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Should BSA "own" the units? Should the current relationship with chartering organizations be re-examined?


SaintCad

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Under the guidlines, chartered organization own the scouting unit. In some cases, like the LDS Church, this is because Scouthing units are a fundamental part of their youth organization. I'm in a troop where our CO was an absentee owner for years and I know that many COs are somewhat involved but their units are not really part of the overall community of their CO. Many units get no support from the CO yet if the unit were to ever disband, the CO would own everything the Scouts worked hard for.

 

But in addition to that, I'm reading the charter agreement and to be pedantic, my Troop is expected to be almost a youth group for the CO including promoting the CO's value system. Thank goodness my CO doesn't enforce it because most of my Scouts want to be Scouts and not part of the Church tht happens to be our CO. Yet at Scoutmaster I feel obligated to let the Church know that they have tremendous power over how we conduct business and who our leaders are. If the Church doesn't believe in divorce, they are within their rights to have me booted out and let's not even talk about my son who is contemplating studying Buddhism.

 

Is it time to look for BSA to look at the relationship between chartering organizations and units? Should a unit be a member of BSA and if so, does the current structure allow for that or is that the unit is a part of the CO and the CO is part of BSA? Is it possible that the units should be owned by BSA and free to form associations with whatever community groups it wants? Would that help in communities that have many units yet only a few scouts in each unit because of all of the chartering organizations?

 

My personal opinion is that BSA should allow any boy to be a Scout but I do recognize that BSA has always had a religious overtone. Do you think that moving away from COs (and let's be honest, most are churches) will allow atheists and homosexuals into Scouting? Do we even discuss if that is a bad thing (and obviously no one is advocating NAMBLA to be involved in Scouting)? Should we try to move back towards encouraging schools to be COs or would BSA have to make to many concessions for that?

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Well, BSA has had a religious overtone ever since "reverent" crept into the Law, I am sure Kudu can tell us when that occured, it was not in there in the beginning

 

next, just because some units have absentee Charter Organizations, wait, let me alter that a tad, just because "a lot" of CO's are absentee does not mean the model is flawed. In a highly participating CO arrangement it works great. Rather than change the way the BSA does business, perhaps the units with absentee CO's should seek to strengthen its ties with the CO.

 

How to do that will vary with each organization...

 

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In my opinion BSA would not want the responsibility.. They don't have the manpower to be monitoring rouge units. You would get units not following youth protection, maybe because they think they are silly, maybe because the SM is a pretetor.. You would have other problems, maybe not youth protection issues, but still headaches, adults bickering issues..

 

The CO is responsible for their units whether they are attentive or not. Sort of like a parent that lets their teenage son have a party, and does not monitor it. The BSA still gets sued for units that do stupid or illegal things, but they have the buffer of it not being their unit. It is the CO's unit.. What was the CO doing to monitor their unit..

 

Not always effective padding, but padding none the less.. Something the BSA would not want to do away with, because they could not be attentive to all these units without upping their manpower considerably.. Then still being on the hook for the sly con-artist who still manage to pull their illegal or stupid moves when they turn their head for a minute.

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I don't think there's any possible way that BSA would want to own the units.

 

First off, they really don't want the liability.

 

Beyond that, the chartered organizations really do a lot of the work for them of managing the units.

 

You are right, the CO does have a lot of authority over the unit. However, over time, each CO decides how it's going to operate its unit. It may be as an absentee landlord, or it may be deeply connected. It is relatively rare for one to switch mid-stream. Sometimes when that happens, as it did with one troop I know around here, the troop decides to leave and join a new CO (not exact from a technical perspective, but in practice that's what happened.)

 

Is there a danger that every group will have its own unit and they'll all be small? I don't think that's the main reason that there are a bunch of small units. That might be the reason that the LDS has a bunch of small units, but most other people will join a Scout troop without regard for who the CO is. They initially join most often because of location and meeting nights.

 

I think that the CO model is one reason why the BSA has such a hard time with standards and keeping things organized, but I think it has been a pretty successful model for them.

 

It's better than the Soviet model of command and control. No one at council gets to decide where a new troop needs to be, or who should be the leaders, or what the troop should focus on. It turns out that people at the top don't always have a great ability to predict exactly what the people on the ground want.

