Scouting Maverick: Scout Better

BSA’s new initials mean sexual assault

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by

Aren Cambre
in

Boy Scouts of America recently chose a new name, Scouting America (SA). This will be a doing-business-as arrangement (DBA), so the underlying corporate name says the same.

SA means sexual assault.

With its new name, BSA spotlights its devastating past. That past is why it just made a $2.4 billion bankruptcy settlement.

BSA’s marketers ham-fistedly insisted on no abbreviations. Sorry, Scouting America will be abbreviated to SA. 66% fewer syllables and 89% fewer characters is too strong a pull. And BSA initializes so much, it’s a longstanding pattern: BSA, NYLT, NAYLE, OA, PLC, ILST, AOL, DYLC, NESA, NCAP, et al. It’s a Sisyphean quest to stamp out initializing this corporate name.

SA means sexual assault:

I could go on. Simple searches turn up so many more references to SA = sexual assault.

SA means sexual assault!

This is yet another bunder, on top of a pile of blunders, foisted on Scouting by its national organization.

Blunders will continue until people at the top declare they’ve had enough. What are you waiting on?

P.S., Scouts USA or Scouting USA make more sense. It reflects our country name instead of usurping the name of two continents, and it fits the naming convention of many of our WOSM peers.

Comments

5 responses to “BSA’s new initials mean sexual assault”

  1. Jim Avatar
    Jim

    1. Scouts USA was never going to happen. Ever. The GSUSA was never going to allow it. They own the similar trademark and they would have won in court.

    2. Why are people abbreviating the term “sexual assault”? I actually find that more offensive than choosing a name that’s abbreviated down to a similar combination of letters. Call it what it is: SEXUAL ASSAULT. It isn’t SA, it is SEXUAL ASSAULT. Calling the crime “SA” waters it down and hides what it actually is, perpetuating some kind of perverse sense of shame on the survivors of SEXUAL ASSAULT.

    3. Scouting America is not abbreviating the term and is more likely to encourage the use of the words “Scouts” and “Scouting” over yet another abbreviation, especially an unnecessary and lazy one like “SA”.

    Reply
    1. Aren Cambre Avatar
      Aren Cambre

      I have asked several youth, in a non-leading way, what SA means. The immediate, universal response is “sexual assault”.

      Searching the Fizz app for a particular university on SA, it comes up only with references to sexual assault.

      This is a blunder.

      SA is already appearing all over the place on social media in reference to Scouting America.

      Reply
  2. Floyd Goldoli Avatar
    Floyd Goldoli

    Don’t forget that the logo for Hitler’s brownshirts read “SA”.

    It’s like these guys didn’t bother paying a marketing company to advise them. They just spitballed this sitting around the break room where the last four guys who work in Dallas were drinking their coffee.

    I’d hate to think that a committee of volunteers came up with this, but the kind of volunteers they put on national committees tend to be the type who checkbooked their way to the top.

    Field Scouters, the filthy peons who actually work with children and are the product that the corporation monetizes for the absurd fees they charge, and whose existence makes the insane salaries of the clown college dropouts who actually run the corporation possible? They rarely wind up wearing the mysterious gold tabs and making decisions that affect the program.

    What would we know about Scouting? We’re just the ones who make it happen.

    The corporate mentality of the B.S.A. is killing the movement.

    Reply
    1. Aren Cambre Avatar
      Aren Cambre

      Businesses need money, and scouting is no different, so there’s some legitimacy if you checkbook your way up. But I’ve noticed that advancement in BSA volunteer and professional systems big time over-relies on loyalty to the bureaucracy, not so much on competence or commitment to the base. I think that’s why we have a bunch of national committees that don’t do much useful.

      Reply
  3. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    I would have voted for Scouts of America.

    Reply

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