elitts

I've hidden a few posts here because we were moving from arguing on issues to just arguing with each other. Not all of the posts were un-scoutlike, but I also removed those that were responding directly to the offending posts. Let's all just take a breath or two before continuing. If you disagree with the hiding of these posts, please message the moderators in general and if the collective disagrees with me, the posts can be un-hidden.

This isn't a fringe view, you just aren't reading what he wrote in context. He's not saying women are "Neurotic" he's talking about the "Big Five Dimensions of Personality". Neuroticism is a trait, not a mental illness or criticism. Another phrase for Neuroticism is "Emotional Stability". But everyone should alsways keep in mind that not all the moderators read everything every day. If anyone thinks a post is contrary to the forum rules, they should "Report" the post rather than assuming a moderator will be along soon and notice it.

You are mixing up statistical and non-statistical terminology. In the context of a statistical study if something bad happens frequently then it's a "high risk". But a negative occurrence being a "high risk" has nothing to do with the severity of the potential outcome. Elementary Teachers, particularly in their first few years, are at "high risk" of contracting all manner of infections from snotty, unhygienic children. (then after a few years they are often relatively healthier, illness-wise, than the average adult) But the likelihood of a serious outcome from all those illnesses is extremely low. So yes, Health Care personnel do regularly run the "serious" risk of death associated with being around potentially life threatening contagions. However at this point in time, the actual rate of risk of contracting one of those illnesses is typically very low given the level of precautions built into the health care system. And Health Care isn't viewed as nurturing and "low risk" because it has been predominately a female profession, it's viewed as nurturing both because that's typically a requirement of the job (since a nurturing atmosphere is linked to better outcomes) and because dealing with people who are sick and in pain and dying is emotionally draining and often just a shit job; and only people with a genuinely caring, compassionate and nurturing personality can do the job well. And once again, NO ONE SAID GIRLS PREFER MENU PLANNING OR DON'T LIKE ADVENTURE. That was your (incorrect) interpretation of what someone said. This is what Eagledad said: While I don't know that I'd go so far as to say girls have a "natural instinct for management and details", it's pretty well studied that girls are better than boys at the kind of self-regulation and discipline required for scholastic, planning and organizing tasks (without regard to whether or not they actually enjoy it) This is proven out by the fact that girls out-perform boys (on average) across the board at every level of school. As far as whether or not girls like adventure, well the only statement I've seen anyone make with regard to that was to say boys are more drawn to adventure than girls. Which can certainly be true in some respects. The impact of testosterone exposure in-utero and in the body has been studied with the following result: Now consider the first definition of the word "Adventure": Definition of adventure (Entry 1 of 2) 1a : an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks a book recounting his many bold adventures b : the encountering of risks the spirit of adventure 2 : an exciting or remarkable experience an adventure in exotic dining They were looking for adventure. If you consider "Adventure" to be something risky and exciting then the more adventurous something is, the higher the level of risk you would expect it to entail. So it would make complete sense that boys would be drawn to riskier adventures (on average) than girls. However, I don't know that that distinction has much relevance when it comes to the relatively watered-down risks associated with anything the BSA permits Scouts to do.

That's a great idea; and in many ways I agree with it in principle. The problem is that the US government spent 80 odd years (after slavery was abolished) keeping their thumb on the scale (via redlining) when it comes to minority populations. So we aren't talking about some new kid "coming lately to the game getting to take a swing". What we have here is something more like a kid who's been on the baseball team since 1st grade, but wasn't allowed to do anything in practice but chase stray balls. Now it's High School and he/she is told, "Congratulations, we've decided to give you a shot at making the Varsity team. All you have to do is play better than one of the 20 other kids who've been given practice time and game experience for the last 8 years while you rode the bench." I'm not sure how you go about "fixing" what the Government did, I certainly don't like the idea of quotas and affirmative action. But at the same time, once you really look at how pervasive and long-lasting the impact of those policies were, it starts getting pretty hard to think just saying "Ok, we're not going to do that anymore" makes today's world anything like a fair playing board.

