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We use soap, bleach, and sun. (That last one can be hard to find.) Backpacking, I just carry soap. I look for something biodegradable without dyes.

Winds can be tricky. Seabase sailing adventures include the Sea of Abaco in the Bahamas — nice islands, but far from many amenities including top tier medical facilities. Yes sailors do try to take care of one another, but the time to rescue can vary. Seabase tries to keep participants from hurricanes - just like Philmont keeps participants clear of wildfires. So, emergency evacuations in those scenarios may require some minimum fitness for complete success. That said, the fitness for swimming, scuba, or sailing has different parameters than that for hiking/backpacking. Those parameters aren’t entirely aligned with body mass index. Kayaking and canoeing come close to having the same stressors as hiking, and therefore the height/weight may be relevant. So, when in doubt, contact the HA base before committing to a specific adventure.

Seabase let me slide. On the other hand, I was BSA guard certified and only slightly over limit. No big deal for sailing adventures.

In case you think knots are too arcane for your budding bio-engineer….

Far from it. If you wanted such compensation, but wouldn’t admit it. That would be dishonest. To nod my head in agreement to any side in this, that would be dishonest. To shrug off losses of assets and pretend that that is not affecting the youth who are most at risk for abuse in the home, that would be dishonest. Therefore, to say that monetary payouts are objectively “fair” to victims would be dishonest in two directions: 1) It gives the false illusion that this somehow prevents future victims when in fact it could be making safe havens inaccessible to future victims. Moreover, I’ve seen payouts for pain and suffering help my friends and family who’ve received them, but only after a lot more pain and suffering. It seemed that the payments just served remind them that they were kicked down and should stay down, until some other tragedy jolted them into using what they’ve garnered to slog forward. And 2) Secondly there’s no upper limit on the amount needed to compensate for pain and suffering because money is a terrible vector for transmitting compassion —compassion being the thing I know that helps with pain and suffering. The reason we even bother is that money is the best vector we have to transmit compassion beyond our physical reach.

How it “sounds” is purely subjective. I know you want empathy in the form of unanimous agreement that dollars should be paid out above and beyond mitigation costs. It’s not an ironclad argument when cost-prohibitive to youth becomes a program that many find to be a temporary safe haven from psychologically destructive family environments. From their perspective paying a past victim puts a number of current kids at risk. And then a whole cycle of counter-arguments ensues. Again by people who think differently. At the end of the day, your opinion is yours, and as it seems to be in solidarity with many other victims, it deserves to be aired. But after talking with leaders of other international scout associations over the years I feel in less of a position to say what sounds fair than I ever did.

We need to get beyond this. The only way we can help victims is to accept that in the pool there will be a few frauds who nobody will screen. It certainly galls survivors as much as it does the majority of us who never drew the attention of predators. This is the cost of actually being helpful. (This, and being more attentive to our youths’ environments.)

The other problem with having every parent registered is that some are simply not qualified to chaperone our youth. You need to find a balance. But, especially for girl troops, you need to search through all of the female parents/grandparents/adult siblings to see who would commit to becoming an ASM. Family camping is kind of a recent trend in BSA marketing. It’s a square peg that takes some pounding to fit in the round hole. Not worth my effort IMHO. The only parents who need to be in camp are those of special needs kids — and then only until the scout learns how to address his/her difficulties independently or with buddies.

Send an urgent request to your district/council camping committee. When I was a crew advisor, I often leaned on other units for that second female adult.

Having just camped adjacent to Swiss (who shared excellent teokbokki with us while we scrambled to raise camp), I spent a good four days sharing coffee with their scoutmasters and learning about their program. One important thing to note: they receive government funding, and their program provides sports education (similar to BSA’s defunct varsity scouts).

I was impressed with the number of scouts in my Jambo troop who earned Eagle ... many earned it more than a year ago. Now this could be a biased sample of scouts whose families engage the program more, but it's clear that this lot is not flying away. It's not clear that there is a "great majority" disappearing after obtaining Eagle. Looking at my troop, about 1/4 who earn Eagle before age 17 find other things to occupy their time. That's not much different the the number of older scouts who quit without earning Eagle.

