA's coverage. The appeal for their funds would take a much different form.

I’d tell anyone who would dare cuss me out via text that my flip phone lost their message before I could read it. They can find me at a campfire 3 miles into back country if they want to come and discuss anything. Just bring dessert.

@ThenNow, again, no forgiveness necessary. Just as you, and others have touted 85,000 as a big number ... I have, with some reasonable objectively, identified it is a small percentage, relative to estimates from reliable studies. The review article that @CynicalScouter shared pointed out that only one of the studies estimated lifetime prevalence of victimization. Those tragically high percentages are pretty tight estimates of what's been happening in the average modern American male lifetime so long as he's avoided juvenile detention or jail. But NISVS data are not relevant to Child Sexual Assault. So, we can have a good study that brings nothing to bear on the question at hand. Part of the challenge of my profession is finding good comparison groups to the kids my colleagues have studied, and they are very, very hard to come by. I have been very careful to choose, reliable studies that give credible conservative estimates of what's happening to the population in general. I agree that it is an ecological fallacy to generalize anecdotal evidence to a large percentage of a population. But, here's my point: 85,000 represents a small percentage of 100 million alumni (... rounding the denominator down even further for brevity). Just because it was larger than what BSA expected doesn't change that. Then, number of claims aren't verifiable represent an even smaller percentage. So, I am generalizing my experience with the paucity of detail from some of the victims who I believe and up-scaling it to what we have identified here. It seems most likely that non-verifiable claims in this small percentage of scouting alumni could very well represent a legitimate history of abuse by a scouter or fellow scout. Saying that my assertion is anecdotal does not validate any other alternative assertion that would justify sifting through the existing claims to shore up viability of a claim. Put forward your anecdotal evidence that nearly all of the folks who you believe are victims have minimum recall to meet whatever veracity test one would propose -- and then you have a counter argument. But even if 1 in 10 of the survivors you know are terribly short on details, then that is evidence in support of flat-out accepting the non-verifiable claims as ultimately viable. Statistically, that makes sense. There are surprisingly few TCC claims from this century.

There is a difference between any traditionally collected sample of survivors, and a cohort who signs on as a class of survivors in legal action. What's unknown is the magnitude of that difference. Even if a large percentage are not verifiable (and I couldn't begin to say what constitutes a "large" percentage, given that 85,000 already constitutes a small percentage of scouting alumni), there is no frame of reference to tell us if that the "non verifiable" category represents an inordinate number of false claims. In my very small sample of survivors who I've talked with, none of them could give what I'd call strong corroborating points of reference. The only reason they'd know their abuser was because most were related. I can imagine that point being lost to the victim's memory if they weren't related. In other words, the definition of "viable" might have some basis in law, but not in science. So, there is an invisible bar to be determined, and it is in TCC's interest to get as many claimants to exceed some unknown standard.

I’ll restate: WB isn’t for anyone at any time. You have one advantage: you’ve read how much we don’t like when young adolescents are treated like children. You know that there’s a “Cub Scout Leader” switch, and that you have to tone it down. (FWIW, when I became a Crew Advisor, I needed to find the ASM switch and tone that down.) You were a Boy Scout, you can dig deep and remember what you got out of that program … what went well, what didn’t go so well, what you’d do differently. Knowing this puts you a step ahead of lots of adults. Being humble to your youth covers the remaining ground.