"Two local Boy Scout members called out the Campbell County Commissioners earlier this week for their reported fixation on LGBTQ+ material in the public library and reported attempts to meddle in the established challenge process."

[HelpfulTracks]

6 hours ago, yknot said:

But it's also fair to note that many people who have viewed BSA in a favorable light over the years have also been those who have been interested in perpetuating some of the social issues 

I don't think that conclusion can be reached based on polling. 

Over the last decade BSA has mostly had a favorable rating between 65-75%, twice falling into the mid/upper 50s

59%  when BSA admitted gay your but banned gay adults.

56% in latest polls, attributed to bankruptcy/abuse 

Generally, those that believe Scouting is good for youth have hovered around 80%, latest poll having that number at 69%

One could debate the reasoning for disparity, but those numbers do not reflect the general publics favorability rating of the social issues we have discussed here. 

[HelpfulTracks]

5 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

As I noted: any progress in terms of BSA and issues like this only occurred after a lot of years and a lot of kicking and screaming.

Please provide some reference for that.

Other than admitting gays to Scouting, that statement just isn't true. SO you can skip that one.

BSA never had a policy against minority unit or desegregated units. 

The transgender change happened almost overnight. The policy changed within days of a youth going public that their unit would not admit them. Social justice groups didn't even have time to mobilize a campaign against BSA.

As for admitting girls to troops, the general public was opposed to that change, and other than one girls social media campaign there was not much more than the occasional group of girls asking to be admitted. I know for a fact that Scouters were pushing for that change from within long before the young ladies social media campaign. Never mind that girls have been in some for of Scouting for 50 years. 

 

5 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

BSA has not exactly been quick to embrace modernity... 

You keep saying that as if some one is disagreeing. No one is. 

5 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

....and when it has it has been condemned by scouters as "politically correct".

Some Scouts have, many of them left BSA. But most of the most vocal one making that statement, did not have a current relationship with BSA or never had one. 

[qwazse]

So, when did BSA have troops with mixed races? Sometime before 1919: https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2021/03/24/new-research-reveals-an-even-earlier-black-eagle-scout-hamilton-bradley-of-new-york/. Let us not forget that this is a big country, the black experience has never followed a single narrative, and the strategies BSA deployed to reckon with varied accordingly.

But to the OP, scouts can and do attend and speak at town meetings in uniform. From time to time, those events are noted here, and similar objections are raised. Invariably scouters conflate endorsing a political candidate with engaging in civil discourse at town meetings.

[PeterHopkins]

On 10/8/2021 at 9:38 PM, T2Eagle said:

Scoutreach units are treated as a district because they operate differently then, and need different services and resources than a traditional units.  They use paid leaders to provide the program, and at least in my council are always a part of council events, and are certainly welcome at other district's events.  

I realize that these units need different support, and their unit and den leaders need someone in the council office to whom they report, but I haven't seen (in two different councils) these units integrated with traditional units.

[PeterHopkins]

21 hours ago, HelpfulTracks said:

We had a commissioner for them because they needed assistance just like every other unit, in some cases more. By the way, that was the most difficult job I have had in scouting, but also the most rewarding. 

You and I are not talking about the same thing. You're talking about a district that has widespread challenges that essentially define it as a ScoutReach district.

I'm talking about carving out portions of a district and essentially treating them as a virtual district. Again, I know this is not done with the intention to segregate along racial lines. However, it has had that effect.

I was an ASM at the 2005 National Jamboree. Our council sent four regular troops plus LDS and Sabbath observant troops. Every Scout in the regular troops was in a traditional troop. Over the course of 10 years in that district, I never saw a Scout at a camporee or other district event who was from a ScoutReach unit.

In my current district, two years ago, when we could recruit in person a schools, I asked the DE why there would be no Join Scouting Nights at several schools on the list. He replied that these are ScoutReach schools. One elementary school was less than 10 miles away from my pack's meeting place and les than three miles away from another traditional pack. Effectively, traditional Scouting was not being offered to these youth (unless they found us themselves on beascout.org.

I don't see any ScoutReach units at council Cub Scout events (but there haven't been many of those since I've been here). Nevertheless, as I described above, all anyone needs to do is look around at one of our lodge OA events, and it is painfully obvious that Scouting is severely underserving the black community in my council.

I don't think ScoutReach is implemented the same way in every council. It sounds like you did it right. Kudos to you. In the mid-2000s, when there was something called OA ScoutReach, I got some youth in my troop (I was an SM) to buddy up with a traditional troop in a severely challenged neighborhood. In exchange, I got the SM to do a presentation at a roundtable (I was a staffer). I got a taste of how hard your job must have been. No one in this troop, youth or adult, had a reference point from which they could make Scouting come alive at their weekly meetings. The troop camped sporadically and had little advancement. I think we gave them a push start. They showed up at the next district camporee.

[PeterHopkins]

15 hours ago, HelpfulTracks said:

Ironically, BSA is being sued as a result of allowing girls in Scouts BSA.

The BSA is being sued by GSUSA in an intellectual property dispute. If the program were still called Boy Scouts instead of Scouts BSA, there would be less of a case.

There have also been some who have been a bit too enthusiastic and called girls in Scouts BSA troops Girl Scouts. In my district, we were instructed at the roundtable never to do this. I'm not sure everyone got the message.

It took a while before the Girl Scouts of the USA caught up to Campfire Girls, which was started with assistance from some of the BSA's founders. Within GSUSA, some legacy organizational resentment still exists over the BSA's involvement with Campfire's founding.

[HelpfulTracks]

13 hours ago, PeterHopkins said:

The BSA is being sued by GSUSA in an intellectual property dispute. If the program were still called Boy Scouts instead of Scouts BSA, there would be less of a case.

