Author: Aren Cambre

In 2017, Scouting America (SA) pulled a sexist scam. After falsely claiming equity and inclusion, SA foisted a separate-but-equal regime on Scouting. It did this to appease misogynists.

The crown jewel of SA’s regime is the linked-troop sham. The linked-troop sham’s sole point is to maximize gendered segregation.

Enter Wood Badge, a great adult-training program. As I write this, SA’s national organization is running a Wood Badge course at SBR. (SBR is SA’s monument to bigotry.)

SA took a shit on this Wood Badge course, using it to showcase the linked-troop sham. That’s why it’s the Linked-Troop Wood Badge course.

It’s tragic that SA defiled Wood Badge. But it did. That shit has some nasty stank, so so let’s talk about it.

Background

When SA first accepted girls in its Cub Scout and Scouts BSA programs, many believed claims that SA was becoming inclusive and serving families better. That was gaslighting.¹ SA was actually doing shady shit on the sly.

The shady shit was how SA included manosphere-grifter logic in its decision-making. This logic manifested with how girls were “included” under a gendered, separate-but-equal regime. This was done so that SA could take care of the feelings of misogynists.

To enact this separate-but-equal regime, SA abandoned these:

• Program integrity²
• Opportunities for youth to learn to work together³
• Safe spaces for nonbinary youth⁴
• Serving families⁵
• Valuing fathers⁶
• Culture of compliance⁷
• Equal access to programs⁸, especially for girls⁹
• Honesty and integrity¹⁰
• Evidence-backed standards¹¹
• Scout-unit self-determination on single-gender vs. coed

The separate-but-equal regime’s crown jewel is the linked-troop sham. Under that sham, boy troops and girl troops may “link”, allowing them to share some administrative resources and do limited activities together.¹²

Due to SA’s gaslighting, this sham is widely misunderstood as SA’s interim state, buying time for it to offer a coed option.

The opposite is true. The linked-troop sham is a brief, interim step to full gendered segregation. In response to wide misunderstanding, SA representatives haughtily mansplained that coed will “never” happen¹³ and, dripping with disdain¹⁴, lectured that the “ultimate goal with the linked-troop [sham]” was that boys and girls are ripped apart, with their respective, mono-gender troops “identify[ing] as separate entities”¹⁵.

SA’s separate-but-equal regime, and the regime’s linked-troop sham, rest entirely on misinformation and toxic, racist, and sexist folklore.¹⁶ Despite this, SA’s representatives have made multiple public statements where they clownishly and falsely claim rationality.¹⁷

Separate-but-equal regime: SA’s hug of misogynists

Misogynists’ voices do not belong in SA, especially not while SA was planning how to accommodate girls!

Former Chief Scout Executive¹⁸ (CSE) Michael Surbaugh felt differently. He gave misogynists a powerful platform at the 2017 National Annual Meeting.

The National Annual Meeting (NAM) is SA’s most important annual meeting. NAM 2017 wasn’t wasn’t any old NAM. NAM 2017 is where inclusion of girls was the main topic!¹⁹

In his NAM 2017 keynote speech, Michael laid out plans to accommodate girls. His lead in was a big ole bear hug to misogynists, saying that their views are “something we have to wrestle with”. He shared how some misogynists felt “the worst thing we could possibly do is to allow young women to get the Eagle rank”, how other misogynists think the “integrity of that Eagle rank” depends on denying access to girls, and more misogynistic trash.²⁰

Here’s the video of Michael’s awful remarks (skip to 24:54):

By airing misogynists’ concerns at a crucial moment, Michael validated them and revealed their power. This speech was Michael’s admission of how sexism is woven into the national organization’s cultural fabric. (Sexism is a component of SA’s cultural rot, which I talk about elsewhere.)

After honoring misogynists, Michael dried their tears, appeasing them with the separate-but-equal regime (starts at 26:20 in above video).²¹

The regime is fueled by folklore and misinformation

The main idea driving the separate-but-equal regime is SA’s dunderheaded theory, that adolescent maturity is reducible to pubertal stage. In a “hold my beer” moment, SA extended its dunderheaded theory to slander an entire class of youth: SA’s official line is that since some girls hit puberty earlier than boys, adolescent girls as a class are venomous harridans who “disadvantage” the entire class of weak, fragile boys.²²

Here’s the problem: Maturity has many factors, not just pubertal stage.²³ Maturity is highly individualized. There is no evidentiary basis that boys and girls have catastrophic maturity differences at any age.

Regardless, SA “protects” boys with the separate-but-equal regime’s ban on coed dens and troops. With boys and girls ripped apart, venomous-harridans girls cannot “disadvantage” the weak, fragile boys.

While the dunderheaded theory was the start, SA went much further. In doing so, SA revealed that its separate-but-equal regime rests entirely on a corpus of misinformation and folklore.²⁴

SA’s corpus of misinformation and folklore includes weird theories about adolescent maturity²⁵, sexist folklore²⁶, alignment with racist adultification²⁷, questionable sources²⁸, an absurd theory on relationships²⁹, an absurd theory on which gender is advantaged³⁰, folklore about gendered learning differences³¹, open sexism and misogyny³², a likely lie about another Scouting organization’s experience with coed³³, and disparagement of families and volunteers³⁴.

Rationality was never SA’s priority. The fix was in from the start: Michael Surbaugh decided that misogynists’ feelings must be protected, above all else. Therefore, the point of SA’s corpus of misinformation and folklore was to concoct a fiction of rationality, to obscure the misogynist hugging.

SA used the playbook of manosphere grifters. To appease insecure males, these grifters misuse research³⁵ to reinforce clownish, masculine stereotypes by “distort[ing] biology and evolution” while advocating for “deny[ing] rights and respect to women, trans and nonbinary people”³⁶.

Many saw past SA’s absurdity. Some succeeded in liberating themselves from the regime!

The regime was easy to flout in Cub Scouts

Cub Scout leaders widely flouted SA’s separate-but-equal regime. Cub Scout packs that accepted girls largely ran coed dens.³⁷

Bowing to this mass noncompliance, SA finally admitted partial defeat on its separate-but-equal regime, canceling it for Cub Scouts through 4th grade³⁸ on June 1, 2023.

It was easy to openly provide coed experiences in Cub Scouts. The sheer amount of coed contributed to Cub Scouts’ partial liberation from the separate-but-equal regime. But it’s harder in Scouts BSA.

…but hard to ditch in Scouts BSA

While many coed Scouts BSA troops exist, they have a harder time, which suppresses their openness.

Coed troops fight through more challenges, such as a four-deep rule for adult leaders³⁹, fractured vision due to redundant Scoutmasters⁴⁰, redundant youth leadership⁴¹, and more.

Also, anachronistic, counterfactual notions on how adolescents relate to each other are common in Scouting.⁴² Some of these anachronisms overlap matters governed by SA’s youth-protection rules.

Youth-protection rules are held in high regard. This is good! The viability of Scouting hinges on effective youth protection. Yet coed troops, in moving past anachronisms, must navigate gray areas not clearly covered by youth-protection rules. Sometimes they must adopt practices that, while likely as effective as sanctioned practices, do not follow the letter of the law.

Scout leaders generally do not wish to be open about this, especially given how national representatives freely threaten to expel adults over trivial matters. This suppresses public acknowledgement of coed troops.

Altogether, artificial barriers to coed troops and a lack of transparency on their existence suppresses perceived desire for coed troops. This reduces pressure on SA to liberate Scouts BSA from its separate-but-equal regime.

Enter the perfidious National Scouts BSA Committee

Further suppressing liberation is the perfidy of the National Scouts BSA Committee (NSBC), the committee that oversees⁴³ the Scouts BSA program.