Unless the scouts confront the SM and say that they think his behavior is inappropriate, you should expect nothing to change. I concluded early on that there’s nothing wrong with scouts having to choose between troop and crew activities. Venturing serves a different purpose for dual registered youth compared to its role for youth in only one program. There is one line that I used to great effect during my time of troop-crew conflict: “I’m not about to be bothered by the burr up anyone’s butt … especially yours!”

My observations generally concur with @gpurlee's friend -- chances are we compared notes. With some added detail: 1) Each American unit was in a different subcamp, so there was only international contact. In contrast to the last WSJ, it felt good to be the minority. For those into trading, US swag was in high demand. Regarding facilities and emergency services, they were adequate to the task at hand, and we saw them improve daily. 2) The contingent management team (including our troop's commissioner) did not visit our site (which I found to be splendid) until after they decided to evacuate. Communication was primarily via Basecamp (before the trip) and Whatsapp (hastily assembled after the trip). Neither is as useful as these forums would have been. 3) It's summertime on a warming planet. My scouts (from across the southeast US) had camped in heat and humidity like this before. And the amount of dehydration/heat stroke among our boys was par for the course. This was a relatively safe environment to learn how to listen to your body. The Brits, were not nearly as disciplined, and talking to the youth, many were not consuming the needed water and electrolytes, and were not slowing their pace in the afternoon. (Mad dogs and Englishmen ... out in the noonday sun.) 4) We were not merely confined to base. We were confined to the garrison's school grounds. There was no visiting the PX, or the library, or any of the base families (who weren't even allowed to visit us on day one, but that was relaxed when we were staying there on days 7 through 11), no access to a kitchen to make my coffee! (I'm still kicking myself for not buying fuel for my burner when we stopped at a grocery on the pre-tour.) Excursions from base required coordinating all 20 buses to leave and return at the same time, and it took time for the MPs to clear the convoy in either direction across the gate. (Police escorts are cool the first time ... not so much after that.) So, for a two-hour shopping trip in Seoul, we were on a bus for 6 hours. 5) Coordinating with leaders of other troops was not pleasant. There were numerous violations of my rule #1 (don't ask for a rule). We would be given instructions, followed by the phrase that I came to dread: "Are there any questions?" On base, this caused delays in execution of simple tasks like dropping your gear and getting dinner. I finally started taking on tasks just to prevent second-guessers from wasting all of our time worrying about doing it wrong. For this reason alone, we would have been better off dispersed to the various campuses, sharing quarters with other contingents. 6) I'm no fan of conventions. But, the simple format of having 40,000 kids from hundreds of nations camp together is a heady brew that I won't pass up. I would have definitely preferred to stay on site until the day before the typhoon made landfall. (I actually slept out on my hammock under a porch the night it landed.) I think this is the experience of most of our SMs. We would have preferred to have helped the troops who were hurting to relocate to our seemingly better sites. In fact, we requested that the contingent management team rescind its total evacuation order allow us to do just that. We were obviously denied. Following up with contingent leaders, it seems the root cause for the premature withdrawal was in US/UK vs. Korean medical teams' conflicting standards of care for edge cases (i.e. those needing surgery). Contingent management estimated that the risk to the one or two scouts who might need that care outweighed the desires and abilities of the leaders in camp. This is a subtle story that doesn't make headlines because it doesn't sound as dramatic as the rather common rate of heat exhaustion, mediocre infrastructure, and high probability of foul weather. But, I think that type of conflict will require close scrutiny before we find ourselves in Poland in 2027.

Each US unit was in a different subcamp, so there was variation in hydrology. No two pieces of drained seabed are alike! This is no surprise. But, US and Brit camps were also worse simply by virtue of arriving a day late.

