qwazse

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.

One more thought ... maybe have an adult skills challenge. Put up a wall chart of requirements for you all. That way the scouts know that you are trying to learn this stuff too -- and they aren't even getting a patch for it. Include the BSA-required trainings as well. I was surprised how much it meant to some of the boys that we went through Scoutmaster training (of course, that came with a patch). Have your SM and ASM(s) signed up for Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills? That's a challenge for most of us to fit in our busy schedules. So, getting them to commit to it is important. As you've experienced, Wood Badge isn't for everyone. But, keep an open mind and clear any road blocks hindering the SM attending within a year or two.

You're not wrong. https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/safety-moments/charcoal-safety/ It takes decades to learn how to undo a bad habit, and you just found one example as to why. That said, I started collecting some 2nd degree burns when when we were scouts and our new camp introduced charcoal fire starting with kindling, using chimneys made from #10 cans. It took a while to learn that hot-pot tongs were useful for things that weren't pots!

It also includes any parent or volunteer for scouting of any sort who is not registered with BSA.

Specifically, it means Jerry Sandusky. Absent this, the original statute would not have included his colleagues. But generally it means any volunteer who works with youth. (I think that includes youth themselves. Our church puts high school students who volunteer with younger youth through mandatory reporter training.) Our councils here have not split hairs. Every adult leader is to act as though they are a mandatory reporter.

Also, some fine print that scouts and scouters find useful: What that means: not everybody has to sign off on requirements in the order presented in the handbook. One scout might want to master lashings, another map and compass, another cooking. You might find one of yours has forgotten all of the memorization. Tell her, “That’s okay. We’ll come back to it when you want ovals to sew on your shirt. For now, is there some other skill in the handbook do you want to master?” Get your adults focused on skills. The advancement will follow.

With a start-up (especially with adults trying to get in the groove), I would proceed in a what that doesn’t suck the joy of scouting out of the room: The crossovers should start the fun stuff of forming a patrol including electing a PL. Start or end meetings with pledge of allegiance, scout oath, law, and outdoor code. Pick MBs to earn at summer camp. Or, if most of the scouts have interest pick an MB to invite guest speakers for during a meeting. If you think the PL is responsible, she could sign off when her mates demonstrate skills. And the SM can sign off on her demonstration of skills. Tell the scouts if they want to elect a different PL, they may do so.