AwakeEnergyScouter

Only the last NOAC? Or also the last US national jamboree? Were these the first such events, or were there previously held events? Are such events held more widely? If BSA is pushing DEI so hard, how come I haven't heard a DEI peep despite being an active scouter? Please provide the wider data basis for your subjective description of DEI in the BSA. You've previously called them "sanctioned" by BSA, what does that mean exactly? Organized by? Allowed to occur organized by some group of scouts and/or scouters but not the BSA itself? What was the stated purpose of the "meetings/gatherings"? Were they meetings or social gatherings? As someone else already quipped, did the poor straight white men miss out on an ice cream social? Were they in fact actually excluded, or were white straight men actually allowed to attend the "meetings/gatherings"? That last one is absolutely imperative for you to address if you actually want to engage in civil discourse, especially since it still seems rocky to let go of the anger. Your core intellectual claim hinges on that they were actually excluded in the first place. But were they? I have my doubts. In grad school, I was a Society of Women Engineers officer. Men are not, in fact, excluded from SWE membership, and we had a very active male member in our chapter. The national conference was full of men looking for jobs. As for woke being an acronym - never heard of that, and apparently neither has any online dictionary including Urban Dictionary. If you use nonstandard meanings of words, it's on you to explain how you're using the words.

I agree with Civics for Life that civil discourse is constructive to have for its own sake. "Civil discourse is not simply polite conversation, though courtesy and respect are crucial to it. Civil discourse goes beyond politeness. It is conversation with purpose—that is, constructive dialogue. Though they may disagree, participants in civil discourse are committed to hearing each other’s fact-based opinions and dispassionately evaluating those opinions against their own. Participants enter into civil discourse with a shared goal: to leave it with greater clarity or even, potentially, having achieved some new agreement." They further define the characteristics of civil discourse as "Civil discourse is: Fact-based Non-ideological Productive Respectful" So that covers civil discourse - but not uncivil discourse. When the conversation loses its factual grounding, becomes ideological, becomes unproductive, and disrespectful, it's not civil. Even if expletives are withheld. So let's take a look, shall we? In the Order of the Arrow subforum, we have a post with the subject "DEI is an acronym for Don't Expect Improvement". Taken literally this is plainly untrue, so the statement is not meant to be taken literally and seems ideological given current US political context. Then we have some seeming anger about "wokeness" due to the all caps, followed by oblique references that I only can guess one of, creating a dearth of facts. Following this is is a referential statement that proponents of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion have also realized that being woke isn't really beneficial and that the truth of this can be confirmed by asking unspecified colleges, universities, and manufacturers (which ones exactly is not specified) that have fired their "DEI employees" (HR staff working on DEI?) and (probably) boarded up their DEI offices. Since this seems to connect to recent partisan kerfuffles about banning DEI offices and positions, this is likely to be ideological as well, and so far nothing to do with Order of the Arrow or even scouting at all. Once we do get to scouting, there's a statement implying a contradiction between Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and BSA organizing alleged special events for women, LGBTQIA+ folks, and POC followed by an allegation that there would be outrage if straight white folks (including women? probably meant men only) had a gathering. I say alleged, because MrJeff has already brought this up at least once and also failed to give clear examples of what gatherings when exactly in what context, including when previously asked for it, and since he's never able to give actual examples I'm ready to believe it's not a real thing in the first place when no one else here seems to know what specifically he's talking about. The post that he made right before this one has no mention of DEI, so that's no help, although I'll note @Mrjeff that my handle here can't be broken down into just Awake in any sensical way, the concept is (awake energy) because it's a twist on a dharma name. (And we scouts, as you may recall, aspire to be mentally awake, possessing that awake energy.) And I'll also note that I'm willing to speak directly to both you, @Eagledad, as well as @Mrjeffbecause talking about people in the third person in their presence is rude. So, if there is an actual fact basis for this conversation, @Mrjeff isn't providing it and no one else can guess what it is. This is then capped with a question about what the difference between BSA-organized events for scouts only recently allowed to join the BSA (historically speaking) and a gathering (BSA-organized or not is unspecified) of (probably) straight white men, and the question of how segregated events aid DEI. These questions do not seem sincere, given what came before them. As before in our previous conversation, my problem with this conversation isn't that I don't personally like it, it's that it's hurting BSA scouting and BSA scouts. Scouting is not and has never been a political "safe space" where you can rant and rave about your political opinions in peace. We are a civil, not political, movement. We've always had both left-leaning and right-leaning scouts and scouters. Did you watch InquisitiveScouter's TED talk video? Well worth watching. But there is something Haidt missed, something InquisitiveScouter mentioned earlier on just in different words - the two levels of truths. On the absolute level, there are indeed no groups of people. But at the same time, it would be downright denialistic to pretend you can't see the outlines of groups of people, even though the 'edges' dissolve as you look for them. So one should absolutely strive to attain the stage of 'one taste' where like and dislike have been transcended, but that doesn't mean that you lose your sense faculties and ability to tell one thing from another. You just don't solidify what those senses convey into some Eternal Truth in your mind, don't believe your thoughts as my dear root teacher always says. What ultimately sets the wheel of samsara into motion is the Three Poisons - passion, aggression, and ignorance (of how the world really works). Look around the internet - conversations that start from an angry post are virtually guaranteed to turn uncivil. In this case, though, the people who end up fighting are supposed to be in the same tribe of scouters! Why start an angry, ideological conversation without a clear factual grounding? Why? It is not productive and only ends up hurting scouting and scouts. When you start in anger it's unlikely to end in peace, in this case leading to infighting within our scouting tribe.