There have also been some who have been a bit too enthusiastic and called girls in Scouts BSA troops Girl Scouts. In my district, we were instructed at the roundtable never to do this. I'm not sure everyone got the message.

It took a while before the Girl Scouts of the USA caught up to Campfire Girls, which was started with assistance from some of the BSA's founders. Within GSUSA, some legacy organizational resentment still exists over the BSA's involvement with Campfire's founding.

Indeed. But had BSA not started allowing girls in to troops, this wouldn't be an issue.

The fight over the name is particularly interesting considering Girl Scouts USA initially had push back from BSA and GSA over the use of the term Girl Scout. Given that, it seem a little disingenuous to sue of the name, but I am not a lawyer so. 

We had the same issue with units and the name usage, but we were able to get the word out quickly and the message seems to have stuck. 

[HelpfulTracks]

14 hours ago, PeterHopkins said:

You and I are not talking about the same thing. You're talking about a district that has widespread challenges that essentially define it as a ScoutReach district.

I'm talking about carving out portions of a district and essentially treating them as a virtual district. Again, I know this is not done with the intention to segregate along racial lines. However, it has had that effect.

TO start with, this reply is not to debate how it should be done, but more to describe how we do it, and how all the material I had on ScoutReach it is supposed to be done. 

-------------------------------------------

No, these are ScoutReach units, and have not segmented off to some separate pseudo district. They run the Socuting programs (Cub, BSA, Venturing), although some run a more limited version of a "ScoutReach program", regardless they are part of the district. The district boundaries are actually defined using Economic Empowerment Zones. The district has a gerrymandered look, but it is contiguous. 

The idea with ScoutReach is to serve communities that might not otherwise get served. The biggest differences are in the adult leadership (paid program specialist) and funding (donor contributions). The goal is to run the Scouting program, which is done unless it needs to be modified for various reasons. 

Even still, I am not following how ScoutReach could be considered segregated. Our ScoutReach units are racially diverse. They are socioeconomically similar, though not homogenous. But, that could be said about our suburban and rural units as well. 

14 hours ago, PeterHopkins said:

In my current district, two years ago, when we could recruit in person a schools, I asked the DE why there would be no Join Scouting Nights at several schools on the list. He replied that these are ScoutReach schools. One elementary school was less than 10 miles away from my pack's meeting place and les than three miles away from another traditional pack. Effectively, traditional Scouting was not being offered to these youth (unless they found us themselves on beascout.org.

We do have School Night for Scouting at these schools. Parents and youth can see both programs and decide which is best for them.  And while our ScoutReach programs have some things they do differently, they still try to use as much of the Cubs program as possible. The biggest differences the parents and youth see is meeting time and location (usually at the school, sponsoring club and immediately before or after school). They do see that some units are more traditional, and have a wider range of things they can do, but it will also take more time commitment from the parents. 

14 hours ago, PeterHopkins said:

I don't see any ScoutReach units at council Cub Scout events (but there haven't been many of those since I've been here). Nevertheless, as I described above, all anyone needs to do is look around at one of our lodge OA events, and it is painfully obvious that Scouting is severely underserving the black community in my council.

Like every district I have ever seen, there are more cub units than Scouts or Venturing combined. So we are able to have Cub Day Camps, Cub-o-rees, Cub night evets etc. We have fewer Scouts or Venturing units, so we have found it works best to have them join the neighboring districts for camporees and such. 

As for OA. The districts meet together but are separate chapters with separate officers (or were before reorganization).  The reason for OA meeting together is we do not have program specialist for OA - I have never questioned the reason for that, because we have it working and since it does work, the idea of find adult OA leaders is way way down the list of priorities. 

14 hours ago, PeterHopkins said:

I don't think ScoutReach is implemented the same way in every council. It sounds like you did it right. Kudos to you. In the mid-2000s, when there was something called OA ScoutReach, I got some youth in my troop (I was an SM) to buddy up with a traditional troop in a severely challenged neighborhood. In exchange, I got the SM to do a presentation at a roundtable (I was a staffer). I got a taste of how hard your job must have been. No one in this troop, youth or adult, had a reference point from which they could make Scouting come alive at their weekly meetings. The troop camped sporadically and had little advancement. I think we gave them a push start. They showed up at the next district camporee.

Based on my understanding of the program, which is through  BSA material, we were running the program as prescribed, meaning we were not doing anything special or reinventing the wheel. If we were, then I guess it was just because what we saw in ScoutReach seemed to fit with our regular programing, just a different way of delivering it, and we just stumbled backwards into it. 

As for OA, which I am still very involved with, you can see how we handled the district in my previous paragraph. The Lodge does do some things to reach out to all types of inactive (OA wise) units. We don't call it OA ScoutReach, we just roll it up with our normal unit visitation program. Though I will say we are not were we want to be, we have way too few visits outside of elections, but we are working on it. 

It was certainly a tough job. It was easier to raise money (wealthy donors will write a check of underserved kids in a heart beat). But getting volunteers was way way more of a challenge than other districts, which made programming harder too. Many of the youth were coming from broken homes, parents were working 2-3 jobs, and sadly some had absentee parents who did not know or care where their kids were. So it was not uncommon for larger or district wide events to have volunteers cancel at the last minute. So we had to over plan for events and sometimes realize in advance we could not do some things.  Volunteer cancelations was also we used program specialist as the primary unit leader. 

I was a Scoutmaster for NSJ in '17, several of these kids went with us. It is pretty awesome to watch a kid that has never been more than a few miles from his front door have the experience of the NSJ or high adventure. 

Edited October 10, 2021 by HelpfulTracks
Moderators might want to branch this thread as this is WAY off OP but a good topic for discussion.