In a mansplaining storm, the NSBC’s chairman cracks sexist jokes.⁴⁴

NSBC members joined national bureaucrats in displaying arrogance and hostility to the base.⁴⁵

NSBC members joined national bureaucrats in using folklore and misinformation to slander girls as a class.⁴⁶

The NSBC’s disdain of the base is entrenched. Years after SA kicked off its sexist scam, the committee hadn’t lifted a finger to help the base⁴⁷:

At the time of this Reddit comment, SA kicked off its sexist scam 6.3 years prior, and the Scouts BSA program had been subjugated by the separate-but-equal regime for 4.8 years!

Broad discontent with the regime would have been readily apparent to anyone who’s alive and breathing. But when a committee doesn’t care about the base, it doesn’t listen to them.

The NSBC is awash in perfidy.

The only clear evidence of the NSBC cosplaying usefulness starts in May 2024, when SA put this committee in charge of something big.

This “something big” may be more gaslighting.

Laughably stupid coed-troop pilot proves SA still loves misogynists

At the May 2024 NAM, SA finally admitted its sexist scam is wearing thin. It announced a lengthy coed-troop pilot, to be run by the National Scouts BSA Committee.⁴⁸

This was an empty gesture. If SA wanted to do right, it instead would:

1. Immediately liberate all from the separate-but-equal regime, deleting the regime in its entirety.
2. Apologize for the regime.
3. Discipline all national professionals and volunteers who betrayed Scouting to support misogynists.

Instead of doing right, SA continues to hug misogynists by delaying a decision on liberation. Coincidentally, delay is is the main point of SA’s pilots.

SA’s pilots are trash

In the real world, pilots are smart. They uncover findings, via a live test of a proposed change, that would be difficult to know in advance.

I have yet to uncover any recent SA-pilot finding that 1. wouldn’t have been discernable, in advance, by an informed person or 2. could have been an easy course correction later. For example, while late-2010s pilots were run for girl troops and girl dens, every last part of BSA’s Family Scouting Questions and Answers, which laid out the separate-but-equal regime, would have been predictable by an experienced adult leader who had seen Michael Surbaugh’s 2017 NAM misogynist-appeasement speech, which preceded the pilots.

Some pilot programs have no findings! For example, the yearlong pilot of coed Cub Scouts dens⁴⁹ had no findings⁵⁰.

SA’s pilots are trash. Mere bureaucratic-stalling exercises, they simply delay change.

SA’s laughably stupid coed-troop pilot is trash

When SA admitted its sexist scam is wearing thin, it announced a long delay before any possible liberation: The NSBC-run coed-troop pilot will run through July 2025.⁵¹

This is just another trash pilot. It has no proper end. There’s nothing to learn!

Coed has been normal in USA society for well over a century.⁵² All of SA’s international peers programs are coed.⁵³ SA already has over 56 years of coed experience, mainly in its high-school programs.⁵⁴ Unofficial pilots of coed troops have been ongoing⁵⁵ since girls were first admitted to Scouts BSA in February 2019⁵⁶. Everything SA need to know to navigate coed, it’s already at its fingertips!

Without a proper end, what goal is the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot seeking?

Coed-troop pilot goal 1: prolong misogynist appeasement

With the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot, SA pretends that girls are a weird, novel entity who need 14 more months of careful study. Because, you know, SA’s 56 years of experience with coed wasn’t enough.

That is absurd! It’s line 3 from hymn 231, “How Great Manosphere Grifters Art”.

This validates that the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot is doing the customary SA-pilot thing, kicking the can down the road. At a minimum, it extends SA’s misogynist-appeasement period by 14 more months.

This buys time for the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot’s more insidious goal.

Coed-troop pilot goal 2: hug misogynists by hobbling reform

Misogynists had a lock on SA’s national organization in 2017. I have zero evidence that SA has pushed them away. In fact, for reasons I cannot get into (I cannot say more without violating confidentiality of my sources), SA’s misogynists may now be more powerful than in 2017.

If SA was to liberate Scouting from the separate-but-equal regime, that would be a slap in the face to SA’s misogynist friends. Liberating Scouting from the regime invalidates misogynists’ feelings!

To minimize hurting feelings of its misogynist friends, SA must obstruct reform. The best way to obstruct reform? Put an anti-reformer in charge of assessing the reform.

That’s the why I theorize SA put a perfidious entity, the NSBC, in charge of the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot.

The National Scouts BSA Committee has never distanced itself from perfidy. The NSBC has never apologized for its transgressions. It has never repudiated its errors. It has never disavowed its sexism. It has never committed to do what’s best for the base. It has never been transparent.⁵⁷ Its members still promote the linked-troop sham to this day! We can only expect the NSBC’s perfidy to continue.

Continued NSBC perfidy means more warped data, more lies about girls, more cherry-picking research, more weird theories about pusillanimous boys being “disadvantaged” by venomous-harridan girls, more ignoring the base.

Given this, we should expect the NSBC to twist the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot’s findings in ways that build on its its corpus of misinformation and folklore. We should expect the NSBC to yet again advance manosphere nonsense, just to help SA hug its misogynist friends.

Summed up, the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot is likely a ruse. SA is probably, once again, setting the stage for more gaslighting.

The laughably stupid coed-troop pilot will likely lead to…

…a phony liberation…

I think the most likely outcome is SA will once again gaslight everyone.

It will have a splashy announcement of Scouting’s liberation from the separate-but-equal regime. When national bureaucrats should be apologizing to us, they will instead pat themselves on the back, acting as if our liberation from their blunder is an incredible achievement.

Likely armed with warped findings from the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot, SA will do shady shit on the sly, retaining key anachronistic gendered rules or standards.

In other words, SA will likely obstruct clean liberation from its sexist scam. Instead, it will likely cling to substantial parts of the scam.

…or retention of the sexist scam…

Full retention of the sexist scam is a possibility. Remember, SA’s misogynists probably still have a lock on the organization. They don’t want to be slapped.

This hinges on how far the NSBC goes with its distortion of the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot.

…or a full liberation?

I wish this would happen, but it’s unlikely.

A full liberation would mean full deletion of SA’s sexist scam. All arbitrary, gendered standards would evaporate.

That’s it! It’s simple. It’s clean. It’s fast. But it slaps misogynists in the face. That is why I lean against SA doing this.

In the end, SA needs leadership to overcome its sexism. That requires leadership from an organization beset by a decades-long leadership vacuum. Don’t get your hopes up.

Back to the Linked-Troop Wood Badge

Those of you at the Linked-Troop Wood Badge, I am sorry.

I am sorry SA is forcing you to sing an opera written by manosphere grifters.

I am sorry SA forces you to cosplay a fiction, that girls are venomous harridans and boys are weak and fragile.

I am sorry your Wood Badge session was warped by misinformation and folklore.

I am sorry SA warped your course to validate its misogynist friends.

I am sorry.

Wood Badge is a good program. Look past SA’s sexism, and apply Wood Badge’s valuable lessons to your life and to Scouting.

Silver lining?

SA’s national CEO, Roger Krone, is attending this Wood Badge as a participant!

This would be a great opportunity for him to send a shot across the bow and announce immediate liberation!

Will Roger be be brave? Will Roger demonstrate leadership? Or will we get more of SA’s sexist scam?

I would love to be wrong

I would love to be wrong!

If anyone can point to me evidence that the National Scouts BSA Committee has openly rejected its perfidy, or that SA has openly committed to cleanly liberate the movement from its sexist scam, drop a comment!

1. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Gaslighting of volunteers and parents” section. In its lead up to including girls, SA falsely conveyed a sense of inclusion and equality, only to follow with a separate-but-equal regime. This is gaslighting is the core of SA’s sexist scam. ↩︎
2. Ibid. See the “Mocks program integrity” section. ↩︎
3. Ibid. See the “Poor source” section. ↩︎
4. Ibid. See the “Harms transgender youth” section. ↩︎
5. Ibid. See the “Alienates Scouts and families” section. ↩︎
6. Ibid. See the “Devalues fathers” section. ↩︎
7. Ibid. See the “Creates noncompliance culture” section. ↩︎
8. Ibid. See the “Denies high adventure to youth” section. ↩︎
9. Ibid. See the “Worsens girls’ experience” section. ↩︎
10. Ibid. See the “Gaslighting of volunteers and parents” section. ↩︎
11. Ibid. See the “Faulty bases for coed ban” section. ↩︎
12. FAQs for Linked Troops, Boy Scouts of America, September 17, 2022. ↩︎
13. Scouts BSA Web Conference March 2021. At 29:30, the National Scouts BSA Committee chair cuts off another presenter to mansplain that “nobody” supports coed, then cracks a sexist joke, and then conveys likely false information about Venturing and other countries’ Scouting programs, then concludes that coed troops are “not happening” and that you can “take [my haughty mansplaining] to the bank”. ↩︎
14. See 2022 Scouts BSA Linked Troops Best Practices Webinar 92022, starting at 58:00. No matter the question, the hostile and exasperated answers conveyed that linked troops are expected to separate into independent, single-gender troops. ↩︎
15. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Gaslighting of volunteers and parents” section. ↩︎
16. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Faulty bases of the coed ban” section. ↩︎
17. Ibid. Also, as a prominent example, see “The Scouts BSA task force for diversity, equity and inclusion, one year later” (Mike De Socio, Morally Straight, October 12, 2022) where a National Scouts BSA Committee member, who absurdly claimined to lead a DEI task force (!), shamefully spreads gendered disinformation–neurosexism–on SA’s behalf. In a follow up article “The BSA is using neuroscience to justify gender-separated troops. But ‘science doesn’t support it‘” (Mike De Socio, Morally Straight, November 23, 2022), the reporter debunks the SA representative’s false claims. ↩︎
18. In SA, “Chief Scout Executive” (CSE) is a fancy title for the national CEO. Fancy titles like these are used across SA to distinguish positions reserved for commissioned professionals, who are in an obsolete employment system that excels at running off great talent. That is why SA’s internally sourced CEOs are over-promoted bureaucrats, not leaders, who excel at screwing up. ↩︎
19. Bryan Wendell, “BSA invites girls into Scouting programs“, Scouting Magazine, January-February 2018 ↩︎
20. A three-minute excerpt of Michael Surbaugh’s 2017 NAM speech, focused on these comments, is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/bravescouters/posts/2491012247750838/. Also see BSA’s full video of Michael Surbaugh’s speech: 2017 Business Meeting Mike Surbaugh. Michael’s airing of misogynists’ concerns start at 24:54. ↩︎
21. Ibid. Also see BSA’s full video of Michael Surbaugh’s speech: 2017 Business Meeting Mike Surbaugh. Michael’s airing of misogynists’ concerns start at 26:20. ↩︎
22.  Scouts BSA Web Conference March 2021. The specific comments regarding “disadvantaged” start at 29:42. ↩︎
23. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Folklore about maturity…” section. ↩︎
24. Ibid. See the “Faulty bases of the coed ban” section. ↩︎
25. Ibid. See the “Folklore about maturity…” section. ↩︎
26. Ibid. See the “…that is sexist” section. ↩︎
27. Ibid. See the “…that is racist” section. ↩︎
28. Ibid. See the “Poor source” section. ↩︎
29. Ibid. See the “Poor application of questionable theory” section. ↩︎
30. Ibid. See the “Reversal of who is ‘disadvantaged’” section. ↩︎
31. Ibid. See the “Folklore about learning” section. ↩︎
32. Ibid. See the “Sexism” section. ↩︎
33. Ibid. See the “Improbable analysis” section. ↩︎
34. Ibid. See the “Disparagement of families and volunteers” section. ↩︎
35. Jennifer Sandlin, “Manosphere grifters misuse evolutionary psychology to promote anti-feminist views“, Boing Boing, November 25, 2023 ↩︎
36. Steve MuCollough, “Online misogyny: the ‘manosphere’“, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, September 12, 2023 ↩︎
37. This was plainly obvious in social-media Cub Scout leader forums and in my in-person observations. ↩︎
38. Due to SA’s poor program design, the jump from Cub Scouts to Scouts BSA is jarring, corresponding to about a 25% year-over-year membership loss. The national organization, preferring inertia over integrity, is unmotivated to fix program-design problems. Instead, SA clings to a fantasy that the 5th grade Cub Scout year is a good transition to Scouts BSA. Ergo, since Scouts BSA falls under the separate-but-equal regime, SA declined to liberate 5th grade Cub Scouts from regime. ↩︎
39. Because SA treats the girl troop and boy troop as separate troops, each troop must separately meet the two-deep rule for adult leadership. Therefore, troops unofficially running as coed operations must have four-deep leadership. ↩︎
40. The boy troop and girl troop each must supply its own Scoutmaster. This is by design. SA poisoned the well to induce conflicts and burdens that interfere with a harmonious, single operation. ↩︎
41. Theoretically, each troop is to have its own Patrol Leaders Council. This leads to ridiculous arrangements, such as coed troops having both a male and a female Senior Patrol Leader. This is by design. SA poisoned the well to induce conflicts and burdens that interfere with a harmonious, single operation. ↩︎
42. This is a qualitative statement, based on my experience in the program. But it comes out in objective ways from time to time. The amateur folk psychology of Scoutmaster Pete in On My Honor (Jay Mechling, 2001) is an example. Pete’s amateur psychology seems to get some things right, but he has some major misses. So is the bizarre theory, advanced by the national organization, that males and females are bifuracted by their use of categorically different ways to build relationships, reviewed more in The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban (Aren Cambre, November 2022) in the “Poor application of questionable theory” section. ↩︎
43. The testimony of several insiders affirm that national program committees are mostly do-nothing puppets of the bureaucracy. They are extraordinarily secretive to hide how little they do and how misaligned they are with the base they serve. While some committees have a few capable members, those people’s effectiveness is attenuated by how SA neuters committees by stacking them with passive loyalists. ↩︎
44. https://www.facebook.com/groups/bravescouters/posts/2426021844249879. In this video excerpt, the chair of the National Scouts BSA Committee, in the middle of a mansplaining lecture about the separate-but-equal regime and its linked-troop sham. is a sexist joke. The “truth behind this joke” is that wives should be subservient to husbands. ↩︎
45. Scouts BSA Web Conference March 2021. At 29:30, the National Scouts BSA Committee chair interrupts another presenter to mansplain that “nobody” supports coed, then cracks a sexist joke (same as in above footnote), and then conveys likely false information about Venturing and other countries’ Scouting programs, then concludes that coed troops are “not happening” and that you can “take [my mansplaining] to the bank”. ↩︎
46. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Faulty bases of the coed ban” section for example after example of how members of the National Scouts BSA Committee slandered girls as a class. ↩︎
47. https://www.reddit.com/r/BSA/comments/16cjo9y/comment/jzkikne/, comment authored on September 7, 2023. ↩︎
48. Combined Troop Pilot, Boy Scouts of America, May 10, 2024. ↩︎
49. Again, only through 4th grade. 5th graders are forced back into the separate-but-equal regime. ↩︎
50. The June 1, 2023 cancellation of the separate-but-equal regime for grades K-4 was accompanied by no new rules, new standards, or program changes. This is strong evidence that the yearlong pilot had no useful findings. ↩︎
51. Aaron Derr, “What you need to know about the Scouts BSA combined troop pilot program“, Aaron on Scouting, Scouting Magazine, July 15, 2024. ↩︎
52. Thomas Woody, “A history of women’s education in the United States“, The Science Press, 1929. In this, the author writes that “Public high schools are mainly
    coeducational.” In “The paradox of G. Stanley Hall: Foe of coeducation and educator of women“, Lesley A. Diehl finds that Woody’s paper substantiates that 98% of high schools were coed by 1900 (p. 870). ↩︎
53. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., BSA’s WOSM peer programs, March 7, 2024. All the listed programs, at all levels, are fully coed or have coed options. ↩︎
54. “History [of Venturing]“, Boy Scouts of America. SA first allowed females into its high-school programs in 1969. ↩︎
55. The author is aware of troops that were coed from the start. ↩︎
56. Implementation Details for First-Time Members Entering Scouts BSA, Boy Scouts of America. ↩︎
57. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., “BSA national committee transparency scores“. See the “National Scouts BSA Committee” section. ↩︎

Scouting America (nee Boy Scouts of America) will likely have a large 2024 youth-membership loss. It’s likely due to its new rolling-membership scheme.