Look, it's another sweeping generalization based upon some headline somewhere. Not to diminish the mental and physical sacrifice people in the Health Care industry made during the first 12-18 months of COVID, but again, you just aren't relating the actual data accurately. The way statistics works is that when data is being unusually impacted by some specific factor that isn't likely to be ongoing, that data gets excluded the study as an "Outlier". When it comes to industry related mortality rates, that's what all of the COVID related deaths would be considered because world-wide pandemics are highly unusual. So NO, Health Care doesn't even come close to being a hazardous profession in general. Pre-COVID, Health Care didn't even make the top 20 and had a rate of death very similar to other professional and scientific fields. At least, that's what the Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks. Even if we were just looking at which industries suffered the most fatalities from COVID, it's not Health Care. Though to be fair, there was a brief window of July 2021 - Nov. 2021 where Health Care workers tragically took the top ranking.

I would NEVER willingly put "troop" monies into an account our local council had access to. I have no problem at all imagining a SE deciding "un-designated bank funds at the end of the fiscal year get shifted to the Council general fund". If I was forced into a situation where a Council chartered troop was my only option, I'd probably establish a new charity with the sole function of acting as our "banker". We would "volunteer" for a fundraiser and the "Troopfund X" organization would simply hold our funds until needed and then they would cut a check for whatever needed paying. Kind of like what we are going to be doing with donated (high-value) equipment like canoes. They don't get donated to our CO, they get donated to a separate non-profit that exists strictly to "own" the equipment. That way we don't end up with a problem if we have to change COs and someone at the CO decides they want to retain the gear.

Just to be clear though, drug companies don't have warning labels based upon past history of old drug formulations, they post warnings of known risks of the current drug. So any BSA risks and warnings pamphlet should be based upon the BSA's more recent history rather than the pre-1980s.

I don't know what Catholic church you attend(ed), but your concept of what priests are personally involved with is drastically different than anything I've seen in my last 40 years of being Catholic (including attending Catholic school). The precipitous decline in the priesthood since the 1970s has resulted in priests having little if anything to do with any of the non-liturgical or sacramental functions of Catholic functions. I'm not saying there aren't any priests still in the schools or running youth community outreach programs, but they are few and far between. The first time I saw a priest outside of mass or a baptism or funeral was when I was 22 and I was joining my fiance in pre-cana classes before we got married. . Yes, It's the worst of all the nationwide organizations with 110 million plus participants over the last 110 years. Current known abuse rate: .076% Of course, the only other nationwide case so far is USA Gymnastics, which I can't find abuse totals for because they haven't released records of all the accusations. But we do know that 1 doctor all by himself was responsible for an abuse rate of .019% (500+ accusations over 20 years, avg. membership of 130,000) And then there's about 227 other people on the permanent ban list they publish. Now, This study says 70% of abusers have 1-9 victims and 20% have 20-40 victims. So if we calculate 70% of that 227 have an average of 4.5 victims that's another 715 cases. Then 20% of that 227 have an average of 30 victims that's another 1362 victims. I assume the last 10% have more than 9 and less than 20 (or more than 40). Let's guess 15 victims then for another 340 victims. So USA Gymnastics should have derived abuse rate of something like: 0.112%

Again I'll say, the total number of Catholics is not relevant for this discussion since the vast majority of Catholic youth have ZERO contact with any priest or deacon. (unless you can find some study identifying what proportion of that youth act as Alter Servers) I know that I attended 3 different Catholic churches as a child (in a fairly large metropolitan area) and not a single one of those churches had more than a dozen or so Altar Servers at any one time. So with roughly 17,000 churches you have a sample population of maybe 200,000 per year.

Another possibility is that your troop has a whole new leadership team that is still trying to figure out how to actually plan meetings. A 60-90 minute long game for 2+ months is a bit excessive, but we've seen multiple weeks in a row in our troop where the PLC kind of falls flat on getting an actual meeting planned so the SPL will pinch hit with a long game. It's part of the Scouting program of being "youth-led" to allow the troop leaders to fumble their way to success with these sorts of things while the SM throws out occasional suggestions as opposed to taking over the programming him/herself. It's definitely worth asking the Scoutmaster what's going on some time after a meeting, but I wouldn't be too worried about it, particularly if there are monthly camp-outs happening.