Heartbroken. It took me all day yesterday to come up with the word for how I feel. It was also how most US SMs feel. The contingent management team, under the guidance of National, is acting against our wishes to remain on site. The KSA had been very good to us. Health services delivery and sanitation were improving daily. They added multiple mitigation strategies. The youth had adjusted to less movement during the day. Our campsite had a constant stream of visitors trading, bringing coffee, or simply chatting. Then at night things began to pop! We exchanged this for hours-per-day rides on busses. To whatever features might placate youth. I’m in an underground mall and the boys are making the best of it. They have encountered some Scouts UK, but it’s certainly not the same. The volunteers at Humphreys are kind and consoling, but they are volunteering in order to comfort the traumatic loss of autonomy we feel. Ad steak and eggs for breakfast makes up for a lot. Hopefully the next couple of days of local fellowship with the garrison’s youth will make up for a lot. Expect BSA-favorable spin on that from National in your inbox soon.

I’m too emotional for comment. Will recap when WIFi is better.

@Tron, all I have to say to your committee is that there are no uniform police, only insignia wonks.

Let’s not speak as if BSA is a monolith. ET Seaton (BSA’s exec in the 30s) was very upset that Juliet Gordon Low did not found the American organization using the name of its British counterpart “Girl Guides.” There were other outdoor organizations for girls that steered clear of using “Scouts” as in their brand. Low stepped into that space. The boots on the ground simply didn’t care, Seaton desired to take action so that they would care. He sought Baden Powell’s support, which Powell refused to give. BSA relented. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3346224). The same recently occurred in the reverse with GS/USA execs. I’m sure they were hounded on many fronts to relent. Or, as I explained to a female Eagle early this spring, “Adults ruin everything.”

If predators were simply identifiable as a buck naked person standing behind any of my scouts, my life would be so much easier. But 20th century America’s revulsion with nudity in public art runs deeper than that. The history of the Liberty Quarter is another striking example. But, as we see in this thread, our multicultural society holds diverse views.

I like the National memorial. I get the point of the the ideal man and woman behind the scout (more Adam and Eve than Greek or Norse, but still trying to harken on multiple traditions). My regret is that they are not full nudes as one would expect. I, too, would have preferred the female scout statue to be more down to earth. I think the body shape does not reflect the average 16 year old, but that could also be the camera angle.

This is pretty much how WSJ operated at Summit in 2019 (albeit with 4x the attendance). There were team activities in some areas, but ad hoc patrols could self-form for those. Scouts wanting to ride the big zip, for example, checked out of camp as early as 5am to get in line. Some units were more tight-knit — especially if they had time slots for performing on one of the stages. But generally, as long as scouts were with a buddy, they had free reign of the place. The Korean Jamboree Management Team, on the other hand, is scheduling many activities by patrol. I last experienced a system like that in the 1981 AP Hill NSJ. We got a stack of Hollerith cards that represented activities at particular times and locations. We would rifle through the stack each day and swap for adventures that interested us. I arrived at a few (orienteering, the dive tank, and pioneering) as a singleton.

BTW, it doesn’t have to be a campout. Small service projects that only need a handful of guys are great ways for introverts to find their way in the troop.

If you’ve seen how they behave on campouts enough to think that it’s their personality and not lack of skills, I think it’s a great idea. My SM took a lot of time with us as individuals, and it was a good thing. For example, on one campout in the back of a fellow scout’s cow pasture, he came up to me with a capped metal tube and said, “I think you’ll find this interesting.” It was a WW-1 canvas box kite. Indeed, I was one of the few boys who were still mucking about with kites at that age, so I took to flying it while my patrol went about KP. It gave me the freedom to have my “introvert” space. And, once I had it aloft, it gave me something that I could hand off to other scouts when it was my shift to do something.

The scenario being imitated here is that of a formal cruise or a Navy junket. So, I would suggest the scout use his own or a similarly sized friend’s pants. If they are too large the scout would find them unwieldy. (Although “acquiring” pants from a larger fellow passenger is a possible means to an end in this scenario, it’s probably not one we would want to encourage.)

More humble brag, “my” scout gives a nod to his roots in the following interview: https://www.yourcommunitypaper.com/articles/cp-interview-patrick-connolly-explores-central-florida-for-a-living/