By December 31, 2024, BSA SA will likely have a 2.4% member loss. If nothing changes, it will reach 14% by April 2025!

SA could have avoided this with a subscription model.

(Important data note: All member counts in this document are of youth members. Adults are not represented in any counts.)

What’s changed

On August 1, 2023, SA switched from a fixed-membership scheme¹ to a rolling-membership scheme (what these mean).

While rolling memberships are a conceptual improvement, renewals appear to be shockingly low.

The old way: fixed memberships

In the old, fixed-membership system, well-run Scout units reached out to all members to secure renewals. Paying for renewal was easy.

Let’s use Cub Scout Pack 123 as an example.

Each year, Pack 123 pays $100 to renew its charter. The charter is a license for the pack to operate. Renewing this charter is called “rechartering”.

Most unit charters expire on December 31. Therefore, by December 31, Pack 123 must pay for the next year.

All Pack 123 members have their own SA memberships. When Pack 123 recharters, in addition to paying its own $100 fee, it pays SA annual membership fees on behalf of its members.

Suppose Pack 123 has 20 youth members and 10 adult members. The pack will pay SA $2450² for next year’s memberships:

• $100: Pack 123’s annual-charter fee
• $1700: SA’s $85 fee for each of Pack 123’s 20 youth members
• $650: SA’s $65 fee for each of Pack 123’s 10 adult leaders

As wise stewards of limited funds, Pack 123 prefers not to pay SA’s fee for youth or adults who stopped participating. Therefore, before paying $2450, a Pack 123 volunteer reached out to all families to assure they are renewing and to collect funds.

Also, a Pack 123 volunteer managed the friction of dealing with SA’s burdensome recharter process. Families did not deal with that burden. They only needed to send a payment to Pack 123. Easy.

A detail: New members had prorated memberships. Sally Smith, who is new to SA, joined Pack 123 in September, 2022. Since Pack 123’s charter cycle begins on January 1, Sally only paid for four months of SA membership: September 2022 through December 2022. When Pack 123 submitted its recharter, it paid $85 on Sally’s behalf for her 2023 SA membership.

The new way: rolling memberships

On August 1, 2023, SA switched to a rolling-membership model. All new members pay a full year upon joining. Their memberships expire next year, on the last day of their join month.

Suppose Timmy Smith joined Pack 123 on September 15, 2023. His SA membership renewal is due September 30, 2024.

SA disconnected individual memberships from the unit-recharter process. When Pack 123 recharters, it no longer manages Timmy’s annual SA membership. Instead, by the time Pack 123 starts thinking about its January 1 renewal, Timmy is not on their minds. Since Timmy’s membership expired on September 30, Timmy’s parents should have already renewed his SA membership through SA’s website.

Problem 1: SA removed a crucial touch point

In the old system, Pack 123 contacted all families regarding SA-membership renewal.

The new system breaks this personal touch. Since Timmy’s SA-membership renewal is divorced from Pack 123’s recharter, Pack 123 no longer needs to reach out to Timmy’s family regarding renewal.

Problem 2: Burdening parents

Parents now directly deal with SA’s processes.

SA’s main objective is to get parents to toss $85 over the fence once a year.

SA makes this hard. The main problem is red tape. Online renewal requires parents to digitally sign a thick, 1,197-word document! It takes around 9 minutes to read: while 1,197 words have a baseline estimate of 6 minutes to read³, this document will take longer:

• It is written poorly, at a “difficult to read”level⁴.
• It has formatting problems.

I am estimating 50% longer due to re-reads of difficult sentences or pauses to comprehend. That means 9 minutes to read the document.

Also, I imagine for most parents, logging into a SA system is a rare event, possibly only for each annual renewal. A once-every-year system will induce friction simply because each year, the parent has to re-learn it and possibly go through the password-reset exercise. I estimate this will induce 5 more minutes of delays.

Beyond remembering how to log in and reading the agreement, I estimate 5 more minutes to navigate the form start to end.

5 + 9 + 5 = 19 minutes! SA is asking parents to go through a 19-minute, bureaucratic exercise just for the privilege of throwing $85 at SA!

Families are rejecting this burden. Below I show how a shocking percent of rolling memberships are not being renewed!

Considerations for how 2024 may end up

This section is insufferably boring. Sane people may wish to skip to the next major section.

We can use December 16, 2024’s numbers to predict how 2024 will end up. On that day, SA had 1,007,482 youth members⁵, falling into these categories:

• 874,014 (87%) with current memberships⁶
• 133,468 (13%) with lapsed memberships⁷

“Lapsed” means a membership that recently expired. SA includes lapsed members in its membership counts. More on this later.

First, we need to talk nerdy.

Limitations on predictors

I prefer to use several years’ data to guide predictions. For SA, I only feel comfortable using 2022 and 2023 as predictors.

SA’s annual cycles have had recent disruptions:

• 2019: This was the last year that the Mormons ran Scout units. Nearly all their units fizzled on January 1, 2020, removing about 1/3 of SA’s youth.
• 2020: The COVID pandemic decimated SA’s ability to recruit and retain, causing another 1/3 membership loss.
• 2021: More of a pandemic-emergence phase, this is an abnormal year.

In addition to major shifts in numbers, these disruptions changed how new members appear in the annual cycle. Most new SA youth join in the fall, part of grade-based cohorts. Mormons instead used age, so join dates for their youth were distributed across the whole year. We no longer have this effect.

Even if the above reasons are insufficient to avoid using years before 2022, I further theorize that the pandemic shifted society’s approach to youth programs. That should also be evaluated before adding pre-2022 predictors.

Lapsing: an explainer

SA’s recharter process is burdensome. This is why many units are late on rechartering.

In the old, fixed-membership model, a unit being late with its recharter means it’s also late on paying SA’s annual fee for each of its members. Nominally, a late recharter means a unit has to stop operating and that all its people have expired SA memberships.

Enter “lapsing”: This is where SA gives expired units and their members a two-month grace period (it’s now longer–more later). Lapsed units and members are still treated as active. They can still participate in all Scouting activities.

Units must resolve their charters within that two-month lapsed period. On the first day of the third month, lapsed units and members become dropped. That is when non-renewed units must stop operating and when the individual memberships are expired.

Annual cycles

Most units’ charter cycle begins January 1. In the fixed-membership system, the vast majority of lapses also happened on January 1, due to late recharters.

This had some predictable effects on youth memberships:

• December 31’s membership number approximated an annual high-water mark.
• January 1 brings a surge of lapses, partly fueled by late unit recharters.
• By March 1, all these January 1 lapses had converted to paid renewals or drops. That approximated SA’s annual low-water mark.

