I was surprised at the amount of weight the scouting awards still carry. One of my kid’s got a congressional internship from her girl scout gold award. It still comes up in interviews years later, in finance. And Rex Tillerson, the 67 year old former secretary of state and head of Exxon, keeps his eagle award on his resume to this day.
Those places probably silently witnessed hundreds or thousands of boys getting abused over the years. It’s heart wrenching to think of memories they trigger for those kids.
Hm. Not sure I agree with this. If anything, with some smart marketing the fact that these skills are getting rare could be used as a huge draw. As many of these traditional skills become less known, parents can no longer teach their children yet many people still see value in understanding some of these basics.
Well, they also trigger pleasant memories for many. We don’t close down NYC because thousands of 9/11 families are triggered by a physical site. If it bothers you, avoid it or get counseling to cope. The trees, lakes, and cabins didn’t cause the problem, humans did, and the solution is with people not places.
Weird comment. They didn’t rebuild the WTC and in fact put a memorial there. I assume it would’ve been considered insensitive to simply put up a new building and lease it out. Clearly there’s an element of scale at work, but offering “get over it” as advice to victims of child sexual abuse is oddly callous.
I just saw on the news that the BSA is setting up a fund to compensate victims. Then there was a man in his 40s that was interviewed and said he wants his childhood back. These victims are scared for life in many ways.
If I had a kid I don’t know if I would have then join. They did clean up a lot but they need a complete overall. Change the name, rebrand, and change the entire leadership.
I was truly impressed when I went to Jamboree this summer as an exhibitor. The leaders and campers I met were truly dedicated people and loved their experiences. So many kids pointed to the leadership trainings etc that was so important to them.
It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Lots of boys were abused at Penn State, and a walk on campus may trigger memories for those victims, but no one is suggesting Penn State should shutdown.
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Neither of my kids were scouts so I have no skin in this game. I do agree with all of the posters that the molestation that occurred is sickening and I am not surprised many people pulled their kids or never allowed them to start scouting because of it.
I was a Girl Scout as a kid and I loved it. It is very sad and tragic what the scouting label has become.
I will say, and someone upthread touched on this, that the Mormon’s pulling out had a huge impact on funding and enrollment, IMO way more than this article states. My old community had a ton of Mormon families, many were my good friends. One of my friends told me that Mormon boys were 40% of the scouting population and they would feel it when the Mormons pulled out. I have no evidence to approve or dispute her claim, but I do know that every Mormon family in our area with boys had them in scouting, and then every single one left.
@Qtinfo, minors were abused in Congressional offices during the page scandals of the 1970s, but no one has suggested selling off the Capitol. Many, many public school systems have faced these issues, but we aren’t shuttering all public schools. The physical facilities are not the problem, regardless of whether they are “triggering” to some. And I didn’t state “get over it”, I suggested avoiding the site of trigger or getting counseling to cope, which is the standard advice mental health professionals offer. Do not mis-quote me.
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In terms of technology, there are a lot of kids who prefer to be on their phone or play video games. And those who are looking to go outside are often involved in sports which are huge time sucks (many year round activities). And increasing secular society makes faith based organizations less appealing. But I think the scouts still teach relevant and useful life skills.
Membership is declining for a lot of reasons. A lot of teen boys spend all their free time on video games, tv, and their phones. Getting them outside once in awhile is still beneficial.
But no one suggested selling off anything? So it seems like you’re the one who’s projecting intentions onto people who are simply reflecting on the horror that has gone at sites that other people have happy memories of. It’s a complicated situation. Most of us get that. Also you edited your post so I assume you realized how unkind it sounded originally. Perhaps that wasn’t how you meant it to come across and that is why you edited it. Fair enough.
Not particularly interested in continuing this tangent. My original advice, always stated in the post, is to avoid the site of triggers or get counselling to cope, and I stand by it. Many posters have commented on the mortgaging and possible sale of Philmont, both pro and con.
However, other scouting type organizations like Navigators and Trail Life may be more attractive to parents who want a more firm commitment to liberal or conservative values, rather than the BSA seemingly leaving all of them dissatisfied (plus having the sexual misconduct baggage).
Statements from BSA have indicated that they intend to establish a trust fund for victims of abuse. Bankruptcy petition lists assets of $1-10 billion. Unless a lot of those assets are cash or marketable securities, they will likely need to sell some assets to fund the trust.
Catholic churches and schools (at least those around here) no longer allow scout troops to meet in their facilities or sponsor the troops. Our church had sponsored a troop for mentally disabled teens and adults for many years and they had to find another sponsor. My father was in the Knights of Columbus and it took him months to find another sponsor. The school my children attended no longer has troops (boy or girl). There was no big announcement, the troops were just gone.
Those parents were irresponsible for not accompanying their students to college to make sure they were safe /s.
You are blaming the parents, which is the equivalent of blaming the victims. How do you not expect people to jump on that?
H was a scout leader and S became an Eagle Scout when being gay was not permitted in the bsa. (Yeah, sue me.) H thinks it’s likely the BSA will basically dissolve because of the various issues. He feels girls in the BSA is a recipe for disaster, the sex abuse situation will discourage anyone from letting their kids join (despite programs put in place to prevent further cases), and the current technology-geared climate are all making scouting a thing of the past.
I was never involved in the scouting. I like to camp at a 4-star hotel.
Can’t say I don’t agree with this.
I had two boys go through Scouts, and attended both the meetings and 4 out of 5 of the camp-outs. Wouldn’t have let them go on the ones I didn’t make, if I hadn’t made the others and judged who they’d be left with.
A little less than 50% of the parents neither stayed for the meetings or ever made the outings.
Not really relevant to some of the abuse claims, since they are alleged to have occurred back in the days of unsupervised everything but are an indication some lessons still haven’t been learned by everyone out there.