You are making assertions that simply have no support. A 2004 report estimates that roughly 4% of priests and deacons between 1950 and 2002 were abusers. Additionally, you can't know if the BSA abuse rate is "proportionally " (which is the only relevant number here) higher that the Catholic Church without knowing what the population size was. It certainly wasn't simply "every boy that grew up Catholic". The vast majority of Catholics have little to no personal contact with a priest. Most contact is with Altar Servers and those few schools where the priest is a school employee also. Also, when talking about statistics, whether or not something is "Significantly High" can ONLY be determined when it's being compared to similar studies of similar data. Since you have no other data sets to compare it to, your "Significantly high numbers of SA cases" really just means "a number I find to be subjectively objectionable". It's like saying "OMG! High School A has a significantly high number of teenage pregnancies at 26 girls! High School B only has 5" Without noting that H.S. A has a school population of 3900 while H.S. B has a population of 250.

Yeah, I get that's probably what people are thinking when they read that line, and hopefully that's where it stays. But people only intended for rapists to end up on Sex Offender registries too; then in addition to rapists we ended up with teenage couples, public urinators, drunks that go streaking through the quad and so on. BTW, actual privacy laws have nothing to do with why employers restrict their reporting; they do that because they don't want to deal with defamation lawsuits.

Section 7.b Incidents that result in a youth or adult offender being placed on the Volunteer Screening Database for child sexual abuse must be reported to the affected Troop’s parents, volunteers associated with the affected Troop, and the affected Charter Organization. The Local Council will provide notification to its Executive Committee. Notification will also be provided to the the YPE, YPC, and the Organization as part of the summary reports required by 7(a). If the only scenario that results in someone ending up in the "Volunteer Screening Database" is confirmed child sexual abuse, then I have no problem with people being notified. But if they are putting people in the database for suspicion of abuse or suspect behavior (like a leader inviting scouts over to their house alone, but with no abuse taking place), I would be against making personal information and identities public. I'm not against people being publicly informed that an action was taken without identifying information though.

I've seen scouts pack in a duffle and then put their duffle, sleeping bag and pad into a tote. That makes a certain amount of sense, particularly if you may have to set up in the rain. Honestly, besides my thinking it was ridiculous, my bigger issue was that I didn't want hard plastic totes going into troop tents. You get the tent bottom pressed between the plastic and a stone or a root and it doesn't take much before you have a tear in the floor.

Since most of that document is very much in the realm of a meta-process document rather than set of ground level changes, I don't think there's much to object to. I don't generally see a problem with information being made public, though I get a little leery about a public broadcast of someone's ouster from the program. If someone is ousted for criminal behavior it's fine, but since there likely won't be anything that resembles typical "due process" with the BSA's procedures, I get concerned. I have no problem at all with aggregated data being publicized and shared at whatever level. My real worry is about the sections talking about developing changes in "sleeping, bathing and bathroom" monitoring. One of the main things I don't think the Scouts BSA program can survive would be expansion of "Two Deep Leadership" into "Two Deep Monitoring". Kids LIKE being able to do things on their own and they need it to develop independence and leadership skills. Even if some few troops can actually round up enough adults to make a "Two Deep Monitoring" system work, it will have castrated the Scouts BSA program in general and replaced it with a formalization of "Webelos III". For example: On Reddit one user posted a document from some council establishing that at any of their camps "All trips to the bath-house by scouts must be accompanied by two adults because that's what YP requires". That might be workable with patrol sized troop. But with a troop like mine with 4 or maybe 5 adults and 30-35 scouts? Even if only 1/3 the scouts want to shower on a given night that still means tying up 2 adults for HOURS when you only have 4 shower stalls for everyone on the South end of camp. It also means that any scout wanting to shower has to weigh their desire to shower against whatever other activity is going on on any particular evening since they can't just dash over for a shower before dinner or after lunch. Honestly, if Summer Camp shower houses and bathrooms are really still a hotbed for abuse, (since most new facilities en-shew mass showers) it probably makes more sense to just require them all to be converted to single stalls without communal areas other than a sink.