Relevant 2022 and 2023 data:

Milestone	2022	2023
Dec. 31 youth membership count	1,042,860	1,015,028
March 318 (next year) membership count (after the Jan. 1 lapses converted to renewals or drops)	792,908 (March 31, 2023)	805,209 (March 31, 2024)
Change from December peak to March valley	-249,952	-209,819
% change from December peak to March valley	-24.0%	-20.7%

We can use means of 2022 and 2023 numbers as predictors. Had we continued with the fixed-membership model, we may expect to drop 230,000 youth in the spring. That is about 22.4% of the Dec. 31 membership number. (Math note: Below, I will use 230,000 to predict expected drops for 2024 and use 22.4% when I need to estimate drops from subsets.)

Expected drops for Aug. – Sept. 2023 new youth

New youth who joined on or after August 1, 2023 are on SA’s new rolling-membership model. These youth are especially important for predicting how 2024 will end up.

Here’s our 2023 new youth for SA’s key growth months:

• August 2023: 31,442⁹ (expires Aug. 31, 2024)
• September 2023: 75,104 (expires Sept. 30, 2024)
• October 2023: 53,225 (expires Oct. 31, 2024)
• Total (Aug. – Oct. 2023): 159771

Using our 22.4% predictor of drops, 35,779 of these new youth will drop.

The real drop number is much worse.

Aside: Do new youth drop at the same rate?

Nearly all youth who joined on the rolling-membership scheme–starting August 1, 2023–will be new youth; few will be dropped youth who rejoin.¹⁰ Therefore, the first wave of rolling-renewal drops will be almost entirely of youth in their first year of SA.

The 22.4% drop rate applies to all youth, both new and renewing youth. Is that the right number if we’re only assessing drops for new youth?

The number of members in SA, categorized by age, increases through age 9, and most recruitment happens in early years:

The combination of these factors suggests low drop rates for young new youth.

However, the drop rate is not 0.

As a Cubmaster of a huge, successful pack, I saw attrition from new youth after their initial, prorated-membership period. I roughly recall it being 10% – 20%. While I don’t have broader data, I assume this is a general phenomenon.

When I was District Commissioner, my PDS-score¹¹-addled District Executives kept starting new units that quickly flopped. This inflated the new-youth counts.

I further theorize that retention is poorer the older new recruits are, especially with new Scouts BSA recruits¹², which further increases the new-youth drop percent.

Also, with how the rolling-membership scheme forces everyone to prepay for a year upfront, those who quit quickly after joining can no longer be represented in the data.

The data is messier than I prefer. While it is possible that the new-youth drop rate may be different than 22.4%, I theorize that it’s close, and I lack a basis to use a different number. While I am open to an update here, unless the correct figure is tremendously different than this estimate, it won’t have a major impact on this article’s major findings.

Fall 2024’s actual numbers

A detail: SA increased lapsed period 50%

First, a crucial detail that will be relevant later: SA recently increased its lapsed period 50%, from two months to three months. I think that change was made in October 2024 or November 2024.

With the old, two-month lapsed period, Sept. 2023’s non-renewing, new members become lapses on Oct. 1 and drops on Dec. 1. By increasing the lapsed period 50%, Sept. 2023’s lapses don’t become drops until Jan. 1, 2025.

Did you see that? SA shifted the peak recruitment month’s drops–September 2023’s drops–into 2025!

Below I’ll share how shockingly few rolling-membership youth are renewing. It seems odd that national’s new lapsing scheme causes its December 31 to include 100% of who joined in 2023’s peak membership month, even though few are renewing.

The numbers are scary

Let’s review retention of new youth we added in our peak 2023 recruitment months: August, September, and October. They are the first batch of members who will renew rolling memberships in 2024.¹³

SA’s November 30, 2024 number of lapsed youth will only include those whose memberships expired on Aug. 31, Sept. 30, or Oct. 31. In other words, it accounts for all members in the first three months of the new, rolling-membership scheme!

The bottom number in the first column will help us get there:

This means 153,405 lapses are attributable to memberships expiring in August, September, and October. (July’s lapsed memberships are already washed out of this number, having converted to drops on Nov. 1.)

But these are not just rolling-membership lapses!

While most units appear to renew on December 31, some renew on other months. Therefore, late recharters will trigger lapses of fixed-membership youth in all months of the year. That is the 19,379¹⁴ number on the second column–the lapses we had in November 2023. We should expect similar numbers for 2024, so I will just subtract 19,379 from 153,405, yielding 134,026 excess lapses (84% of the 159,771 new Scouts in Aug. – Oct. 2023) attributable to the rolling-membership system.

A detail: This Nov. 30 number is favorable to SA. SA had one to three months to convert all non-renewed August, September, and October lapses to paid renewals.

Wait, lapses aren’t drops!

Above, I gave numbers for new Aug. – Oct. 2023 youth from different dimensions:

• 35,779 anticipated drops
• 134,026 estimated lapses

Recall that lapsing is a grace period before a drop. Some lapsed members pay to resume their membership. All others are dropped.

It is my understanding that someone emerges from the lapsed category in one of two ways:

• immediately, by paying for a membership
• when the clock strikes midnight at the end of the last day of a month, when the lapsed member becomes dropped

Therefore, members removed from the lapsed category during the month indicate renewals. We can estimate how many lapsed members renewed in a month by comparing the beginning and end of a month:

• November 1, 2024 lapsed-member count: 160,607¹⁵
• November 30, 2024 lapsed-member count: 153,405

This means SA can convert 7,202 lapsed members to paid renewals in a month. To be fair, November included Thanksgiving, which is often a dead week for families. Let’s be generous and round up to 8,000 lapsed-member recoveries a month.¹⁶ Compared to the November start of 160,607 lapses, SA’s conversion of lapses to paid memberships is 5.0% per month.

Now I need to construct a model to translate lapses into expected drops.

We can calculate the percent contribution that Aug. – Oct. 2023 made to the 159,771 total new youth membership in that period:

• August 2023: 31,442 new members ÷ 159,771 total = 20%
• September 2023: 75,104 new members ÷ 159,771 total = 47%
• October 2023: 53,225 new members ÷ 159,771 total = 33%

Using all this, I can create a rough estimate for what drops we should expect. This is a rough estimate because the Nov. 30 lapse count–my starting point for this calculation–represents 3 months of trying to renew August lapses, 2 months of trying to renew September lapses, and 1 month of trying to renew October lapses, so each month’s contribution to that lapsed-member count has shifted from its contribution to total members. However, given a 5% monthly reduction in lapses–a small number to begin with–the distortion will be of a low magnitude. I do not see a way of untangling these numbers with the reports available to my source, so my inability to tease that out is an acknowledged source of error, albeit an error that is small compared to the big numbers it’s being compared to.

Starting with the Nov. 30, 2024 new-member lapse count of 134,026:

• December 1: August’s share of the Nov. 30 count, 20%, will convert to 26,805 drops.¹⁷ The remainder, 107,221 lapses attributable to September and October, will continue in December.
• December 31: The monthly 5% reduction will cause the December 1 number to reduce to 101,860.
• January 1: September 2023’s share of remaining lapses (59%¹⁸), 60,097, convert to drops. The remainder, 41,763 lapses attributable to October, continue in January.
• January 31: The monthly 5% reduction will cause the January 1 lapsed number to reduce to 39,675.
• February 1: All that’s left are October 2023’s remaining lapses that weren’t converted, 39,675. All these convert to drops.

The sum of drops are 25,465 + 60,445 + 40,553 = 126,577.

Here’s what’s alarming: drops represent 79% of the new youth from August, September, and October 2023!

Drops for rolling-membership youth are 253% higher than the expected 35,779!

Predicting end-of-year 2024 numbers

We can predict end-of-year numbers for 2024 by summing these:

• Dec. 16’s youth count¹⁹
• Expected new members for December

Expected additional, new December youth

Here’s past growth for Decembers²⁰:

• December 2022 new members: 30,597
• December 2023 new members: 23,499

Using the mean, we should expect 27,048 new members for December 2024.

