I’m not the person your reply is to, but you’re spot on about where this is headed. From the DOD’s initial statement about Scouting America, it’s obvious that they want it to go back to excluding girls from the organization. As a current den leader, I was already dissatisfied with the way the organization is being run, and this is probably the final straw for me to just step away from them completely. Leadership is acting like cowards while also asking for donations. It’s incredibly disappointing.
I’m honestly a little conflicted about how people like you who are still actively involved in scouting should react to this.
On the one hand, yeah, screw the organization, they don’t deserve support for this kind of stuff.
On the other hand, it’s about the kids, and I do overall believe that the core values of scouting and the kind of structure it can provide are great things for a lot of kids to experience. There are other ways to provide that sort of program, but scouting is already there, and it makes more sense to me to try to preserve and improve that than to try to start something else from scratch.
And good adult leaders can do a lot to insulate their units from the bullshit from higher-up. I know my troop wasn’t at all afraid to bend or even outright break the rules when it made sense to do so (I actually remember first learning the term “plausible deniability” from one of my leaders,) and being active at the district or council level can help put pressure from the inside (back in the 90s my local council actually tried to force the issue and allow gay scouts to join, they got shot down by national but imagine if more councils would have stepped up to do that.) Good leaders with their heads on straight leaving scouting will just result in the organization collapsing into exactly what we don’t want it to be.
I’m not currently active in scouting, I don’t have kids and my schedule doesn’t really work with it these days to be active as a leader, so all I can do is try to make some noise from the outside leaning on my experience as an eagle scout and former leader. I have nothing to lose but also very little leverage. People like you have more leverage, but also not much to lose- absolute worst case scenario they find an excuse to kick you out, but if you don’t succeed at making change from the inside you were probably going to leave anyway.
The organization is an absolute mess right now, including our district council. There’s so much that needs to be addressed, and it feels like they prioritized this situation over the actual needs of the organization. It feels hypocritical to have the kids recite the scout oath and law every meeting, while watching leadership get bullied by outsiders. It feels especially personal because now it seems like my daughter is about to be targeted. There are people still upset that girls are allowed, and they are about to feel much more emboldened by this latest misstep. It’s just mentally exhausting and I could spend my free time helping my community in other ways, that aren’t trying to exclude my kid.
I’m not the person your reply is to, but you’re spot on about where this is headed. From the DOD’s initial statement about Scouting America, it’s obvious that they want it to go back to excluding girls from the organization. As a current den leader, I was already dissatisfied with the way the organization is being run, and this is probably the final straw for me to just step away from them completely. Leadership is acting like cowards while also asking for donations. It’s incredibly disappointing.
I’m honestly a little conflicted about how people like you who are still actively involved in scouting should react to this.
On the one hand, yeah, screw the organization, they don’t deserve support for this kind of stuff.
On the other hand, it’s about the kids, and I do overall believe that the core values of scouting and the kind of structure it can provide are great things for a lot of kids to experience. There are other ways to provide that sort of program, but scouting is already there, and it makes more sense to me to try to preserve and improve that than to try to start something else from scratch.
And good adult leaders can do a lot to insulate their units from the bullshit from higher-up. I know my troop wasn’t at all afraid to bend or even outright break the rules when it made sense to do so (I actually remember first learning the term “plausible deniability” from one of my leaders,) and being active at the district or council level can help put pressure from the inside (back in the 90s my local council actually tried to force the issue and allow gay scouts to join, they got shot down by national but imagine if more councils would have stepped up to do that.) Good leaders with their heads on straight leaving scouting will just result in the organization collapsing into exactly what we don’t want it to be.
I’m not currently active in scouting, I don’t have kids and my schedule doesn’t really work with it these days to be active as a leader, so all I can do is try to make some noise from the outside leaning on my experience as an eagle scout and former leader. I have nothing to lose but also very little leverage. People like you have more leverage, but also not much to lose- absolute worst case scenario they find an excuse to kick you out, but if you don’t succeed at making change from the inside you were probably going to leave anyway.
The organization is an absolute mess right now, including our district council. There’s so much that needs to be addressed, and it feels like they prioritized this situation over the actual needs of the organization. It feels hypocritical to have the kids recite the scout oath and law every meeting, while watching leadership get bullied by outsiders. It feels especially personal because now it seems like my daughter is about to be targeted. There are people still upset that girls are allowed, and they are about to feel much more emboldened by this latest misstep. It’s just mentally exhausting and I could spend my free time helping my community in other ways, that aren’t trying to exclude my kid.