see below Keep in mind the idea of surge brakes even on trailers small enough to not require electric brakes, surge brakes can help make it a safer tow. Just make sure it's easy to disable them for backing up. Also, take a look at this product. https://www.weigh-safe.com If your troops are anything like mine, even among the people who can pull a trailer, the idea of correctly balancing one is frequently a foreign concept. I got one for my troop and it's been pretty helpful a few times cause I (equipment coordinator) can simply say "DO NOT LEAVE if this doesn't show at least 300 lbs of weight on the tongue". Which used to happen regularly since in our old single axle trailer all the gear tended to get piled up right at the back. (I showed up one time as they were about to leave for a 2 hour drive down the highway and I could lift the tongue off the ball with one hand.) Sounds about right. We had a family in our troop whose dad (an ASM) though he was an absolute genius for deciding to have each of his kids pack all their gear in a 40 gallon plastic tote. (that's one tote per kid) He was peeved when I told him they couldn't bring them inside the troop tents. While I'm personally not a fan of backpacking at all, (give me a canoe trip any day) that does make me wish we could start all our new scouts out with a campout that requires like a .25 mile hike in, just so they understand carrying 4 or 5 different bags and parcels isn't workable.

I moved this into it's own thread for more specific help rather than tacking it onto an old thread.

You may not be able to make assets "restricted" after the fact, but there are a number of other options: You can spin them off into trusts or sell to third parties with covenants permitting essentially unlimited access over time; You could make a conservancy agreement with the State agreeing to maintain the "natural" state of the property for 100 years with little to no development or harvesting. Which doesn't render it "not an asset" but certainly drives the value down so far that it becomes easier to shield in a bankruptcy. You can encumber the property with a loan, then plow the funds from the loan back into improvements that don't raise the value of the property enough to offset the loan balance. (basically what BSA did with Philmont except they plowed it into Summit instead of Philmont)

They can't take action now. But anyone who did before the stay has had time for it to age past undoing, plus all you have to do it wait till the stay is done, put the asset in a trust, then wait 3 years before filing bankruptcy. Since lawsuits take years to litigate anyway, the timing works out ok.

People can keep saying this like it's a rule or something, but it simply isn't. There haven't been any cramdowns because there hasn't needed to be. There also haven't been any conversions from a Chapter 13 to a Chapter 7 because a deal couldn't be reached. I dunno what school you went to, but That's a C- in this neck of the woods. You mean so that you can proceed to stated court, where you'll get to participate in another bankruptcy? Outside of those LCs that end up with than a handful of suits, I expect any widespread move into the state courts will simply initiate more Chapter 11 filings, but without the National BSA insurers kicking in funds, anyone going that route is going to be getting a handful of beans, not a little bag of gold. Yeah, cause the Insurance company's lawyer, who desperately wants to push through a settlement now, is a really good source for independent analysis. I just love how they keep talking about the desire for "an improved plan for youth protection" as though that's somehow the stumbling block here. Some LCs will pay out more I'm sure, but not nearly as much as people seem to think. Since there likely won't be any insurance funds left to tap by the time it gets to LC lawsuits, it won't take more than a handful of cases for any LC to simply file for a re-organization of their own. Except that this time they'll have had almost half a decade to protect assets before filing.

Sure, but that's a correlation, not a causal relationship. That would be like saying older, beat up cars are linked with car accidents. There is a link, but not because older cars actually cause accidents, it's because young new drivers are prone to accidents so parents buy them older beat up cars. I'd wager money that the reason there's a link between alcohol and abusers is that the abusers are attempting to self-medicate rather than seeking professional help for their fixations.

Did I discuss narcoleptics driving to summer camp? No. You invented that as a strawman argument. Let me sum it up. You argue anyone with an alcohol use disorder (which is regularly having 7 drinks in a week for women or 14 for men) should be screened out of Scouts, regardless of whether or not they follow the "No alcohol at scouts" rule; because you are worried that (something might happen) if their disorder suddenly hits a crisis point and you've trusted them with kids. So if that situation is what you are afraid of, and you think the risk is sufficiently dire that they should be banned, then your reasoning should also require banning every other adult who is susceptible to a sudden emotional or physical crisis for a hidden condition that is being controlled by chemicals. If you DON'T think everyone who fits that category should be banned, then it's clear that your reasoning isn't based upon a general concern over potential behaviors or circumstances, but instead, you just don't trust people who drink and you are creating reasons to get rid of them.