Above, I shared a member count as of December 16. As of that day, 15 days were left in December, or 48%. Therefore, I will scale this predictor of new members down by 52%, arriving at an expected gain of 12,983 members between December 16, 2024 and December 31, 2024. This predicted gain is likely to overstate SA’s true gain in this period as the last several days of December are holidays or travel seasons.

Projected December 31, 2024 youth count

1,007,482 (December 16 youth count) + 12,983 (expected new-youth growth for remainder of December) = 1,020,465 youth members on December 31.

Superficially, that’s a 0.5% increase from 2023’s 1,015,028 count. But it’s inflated.

December 31, 2024’s number inflates member count

The December 31, 2024 number will indicate on-paper retention for 100% of new youth from September 2023 – December 2024. This inflates the numbers!

Remember Sally, who above joined in September 2022 under the prior, fixed-membership scheme? Her twin Oscar also joined at the same time. In November 2022, Oscar decided that Scouting is not right for him, so he quit.

Because Oscar quit before Pack 123 requested everyone’s fee for 2023, Oscar’s 2023 membership fee was not paid.²¹ Therefore, Oscar counts towards SA’s December 31, 2022 number but not SA’s December 31, 2023 number.

Sally’s friend Rebecca joined in September 2023, after the start of the rolling-membership model. That means Rebecca’s parents paid for a year of membership upfront. Rebecca’s membership expires the end of September 2024.

By November 2023, Rebecca decided Scouting is not right for her. She quits. Remember that Rebecca’s membership goes through September 30, 2024. Her lapsed period lasts until January 1, 2025. Therefore, even though Rebecca quit Scouts in November 2023, she counts towards the December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2024 numbers!

See the difference? Even though Oscar and Rebecca joined in September and quit two months later:

• Oscar, who joined under the fixed-membership scheme, only contributed to SA’s member count for his join year.
• Rebecca, who joined under the rolling-membership scheme, contributed to SA’s member count for her join year and the following year.

2024 is that “following year” for all who joined in the first few months of the rolling-membership system: Aug. 1 – Dec. 31, 2023! Therefore, SA’s December 31, 2024 number is inflated when compared to prior years!

The real December 31, 2024 number

I expect SA to do its usual, which is to pull a number off the same report it used in past years. If so, it will be an inflated number, as per the prior section, as the report is unlikely to be adjusted for the new membership model.

If we are to do an apples-to-apples comparison–exclude those who joined after August 1, 2023 but quit before they would have paid for 2024 under the old system–then December 31, 2024’s number, the high-water mark, will lower than the report’s number.

We can estimate that! From the 1,020,465 Scouts, subtract the 22.4% estimated drops from the fall 2023 rolling-renewal growth. That nominally means you’d remove anticipated drops from everyone who joined between August 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023.

Before we do the math, a few exceptions:

• For those who joined in August 2023, their non-renewed lapses became drops on December 1, 2024. Therefore, they are already removed from our numbers.
• In the old system, I believe that those joining for two or fewer months before their unit’s recharter date had to purchase membership through the end of the following recharter period. (Is this correct? Leave a comment!) As most units’ charter cycles start January 1, this usually affected only November and December joins. For example, someone joining in November 2022 would typically pay 14 months, taking that person through the end of 2023. Therefore, such people, even in the old system, appeared in their join year’s count and in their next year’s count. In the interest of an apples-to-apples comparison, I will not deduct any Scouts who joined in November 2023 and December 2023.

I therefore will only use September 2023 and October 2023 for this calculation.

• September 2023 + October 2023 new members = 128,328
• Expected drops from that pool in the old system: 22.4% of 128,328, which is 28,745.

Subtract the estimated drops from the end-of-2024 estimate, and you get 1,020,465 – 28,745 = 991,720 members on December 31, a year-over-year drop of 2.2%! (Note: In addition for being a more realistic number, this also corrects for the distortion caused by increasing the lapsed period to three months.)

But wait, there’s less!

The December 31 number omits a crucial part of the story. Given high non-renewals of rolling-scheme members, our spring low-water mark is likely to be far worse than last year.

The real story comes after the January 1 lapse surge works out. This surge is induced by two longstanding factors:

1. Late recharters causing lapsed memberships. Typically, most youth in a unit renew, so most of these convert to paid memberships once units submit late charters.
2. Members who were non-renewed by their units, typically because the person quit SA.

Per numbers shared above, if this was a pre-rolling-scheme year, the January 1 lapse surge would land on about 230,000 drops. After our spring lapse surge is completed, we would have 1,020,465²² – 230,000 = 790,465 members.

But it will be much worse. When 79% of rolling-membership youth are not renewing their SA membership, you’re going to take a bath! We need to figure out the rolling-renewal members’ contribution to the total-membership picture, then adjust the expected spring drops to reflect the far higher rate of renewals of rolling-membership youth.

August 2023’s lapses converted to drops on December 1, so they are already flushed out. That means we need to add up the new members from September, October, November, and December 2023 and figure out their contribution to drops. The counts of those new members are:

• September 2023: 75,104 (you saw this same number above)
• October 2023: 53,225 (you saw this same number above)
• November 2023: 26,632
• December 2023: 23,499
• Total: 178,460, which is 18% of the 1,015,028 total from December 31, 2024

The 82% who are not part of the Sept. – Dec. 2023 cohort will drop at the expected rate. We need to scale the 230,000 expected drops down to 82%, resulting in 188,600 drops from all those who didn’t join in Sept. – Dec. 2023.

Oops, remember that I wrote that August’s drops are washed out already? That means the new-as-of-August 2023 people, who renewed (not quitting), are still in the big number. Therefore, the estimated 188,600 drops inadvertently includes 22.4% of these not-quitting August 2023 people! Let’s add them back. August 2023 brought us 31,442 new Scouts. Earlier I projected that 26,805 of them dropped, leaving us with 4,637 who will remain. Let’s add 22.4% of them back, or 1,039, so our 188,600 drop number declines a little to 187,561.

I estimated that rolling-renewal members are dropping a 79% rate. Of the 178,460 who joined Sept. – Dec. 2023, 140,983 will drop.

Add them up, we expect to see 187,561 + 140,983 = 328,544 drops by April 1, 2025. That means SA’s low-water mark for 2025 is only 691,921, or 14% fewer than 2024’s low-water mark!

All are now on rolling memberships

To avoid muddying waters, I characterized SA members that first joined before August 1, 2023 as still being on the fixed-membership scheme.

There is no more fixed-membership scheme. All members are on the rolling-membership scheme. Those who joined before August 1, 2023 have membership periods that coincide with the charter cycle of their Scout unit.

These members can now pay for annual membership directly to SA. As long as their Scout unit is willing, they can instead continue as if the old model was still effective by paying their Scout unit, and the unit remits the annual SA fee on their behalf.

How SA can fix this

Get the members back

Nothing has changed about the Scouting program that would cause non-renewals to surge to 79%. It’s hard to pin that on anything but the rolling-renewal scheme.

How do we get these Scouts back? My son’s membership expires on December 31. I’ve intentionally allowed it to not renew to see what kinds of contacts I get. So far, it has just been a single, easily missed email on November 1! National isn’t even trying.

Are gold loopers yet again asleep at the wheel? (I know that many in Irving are not asleep at the wheel and are genuinely concerned about this. They are hamstrung by how SA’s bureaucracy resembles a patronage system, causing employees and volunteers to be promoted far beyond their Peter-principle limit, so people with poor performance and bad ideas have outsized influence in Irving.)

We should have had a higher renewal rate than 21%! What are we doing to gain conversions back to renewals?²³

Add a subscription model

It beggars belief that a subscription model wasn’t done from the start. Monthly bills are as American as apple pie. Internet, cell phone, Spotify, Netflix, rent or mortgage payments, etc., monthly payments are ubiquitous! It is unusual for a service to have a one-time fee!

