As an Eagle Scout, reading through this whole thread has been very disheartening.
By way of introduction, I earned my Eagle Scout about fifteen years ago, and I still had enough time left to complete three Eagle Palms. I served variously as Senior Patrol Leader, Assistant Senior Patrol Leader, Patrol Leader, OA Representative, and eventually Vice Chapter Chief and Chapter Chief of my OA Chapter. As Chapter Chief, I helped oversee a yearly Chapter Conclave, sort of a swan song for my Scouting career as I aged out about six weeks later. I even co-taught a course at the University of Scouting as a Youth. Like many of you, I was involved from the Scouts from a young age, starting as a Tiger Cub and working all the way up to Eagle. Being in the Scouts was a big part of who I am today, and I credit a lot of my character growth to being in the Boy Scouts for more than a decade.
So now, having read these points of view and opinions from all of you fine folks, I've found myself in a bit of a slump. I always felt like I owed a debt to the Boy Scouts that I would fulfill as an adult leader - that is, there were adults in the program when I needed their guidance, and I wanted to pay that forward when it became my turn. Although I took some time away from Scouts to finish school, get married, build a life and settle down, it was always in the back of my mind that I would be able to give back to the organization that gave me so much. I learned a lot about myself during my time in the Scouts, and I was looking forward to helping support the next generation of Youth as they made their way through the program.
But now... now it looks like that might not happen. And that pains me greatly. I was looking forward to going back to my childhood Scout camp, to act in cheerful service as I once did, and to pass along the lessons I learned to the next generation - about how to be better men (and women now, too)! Scouting was and is a major, major part of who I am - and I feel like I would be less than I am now had I not had the opportunity to grow up in the Boy Scouts.
Another part of my desire to get back into the Scouts was that I had gained a couple of lessons along the way that were decidedly not part of the intended program. While neither I nor anyone else I know of was ever abused in the Scouts - thank God - there was an incident I recall where the rumor was that our Scoutmaster was having an affair with a female volunteer while at the yearly summer camp. It was a bit of an open secret among the Youth, particularly considering the Scoutmaster literally pitched his tent next to his paramour less than ten feet from the campground where the senior-most Youth were camping. Now, to be fair, this may well have been rumor and rumor alone, but it does bear noticing that the Scoutmaster and this female volunteer were removed from their troop leadership positions by the Council. I don't know whether that would show up in the Ineligible Volunteer files or not, but I doubt it.
This same Scoutmaster, during his tenure, instituted a program where any Scout who left an item behind at a campground - a waterbottle, perhaps, or a pocketknife - would then have to stand up in front of the troop and sing a song to reclaim his item. "Now, SilverPalm, that's all in good fun," you might say - except that many of these Scouts were near-literally petrified with fear. (One thing I learned as Senior Patrol Leader was to ditch my fear of public speaking, since getting up in front of a room full of a few dozen thirteen year olds was as ruthless an audience as you could imagine.) Noticing the issue before any of the adults did, there was a small cadre of Eagle Scouts in the troop who quickly stepped up to stand alongside the younger Scouts whenever they were called upon to sing - helping defuse the situation and acting in a manner well befitting their rank. This policy may have been less egregious had it applied to the adults as well... except for when the same Scoutmaster forgot his sunglasses at a campground, he refused to sing and simply reclaimed the item.
As a third example, this Scoutmaster (a parent of a Youth) and several of the other parents of Scouts in the same Patrol one year showed up at camp with a large stainless steel propane grill - the sort of thing you might see at a Superbowl party. They then insisted the Scouts unload said grill, but the Scouts were not allowed to use it - because the adults had planned for it. They also brought steak and lobster to camp, but refused to share with the Youth, again because the Youth hadn't planned to bring hundreds of dollars of food along. Never mind that Youth have no way to purchase steak and lobster, nor any way to effectively refrigerate them for a week... This wasn't the only problem; this small cadre of adults then proceeded to mock Youth who would wander into the adult clearing around dinnertime, following the scent of buttered lobster. "Oh no," they'd say, "You go to the Dining Hall; we planned this. Hope you enjoy your dinner!" Notably, the best of the adult leaders refused the lobster and accompanied us to the Dining Hall. We knew who to respect.
Needless to say, my Scouting career taught me a lot about how to be a leader - both a good one, like those Eagles who stood up with younger boys to deliver soulful renditions of Yellow Submarine to reclaim a lost neckerchief... and a bad one, like adults actively taking part in the hazing of Youth. I was able to pass along some of these lessons in my role as a University of Scouting co-instructor, and the Scouters in that classroom were appalled at the behavior of these (now removed) Scout leaders. I've seen both sides of the coin, and I want to pass that hard-earned knowledge along, but I'm very saddened now that it looks like I may not be able to do so.
There will always be bullies, regardless of whether that abuse is sexual in nature or not. This Scoutmaster was a bully. So were the other parents of Scouts in that Patrol. If Scouts is to survive, the organization will need to find a way to weed out the bullies and the abusers. Scouting is about doing good in the world, not about giving power to bullies... and that, I think, is the crux of the issue. Does the good that Scouts does outweigh the harm?
Boy Scouts is a brilliant, terrifically valuable program... when it works properly. I sincerely hope there's some way to preserve the best parts of the program for the Youth of today and tomorrow. If BSA liquidates and disappears, that would, in my opinion, be a significant loss both for our Youth and for our country at large.
I'm reminded of the closing paragraph of the ABOUT THIS BOOK foreword for the 4th Edition of the Handbook for Boys - some of you might well have had a copy. The last paragraph reads, emphasis mine:
"Thus this Handbook represents the experiences of many people - experts in Scouting and experts in technical lines. It is written for the boys of the nation. It is our hope that it will inspire you and help you to be watchful for opportunities to help other people, to be tolerant and respectful of the rights of others, to be courageous and self-reliant - in other words, to be a good American."
If any part of that same spirit still exists in today's organization, I sincerely hope it can be saved so that it can benefit others in the future just as it has benefitted me. Either way, hard changes will have to be made.
ThenNow: I'm horrified as I read through what you've written of your experiences, and as a fellow Eagle Scout, I offer you my sincerest regret that your Scouting career was not more like mine - more like it should have been. I don't know what the right answer is as far as compensation goes - I'm not sure any compensation can really ever make you whole - but I hope that this process will offer you some closure at least. Your posts have greatly saddened me... that's not what Scouting should ever have been about.