Yes, I think this is the main point. I did express myself imprecisely, that's true, categorizing a risk level below some undefined cutoff as "YPT working" and categorizing a risk level above that as "YPT not working". What that risk level is is a matter of debate, of course, but because the main point here isn't really that conversation I used the BSA's phrasing to keep the focus on what on Earth this conversation is meant to be good for. The wisdom of starting conversations by lobbing culture war grenades depends in no way whatsoever on statistics. What productive aim did you have in mind when you started this conversation, @Mrjeff? Still waiting on those examples of what you're talking about, for the second time. Nobody else seems to know or has even offered a guess.

But that doesn't mean that statistics isn't a valid epistemology. As you reap the fruits of in your daily life. Even manufacturing of physical goods uses statistics for quality control. And that's before we mention statistical mechanics. Knowledge about the world that hinges on statistics is quite possible.

This is the second layer... Does the gender of the abused young person matter? Of course not. Either YPT works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, the problem isn't "DEI", it's that YPT isn't covering all the bases to prevent CSA.

TBH the rule that you need a female leader around girls all the time sounds a little accusatory of men's character in general to me, despite the statistics. If the idea is that only a woman would protect girls from sexual abuse, what does that imply about all the other male leaders?

Ok, you got any links to official BSA information about these so we can all be on the same page about what specifically you're criticizing? The reason it went off the rails immediately is that people who are angry about too much DEI fit an image of a culture war warrior swinging a sword all around them. IOW it easily looks like you started a conversation by throwing a culture war grenade. If this is not what you intended you may want to be much, much, much more specific about what where when and why.

The blurb itself says right there that they are surveying both girls and boys at the same time, i e they are not only surveying one gender to the exclusion of the other. If you already have a statistically valid sampling of the boys, adding more boys doesn't improve the statistical accuracy, so while it's possible they're collecting more girl data than is useful and/or cost-effective it's not creating a two-tier system. The phrasing does make me wonder if there are relatively speaking few girl members, such that it actually makes sense to send out the survey to all of them in order to maximize the odds that the number of responses ends up being a statistically valid sample of the girls as well as the boys.

How is this discussion helpful?

Sidebar: Why couldn't you just find an elected German official? Why restrict yourself to the base?

Somebody didn't think that name through 😂

I thought we scouts were bougie. Are we not? Lederhosen is not saying otherwise. And 'King/Queen' is still in a lot of Scout Promises... Just sayin' 😉

Time for a REI x BSA collab? 😄

Been telling my scouts that exact thing in the context of the Internal Spirit Award... You can tell it's a scout shirt because it's a Western shirt with two front button pockets and a bunch of badges worn with a necker, even if you don't recognize from what country it's from. Without the badges... Fails scout shirt sniff test

That's how scout shirts are meant to be!

Now that you say that, a parent was complaining about that at our last campout. I mean, I get it. Sewing new badges is yet another thing on the to-do list. The incredibly long, winding to-do list. Blargh. If you just asked me out of the blue, I'd say I don't like sewing on badges either. But that doesn't mean I think that we shouldn't have patches that need sewing on. Not loving every aspect of everything I ever do for scouts isn't the same thing as wanting to change the program. Everything in life is a mix of things you like and dislike. And seeing as scouting is a spiritually based program, and as such is based in the recognition that trying to only have pleasure with no pain isn't possible, it doesn't make sense to sweat these small ordinary irritations. They are meant to be overcome. As a Zen Master Sengcan said... The Great Way is not difficult. It merely avoids picking and choosing.