Why did SA not see this? A subscription model removes the barriers of the annual-renewal blunder! Once you join, you begin paying $7 a month ($84 a year). This is on autopilot until you decide to quit. What this means:

• The lack of an annual touch point will not induce expiring memberships.
• The family’s administrative burden is resolved upon joining, a process all new families already suffer through.

While not an objective of a subscription model, SA may enjoy enhanced revenue from non-participating members who, due to the set-and-forget nature of monthly subscriptions, do not cancel the payments when they quit Scouting.

While some fear the revenue effect of families canceling their memberships, I find that fear to be misplaced. Even in the old system, a great number of youth dropped in their prorated period, denying SA the next year’s membership revenue. And if I had to make a choice, I’ll take the risk of less predictable cancellations over the 79% drop rate the annual system caused!

Fix the annual-renewal form

While I think we need to pivot from annual renewals, some will prefer that over a subscription model, so this still needs improvement.

The form is too hard! It needs to get as close to a click-and-submit form as possible.

It starts with trashing that dumbass, 1,197 word document. The way that dumbass document was written, and the idea that parents must sign it, is contemptuous of the base. If Irving bureaucrats cared about the base, they would never shove such a long, thick, dumbass document into an ordinary transaction. And the fact that we are expected to sign such a detailed, dumbass document reveals a national organization so arrogant, it believes we are so misaligned with its goals that it’s entitled to shove our noses in its goals annually.

E.g., why does national include the excerpt from the Declaration of Religious Principle in its bloated, dumbass document? Because despite that most SA members are Christian–in practice or culture–SA insists on its members mocking Jesus, and it insists on shoving our nose in it repetitively.

Come on, Irving bureaucrats, a renewing member does not need to sign your dumbass document!

Beyond that, there are other improvements that could be made. For example, the emailed notice should have had a unique link that takes one to a click-and-submit form, pre-authenticated for that member, that needs little info beyond the credit card number! The emailed notice could be sent more often. Other lines of communication could be used.

1. While SA’s prior membership scheme was a fixed-membership model, SA offered prorated memberships to new members, providing them membership through the end of the fixed-membership cycle that they joined in. Not long before the start of the next membership cycle, the new members would pay for a full year’s membership. ↩︎
2. This does not include local-council fees, which vary and can be hefty. ↩︎
3. In How to Determine Average Reading Time, the Public Relations Society of America recommends Roy Peter Clark‘s method for estimating time-to-read: divide the word count by 200. ↩︎
4. This document’s reading-ease score is only 42.8, which is considered “difficult” per How to Write Plain English by the University of Canterbury. ↩︎
5. This number, and all other numbers in this report (unless otherwise indicated), come from SA’s “summary” dashboard. ↩︎
6. Calculated by getting youth count using SA’s default filter but unchecking any lapsed membership categories. The remaining default- filter membership categories include “CrossOver, paid”, “Member Without a Unit”, “Multiple”, “New, multiple”, “New, paid”, “ReRegistered, multiple”, “ReRegistered, paid”, “Transfer In, paid”, and “Transfer, multiple”. Note that the report being used appears to have already filtered out some of these types. E.g., deselecting any of the “multiple” types has no effect on the count. ↩︎
7. Calculated by filtering to membership types that are lapsed. ↩︎
8. When you select a [Month] [Year] report in SA’s reporting system for the Month Year field, you are getting a report for the last day of that month. The only exception is when Current Month is selected, you are getting the data as of the day the data is viewed; that is how I got data for days other than the last day of a month. ↩︎
9. These number come from a different dashboard.
   
   If using the “summary” dashboard, these numbers come from a field that purportedly is cumulative. In theory, to get August 2023’s new-member growth, you subtract the August 2023 report’s number (total for Jan. 1 – Aug. 31) from the July 2023 report’s number (total for Jan. 1 – July 31) while filtering the report to “New, paid” youth memberships.
   
   However, on closer inspection, there is an anomaly: January 2023’s new-youth number is 95,385, and February 2023’s number is 79,111. A cumulative field won’t have a month-over-month decline!
   
   It was later discovered that the new-member stats shared by SA officials match those on a different dashboard that shows registration status by month, filtered to “new, paid”. I will therefore use that other dashboard for new-youth data. ↩︎
10. In my experience, it is rare for dropped youth to rejoin the program. ↩︎
11. PDS scores are part of SA’s hazing ritual for District Executives (DEs). This scoring system emphasizes goosing current-year numbers with little regard for future sustainability. Setting up new units, and, when feasible, obscuring true program costs with donor funds, appears to inordinately help PDS scores, but whether the units are around in the future hardly matters: short DE tenures, institutional silos, and an obsolete model for commissioner service makes it difficult to have great success with these new units, especially outside of areas experiencing natural growth of families with Scouting-friendly demographics. ↩︎
12. Scouts BSA is a middle-school program. I therefore expect high rates of attrition for new, older middle schoolers, who are joining a program they will quickly outgrow, or for high schoolers, who are infantilized by a program designed for the prior age cohort. ↩︎
13. While true in the big picture, SA’s numbers suggest a very small number of members may have been on the rolling-renewal system in the year or so before August 1, 2023. I suspect these were test users. ↩︎
14. I think the 2024 number will actually be lower than this as some of the fixed-membership lapses are displaced by new, rolling-scheme members whose membership periods coincide with their unit’s charter period. Still, I have no better number than the 2023 number, and as that number likely modestly overstates the fixed-membership lapses, it bends my math in SA’s favor. ↩︎
15. This number was obtained by visiting the summary dashboard on this day. Otherwise, when selecting a month and a year of any prior month, the user gets a figure for the last day of that month. ↩︎
16. I used 29 as the denominator. The difference between Nov. 1 and 30 is 29 days. ↩︎
17. Small, potential source of error: This probably does not include conversions that occurred on November 30. I think they show in the December 1 numbers. However, November 30, 2024 is a Saturday in a long, holiday weekend, so I doubt there is any movement. ↩︎
18. 59% comes from dividing September 2023’s new members by the sum of September 2023 and October 2023 new members. ↩︎
19. Recall that SA includes lapsed members in its total-youth count. All as-of-Dec. 16 lapsed members stay on the roll through the end of the month. While conversions of lapsed members back to paid are good, they don’t change the end-of-month number. ↩︎
20. As with the previous new-member numbers, these come from the dashboard that shows registration status by month. ↩︎
21. In that year, Oscar became lapsed on January 1, 2023 and dropped on March 1, 2023. ↩︎
22. Here, I went back to the end-of-2024 number that I called inflated. The adjusted number that I calculated later was to provide an apples-to-apples comparison to contrived numbers from prior years. The “inflated” number is my prediction of a point-in-time count in the current system, so it the correct one to use for projections for the spring. ↩︎
23. There appears to be a piecemeal measures being enacted or considered, but I need to maintain confidentiality. SA, you need to be public and open about your strategy! ↩︎

The Order of the Arrow, a weird, racist, secret society in Scouting America (SA), is self immolating.

Despite increasing scrutiny over its 109 years of mockery of American Indians, OA clings to racist playing-Indian activities. Its recent pattern is to express interest in correcting its sins, only to take de minimis measures unguided by strategy.

OA has good reason to be clingy. OA gets woo from its playing-Indian activities. This woo papers over that OA is just a collection of poorly related activities. Removing OA’s woo reveals its incoherence!

OA has no future. It’s time to abolish it. If we quit while we’re ahead, BSA can retain OA’s useful parts.

Background

The Order of the Arrow was founded in 1915, when the USA’s attempts to decimate American Indian tribes were at peak. The then-in-vogue notion was that Indians that we didn’t manage to kill were to be forcibly Westernized.

The goal was debasement of all American Indian tribes. That would have removed tribal customs from any sense of ownership, eliminating moral quandaries about remixing tribal customs for one’s own profit.