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I'd further suggest that the chartering partners should be given additional flexibility to model the program acording to their particular needs. That's local option. So for example, if a Unitarian congregation is willng to accept an non-theist family into Scouting, that should be their choice. Or, if a Presbyterian congregation wants to appoint a lesbian woman as the Pack Committee Chair, that would be OK too. Why should the Catholic troop down the road or the LDS Team across town care one way or another?

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Getting rid of COs would basically put troops and packs on the "Girl Scout" plan.

 

GSUSA in effect franchises to the mongo council which then brow beats the DMM (GS DE) into producing enough registrations for the area or responsibility. The DE then begs, borrows and pleads for leaders, and once the minimum number of adults are lined up, they are on their own. The troop leaders have to figure out where to meet, where to store gear, everything. It's why a lot of GS troops are the size of dens and patrols: that's the number of girls who fit into the leaders' living rooms and two mini-vans. And when the leader is done, if no one takes on the troop, it folds. Like it wasn't ever there.

 

When I had a Daisy troop in the States, I would have loved to have a CO.

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Maybe we could liken BSA's current structure to a constitutional republic...

 

Big BSA sets the basic "constitution" but COs charter units with their unique local cultures and strong elements of self government within the basic framework set by that "constitution."

 

We don't need a dictatorship of Big BSA owning everything.

 

We don't need a pure democracy in which some majority of Scouters could override Big BSA's "constitutional" protection of the right of one unit to be a little different from another as long as it's within the basic "constitutional" framework.

 

Units are different and that's good.

 

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'Cad, most churches don't hold the SM in as "high" a position as a pastor or youth minister. So, they aren't inclined to impose a code of conduct on volunteers who are orderly and respectful.

 

It is a good idea to let them know that you are "their" outreach, not the BSA's. Sounds like you are willing to get any kind of kid to darken the door of the church for the sake of scouting. Most Christians are very proud to allow that to happen.

 

It's also a good idea to let them know they have a say in the goings on in your council. There might be a church member who discovers that could be his "ministry." But fewer Christians these days see being a board member as a calling, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for such a one to step forward.

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There is nothing wrong with the CO setup. Personally I think it works better (even at it's worst) than the alternative that the OP suggested of the council owning the units.

 

If your problem is that the CO "owns" the units assets, what do you think will happen when the council owns them?

 

The council's name will be required on all unit bank accounts, and financial reports will be required to go to council every year showing where every penny went, including unit/den dues.

 

Any equipment purchased with unit funds would have to be turned into council if the unit disbanded.

 

Participating in council sales will become mandatory if you wish to do any other money-earning activities.

 

As Nike stated, this is the GSUSA model, and one that I do not feel will work well with the BSA program, and how it's units are put together.

 

If your concern is the preponderance of religious organizations as CO's, then simply look for a different kind of CO. There are plenty of possibilities out there that do not include religious organizations or public schools. Heck, you can even form your own CO if you really want to (not the best way, but possible).

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Since I have learned about the GS model, I have marveled at how successful they have been. As I have come to understand the BSA model, I have marveled at how much trouble we sometimes seem to engender.

Once upon a time, I was a CM. We were going to have a JS night, so we rented the elementary school AProom and then thought, hey, let's invite the GS to join us, Brownies and Cubs, fun, more the merrier, recruit Scouts, right? Contacted the local GS leader (who was also the PTA president), made the invitation, and she said, quote, "oh, no, we have enough Girl Scouts, we don't want any more".

I later learned of the one GS Troop, one number, one leader model (local Service area/Council "owns" it) and when compared to the BSA franchise model saw the wisdom of making a local organization responsible (no matter how closely or loosely held), I marveled that the GSA has existed as long as it has.

BSA Scout units are by definition, multi age, self replicating entities. My home Troop is approaching 60 years old. RARELY does a GSUSA unit exist more that 10 years. The Daisies and Brownies are the unit that exists until (1) the leader(s) quit (it happens) and no one takes up the reins or (2) the original girls tire of the leader's program (they define it, not the national org) or (3) the girls graduate. Then that Troop ceases.

Definitely, the BSA model is superior, as to local control with national standards.

I think Mssrs. Beard and West had the right idea.

GBBill, too, but that's another thread.

 

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