National didn't poll my scout, who hates taking the belt with all the loops on and off and therefore mostly refuses to wear it. They're not wrong - the loops end up scattering all over the floor a lot. It doesn't have the right vibe. Plus, what kind of a scout shirt isn't covered in patches? And aren't all the sewing avoidance methods already offered enough? 🤦🏼‍♀️ And then there's the ecological impact. I thought the reason for the move to belt loops was just a consequence of that they wanted to move the awards to adventures because the awards were earned by less than 1% of scouts. Came as a surprise to me, because in our pack scouts earn awards all the time. We even provide earmarked opportunities to earn the Outdoor Activity Award, the International Spirit Award (and therefore the World Conservation Award), and the NPS Ranger Award.

I didn't realize it was no longer available. I thought it was still an earnable award for all. Well... In this exact moment, it is. But since the awards are being replaced by belt loops, and it doesn't seem like there's any adventure called something like what's in it, I'm working under the assumption that it will be discontinued June 1 for cub scouts. I'd be happy to be told that's a misunderstanding.

That's a great idea, @OaklandAndy. I'm mourning the loss of the International Spirit Award more and more, as we go through it as a pack. I see the scouts understanding scouts in the bigger picture for every activity we do, and it makes me sad that we can't do it again. But who says? When the scout shop runs out of badges we can make our own 😄

Welcome to the forums, Kelsey!

Apologies, it wasn't my intention to bait. Perhaps I wasn't clear. I meant that in order to stay on the civic side of the line, we all have to self-monitor, which the GSUSA scouter may have failed to do. Political issues one is very touched by are ones one might have to consciously stay far away from the line on. For Palestinians, the Gaza situation is going to be very "hot" for natural reasons. Not a problem per se. But that means needing to figure out how to not let the fire burn when in the role of scouter.

It does feel a little sides-taking. I still think it's better than 'Palestine' bracelets, but absolutely better than the 'Palestine' bracelets in the show of support to wear category is something like those peace bracelets you linked. But in both cases, I don't understand why they didn't go the support scouts in the conflict zone that are already on the ground delivering humanitarian aid route. Clean, simple, loyal. It's probably not hard to guess based on general information about me how I feel about the full-scale invasion. But just because it's easy to guess who I'm hoping will win, and most of us here probably think the same thing, doesn't mean that I should voice that opinion in my role as a scouter. 😳 Maybe especially when that opinion is backed by a lot of emotion and a feeling of having a stake in the outcome. I know what I say won't be even remotely neutral. So I try to avoid the topic in order not to embarrass myself with a tirade I shouldn't be delivering.

This is a lot closer to the line, and as such interesting to consider. My feeling is that supporting other scouts is always ok - so fundraising for an Eagle Scout project is ok because it's generally recognized not just as a good turn but a development exercise for the scout. Compared to the bracelets, certainly Eagle projects deliberately stretch scouts' abilities in a way making bracelets doesn't. The first aid kits seem much closer to that line - and might be over it. I don't think so but I could probably be convinced otherwise without too much trouble, particularly because the council is keeping some of the money. The mitigating circumstances for first-aid kits compared to bracelets with the name of a party in an armed conflict is that the first aid kits don't take any sides in a war the way the bracelets did. If the scheme had been to sell t-shirts that say "Ukraine" and have blue and yellow on them to raise money for first aid kits, that would be the same problem as the Palestine bracelets. It's not just that you're raising money for non-scouting, it's also what you're selling to do so.

This right here is also what sets scouting apart from a lot of other youth organizations. Or should, at least. We need to stick to the basics of what's made scouting successful throughout the decades, and that's the patrol method with the implied trust in the capabilities of the scouts. The last thing they need is more helicopters or snowplows. Separate paper troops and even separate sides of the campground all just seems to add more work for... Nothing. Learning how to lead boys and how to get them to come along was one of the most valuable life lessons I got from scouts, and I want the same for my own scout of course. (No workplace consists only of your own gender.) Not going to get that surrounded by scouts of their own gender whether that's in GSUSA or BSA.

I read the article to mean that it was outside that window, but you're right, it doesn't explicitly say so.