Well, trying to establish child abuse and private drinking or drug use as in any way similar is just plain BS, but regardless of that, what you are talking about is attempting to create criteria for membership based upon your personal biases as opposed to genuine differences in the nature of chemical use. Alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, opiates, barbiturates, caffeine, hallucinogens, anti-depressants, they are all chemicals that impact the functioning of the body and brain in ways that people find useful in a variety of circumstances. The ONLY thing that differentiates alcohol from any of those other chemicals is the fact that it's available without any sort of prescription and some religious groups have decided it is bad. Most of the people who are "functioning alcoholics" aren't drinking consistently for fun, they're doing it for same reasons other people might go get Xanex, Prozac, or a muscle relaxer. Hell, my grandfather actually had doctors instructions to drink a small shot of alcohol before large family meals because it got his hand tremors under control enough that he could eat without shaking all the food off his fork. But if you really want to ban everyone that has a "hidden problem" because it might surprise us if something happens, we'd also have to ban: Diabetics (who can become hostile and irrational when their blood sugar is high), People suffering from on-going mental illnesses (who knows what can happen if there's a disruption in their medicines), narcoleptics (never know if they're going to fall asleep when they are supposed to be supervising), people taking opiates for chronic pain, etc...

My former pack did a catered main dish with potluck for sides and dessert. Charged $2 per non-registered adult and $1 per non-registered child, mostly so that people wouldn't RSVP and then not show up. The important thing is to give people good directions on their potluck contibution. We used to assign Lions and Tigers to "side dishes" and Wolves and Bears to desserts. Also, you MUST specify the number a dish should serve or you'll end up with some numbskull picking up a 20 piece chicken nugget box from McDonalds as their "side dish" contribution for their family of 5. (yes, true story) I usually told people side dishes should serve 10-15 people and desserts should be 20-25. (but you can portion smaller than normal)

Most of subject matter on this forum isn't about sexual abuse in any direct way, and outside of those threads devoted to the discussion of CSA, expecting the people participating in those discussions to be concerned and aware of what might "trigger" someone is unrealistic and unreasonable. Most of us are well aware of the fact that humor is often used to ease uncomfortable discussions and situations and can understand that cracking the kind of joke RoadRunner did was not intended to take away from the significance of the discussion. If the subject is too raw for an individual to tolerate a discussion of that nature, it's unfortunate, but not a reason to attempt to silence someone. There have been plenty of posters on here who are survivors that have shared mixed feelings (as opposed to pure hatred) about their time in scouts, so clearly discussing the idea of good memories balancing traumatic ones isn't an impossibility or an indication that someone simply has no idea what a survivor should look like. Furthermore, I'd suggest you not start down the road of arguing one type of abuse is incontrovertibly worse than another. Rape is bad. Childhood rape is worse; and certainly is can be among the most horrific specific occurrences that can happen to a child. But assuming that the long term effects of the damage an alcoholic parent can inflict on a child through emotional and physical abuse can't measure up to the long-term effects of CSA is just plain ignorant. The difference is that victims of CSA don't talk about it because they block it out, or are ashamed or just try and ignore it while the children of alcoholics/addicts don't talk about it because it takes years or decades before they can even understand that the hell they live in isn't "just the way life is". First of all, the person you responded to here specifically said we shouldn't be screening out people with alcohol problems as potential sexual abuse risks. Second, alcohol dependence and abuse issues come in many shapes and sizes. If you are thinking about the kind of alcoholic that needs alcohol in their system non-stop or they get the DTs, then yes, they shouldn't be allowed to be in charge of children. But that type of alcoholic tends to be the obvious minority of people with an alcohol problem. The far more common alcohol abusers are the binge drinkers or the people who come to depend on alcohol to moderate their mood. These are the folks that may be totally sober 6 days out of 7, but whenever they do start drinking they drink to excess; or it might be the working mom that needs a glass or two of wine to wind down from work every weekday. Most folks like this, often called "functional alcoholics" are completely capable of going for periods of time without drinking when the situation calls for it. Particularly if they are removed from their typical emotional triggers (work, family drama, relationship problems). The original commentor's point was that it's not fair to screen these folks out as "unsuitable for membership" if they can comply with the BSA's rules banning alcohol from Scout functions. Not that they should be allowed to drink secretly while camping or something else like that.