walk in the woods

Hmmm, not sure why Shooting Sports would need any DEI requirements/discussion. The firearms, bows, and wrist-rockets don't give a damn about the person using them. That said, I guess you could start with the racist history of gun control laws intended to keep firearms out of the hands of slaves, freedmen, and Indians (I think we call these folks BIPOC individuals today). You could then continue with a discussion of how that continues today with the harshest gun laws in the nation having a disproportionate impact, up to and including incarceration, on black populations in large cities. Then close the discussion with the logical conclusion that all gun control laws much be abolished due to their historical systemic racism. https://www.theatlantavoice.com/articles/gun-control-historically-has-meant-prohibiting-blacks-from-owning-one/

https://www.today.com/news/2-boy-scouts-rescue-drowning-woman-missouri-floodwaters-t224158

Nothing would stop them and there would be no difference.

Every child is different. My son's first round of vaccines, his autism diagnosis, and the Wakefield study all happened within a few months of each other. We stopped all his remaining vaccines. When school rolled around, the docs offered to run titers to check his immunity. I think he hoped they would be low to convince us to do the boosters. Turns out they were good all the way through his school years.

To be clear, the claim that MMR vaccines cause autism was published in the Lancet, a peer-reviewed journal, in 1998. It took many years for it to be debunked, and not before the Wakefield study results were all over the evening news. The "anti-vaxxer movement" didn't create the claim, Dr. Wakefield did, and following the publicity of the study, the movement. Only later did we find out he was funded by a law firm looking to sue MMR manufacturers. Those of us who have children with autism, who were of vaccine receiving ages between 1998 and roughly 2004, were forced to make decisions in that maelstrom. So, let's put the blame where it belongs, Dr. Wakefield's unethical behavior, a peer-review system that didn't catch it, and the sensationalism of the evening news, rather than the sophistry of some anti-vax movement making the claim. Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent | The BMJ

I suspect WOSM will care. I may be wrong but I believe the first world countries effectively subsidize the growth in the non first world.

Insurance policies paid for by your dues and council chartering fees. Insurance isn't free.

That horse left the barn years ago. The BSA has settled multiple cases in and out of court already. You've already paid.

Assuming parts of the endowment aren't restricted.

Yeah, if he's making a COVID argument and suggesting CA, he'll get the same argument thrown back in his face.

The prohibited activity in that paragraph is "strike at each other" and nothing more. I'd take that to mean martial arts, boxing, etc. are all fine as long as the scouts are striking at training dummies, heavy bags, pig carcasses, etc. It works for this Girl Scout troop in Iowa.

The BSA acquired the land for the Summit in 2009/2010 timeframe, the opening event was the 2013 National Jamboree. The first year of summer programs for units was 2014. You might be thinking about a different place if your troop went in 2005/2006.

Just curious if those same parents refused to let their scouts participate in summer camp because ranges were open?

So where are your council-owned units going to meet? Do you really think if lawsuits start hitting your local churches, Legion Posts, Firemen's Associations, and VFW Halls, that any of them will ever let a BSA unit in their buildings again? They'll close down their facilities to all youth serving organizations in a heartbeat.

Every time I read "heads on pikes" I get this image of them being along the road at the entrance to the Summit as scouters are bused in for summer re-education camp! 🤪

Is this not the entire purpose of requirement 6 of the Scout Rank?

the other thread with these numbers said December 2020. Not sure if that includes the 2021 recharter year or not.

Well, I can say it's at least possible. In the mid-70s, the church I used to attend built a new building and "donated" their old church building to the local historical society to operate as a museum and wedding/lecture venue. There was a reversion clause in the donation contract. In the early 2000s, the historical society decided to sell the old church because it needed maintenance and a nearby private school wanted the ground. The church invoked the reversion clause, took back ownership of the building/grounds, formed a new NFP corporation to manage the property, and put it back into operation for weddings and lectures and such. Now, how that would have played out in a bankruptcy court I can't say.

If you want to get really depressed, here are the 2010 numbers (https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/420-118.pdf) You can certainly see the impact on Venturing of the 2017 LDS departure from that program.

Well, that's a good bet considering the 2020 Cubs number is just under 650,000. Seems like this membership drop can't totally be explained by the LDS departure. Articles from the time of the 2018 announcement (they'd already dropped Venturing the year before) said LDS boys accounted for 18.5% of the 2.3 million members. Estimates I recall said 450,000 members, give or take, which is consistent with the math in the linked article. So the LDS departure can only explain about half of the almost million member loss over the last two years. It would be interesting to know how the December 2020 numbers were counted. If they are still counting members from units with "late" charter packets, then yeah, 2021 will be problematic. My question is what is the critical mass of Cubs required to keep Scouts BSA alive? A 1.4:1 ratio doesn't seem like enough.

It's in the Annual Report, well, the Treasurers Report. Here's the report from 2017 (the most recent one I could find) https://www.scoutingnewsroom.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Treasurers-Report-2017-Final.pdf. If you read down to the Contingencies section on Page 22 you'll find this:

Creek Stewart.

How hard would it be for the Council to just keep a ledger. Money comes in from a camporee it goes into the council account and a credit entry is made in the district ledger. Expenses for the event are paid from the council account anNd a debit is entered in the district ledger. Camporee makes money there is a credit balance in the ledger to start the next event. It would require council to keep their hands off the actual money though.

It's been a few years since I had to deal with JTE, so maybe these complaints about the process are no longer valid. But, that won't stop me from writing them anyway :). 1. Even in the pre-scoutbook era, the BSA had almost all the information they needed to calculate JTE from recharter info, Tour Permits (remember those?), the service hour website (what was that called, service to america or something), etc. JTE should have been a 0 second effort for any unit serving vol other than entering data during the year. Turn in your recharter in December, wait three months for the BSA to rekey everything into their systems, have a nice announcement at the district dinner. In the Scoutbook era this absolutely should be a 0 second effort for unit volunteers. 2. No scout anywhere, ever, should hear the letters JTE uttered by an adult. The only exception I might make to that rule is when the SM works with the SPL on planning ideas. Even then it shouldn't be "JTE requires us to perform X service projects" rather, "Hey, we should consider putting together a service projects." JTE is some management consultant's wet dream. No scout should be exposed to that. 3. The camping metrics are meaningless. For example, if a unit of 30 scouts holds 10 campouts they check off gold. It doesn't matter if they have an average of 5 attending or 25. It's a meaningless number. If we really want to measure the effectiveness of the camping program the metric should be something like percentage of available scout camping nights. If the gold goal is 10 weekend campouts per year, that's 20 camping nights per scout. If you have 30 scouts that's a total of 600 hours. Make the gold metric then 90% of scout camping nights. Maybe make it 90% of total and 60% per scout. Same thing applies to long-term summer camp. It should be a percentage of total available scout camping nights. Again, in the Scoutbook era, this should be easily calculated by the backend systems. 4. Same argument as number 3 for service hours. 5. The advancement metric while well meaning, drives the Eagle Mill mentatlity. OMG! JTE says everyone has to advance one rank!!!!! I don't know what the metric should be but it's not this. One other thought, the management quotes from earlier are missing the qualifying clause. They should be something like "Whatever gets measured gets managed, to the exclusion of everything else." JTE is the BSAs version of teaching to the test.

Stop recruiting boys in order to protect your bonus? 🤣