And profiting from an inauthentic remix is what OA did. In its early days, OA brewed legends and ceremonies from a mishmash of Western stereotypes of tribes. Much of this is phony stories of real tribes or real historical figures mixed with Western fantasy fiction rich with noble-savage stereotypes.

This is racism. I am not faulting OA’s founders for having used racist practices. In their time, racist campaigns against American Indians, like forced assimilation, were viewed as noble. I doubt they understood their art as racism. Regardless of original intent, we now know better. OA’s founding and its contemporary playing-Indian activities rest on racist ideology.

The USA started pivoting from racist practices against American Indians in the middle of the 20th century. Unlike the USA, OA clings to its racist legacy.

Cynically, it makes sense. OA profits on the woo of its racist legacy. Take the woo from OA, and you’re left with an organization no sane person would design: a collection of poorly related activities.

OA’s new mission and values

OA’s July 18, 2024 mission and values is a tacit admission: OA is incoherent.

OA’s new mission and values have four points. On a thin read, these points sound reasonable. The problem comes when OA lays out how the points are relevant, in a four-point list of “meaningful changes”. Two changes are contemptuous of high schoolers. The other two reflect features that should be part of SA‘s mainline programs.

In other words, OA’s own change agenda validates that it should not exist!

Change 1: Retention in Scouts BSA

OA’s first change is “a specific commitment to retention in Scouts BSA”. In saying this, OA is admitting it’s a tool to encourage high schoolers to linger in SA‘s middle-school program, Scouts BSA.

Even though it’s open to youth through age 17, Scouts BSA is a middle-school program. I will write more about this in a future article, but the capsule summary is that Scout BSA’s original design was for ages 11-14, and its program strengths still speak mainly to middle schoolers. Most high schoolers have rejected this middle-school program, fleeing SA.

For 114 years, insiders have called SA’s high-school-retention failure the “older [youth] problem”. Because SA is so bound by inertia, it is willfully blind to any strategy other than retaining high schoolers in its middle-school program. It has therefore facilitated 114 years of failure in solving this problem. (Also a topic for a future article: 114 years is enough time. The experiment has failed. Let’s move on. SA must move all high schoolers to Venturing. This will catch SA up to USA’s cultural norms and nearly all of our international Scouting peer programs.)

The centerpiece of SA’s failed high-school-retention strategy is adding bells and whistles to its middle-school program. Camp staff, high-adventure programs, and OA are the main bells and whistles.

The problem is that once the bell-and-whistle activity is done, the high schooler returns to babysitting duties in the middle-school program. Yuck!

Order has meaning. By making this the first listed change, OA’s leadership conveys that OA’s main job is to help SA avoid admitting the failure of its 114-year-old high-school-retention experiment.

Change 2: Broader service to all of SA

In this part, OA pledges to extend its high-school-level leadership training and programming beyond its own popularity-contest-gated membership. In other words, it’s seeking to be simply another program offering available to all age-eligible BSA members.

Hold on a second, let’s ask something: Which would do best at delivering leadership programming and conferences to high schoolers?

• A weird, racist, secret society that is unwilling to shuck its racist, playing-Indian crap.
• Venturing, SA’s high-school program

Of course, the answer is the high-school program!

See why this is a threat to OA’s relevance? Why would a weird, racist, secret society do better at high-school programming than a mainline program designed for high schoolers? (Hint: It can’t.)

But wait, there’s more!

OA ran an experiment in summer 2024, and it had a great outcome! The 2024 National Order of the Arrow Conference was a dramatically-reduced-racism environment. And it succeeded! The conference was great!

While about 15 instructional sessions at NOAC 2024 still promoted OA’s racist ideology, It would be trivial to trash them. We can easily eliminate from NOAC all remaining vestiges of OA’s racist activities!

SA must liberate high-school-oriented programs from its weird, racist, secret society. Venturing, SA’s mainline high-school program, is a much better fit for this!

Change 3: Emphasis on peer leadership

The point of this is OA sees itself as a place where high schoolers can “[have] the opportunity to lead their peers as opposed to younger Scouts”.

Um, we already have that. It’s called Venturing. That’s where high schoolers can lead their own peers.

Really, this is just a repetition of change 1. OA sees itself as a shiny object, distracting high schoolers from how SA’s wants them stuck in middle-school purgatory. As soon as the OA peer-leadership experience is done, guess where that high schooler goes back to? Babysitting middle schoolers.

The best way to deliver this promise is with Venturing. A weird, racist, secret society adds no value over Venturing.

Change 4: Recognition for Scouts and Scouters

This change makes little sense. SA has robust recognition opportunities in its mainline programs. Why do we need a weird, racist, secret society for that? (Hint: we don’t.)

Back to the purpose

These four changes were how OA plans to alter itself to align with its new purpose. Let’s get into that new purpose.

Sadly, points 1, 2, and 4 of the new purpose are undifferentiated from what should be normative in mainline SA programs:

• Recognize those who exemplify the Scout Oath and Law in their daily lives, and, through that recognition, cause others to act in the same way
• Reinforce a life purpose of leadership in cheerful service to others
• Be an integral part of Scouting America and encourage participation in all it offers through units, outdoor adventures, and national events to further the Scouting experience

Points 1, 2, and 4 of OA’s purpose, as of July 2024

None of these are enhanced by a weird, racist, secret society.

Point 3 usurps what Venturing already excels at:

• Create and deliver peer-led, adult-guided, advanced leadership experiences for Scouts and Scouters that positively impact their unit, community, and ultimately our nation

Point 3 of OA’s purpose, as of July 2024

“Advanced” here is a comparison to Scouts BSA’s middle-school-oriented experiences. It’s coded language for how OA offers programs targeted to high schoolers.

Venturing is SA’s high-school program. That is the best place to deliver high-school-targeted activities.

OA is still a secret society

OA was founded in 1915 as a secret society. To its credit, OA reduced its secrecy over time. But just as reduced-racism does not make OA not-racist, reduced-secrecy does not make OA not-secret.

To shuck the racist and secret labels, OA must drop all racism and all secrecy. It has declined to do either.

On secrecy specifically, I have two examples.

First is its Safeguarded Material practice. This is just a fancy label for how OA keeps core ceremony scripts secret. (The scripts’ passwords are ahoalton, itisonlyright, and leadershipinservice, respectively.) (By the way, in the context of SA, “safeguarding” refers to abuse prevention. Why does OA use that word for its secrecy-preservation scheme?)

Second, the National Order of the Arrow Committee has been extraordinarily secret on how it will deal with its playing-Indian problem.

I am old. When I was a youth, OA’s playing-Indian problem was widely known.

Here I am decades later, and OA’s playing-Indian problem remains unresolved. While some piecemeal action has happened, they are piecemeal, disconnected from any strategy, such as the 2019 prohibition on redface cosplay during Arrow of Light or crossover ceremonies for Cub Scouts. As I write this in September 2024, I still wonder what OA’s plan is, noting that a two-year, “very detailed and methodical evaluation” recently culminated in “minor changes” to its core ceremonies, which still contain a laundry list of racist, pretendian material.

Again, for OA to not be a secret society, it has to stop keeping secrets. Stop adding passwords to your documents. Stop the extreme secrecy of the National Order of the Arrow Committee. And importantly, stop the legacy of secrecy in your sayings, actions, and culture.

OA is weird

Why do I use “weird” to describe OA?

When talking about OA, we’re referring to a 109-year old secretive organization, whose incoherence is only masked by woo from playing-Indian activities, that through its own admission mainly exists to keep high schoolers in a middle-school program, and that in 2024 clings to racist activities long rejected by society.

How is that not weird?

OA has no future

In my past pieces (article 1, article 2), I held out optimism that OA may have a path forward.

I no longer believe that.

OA refuses to change. And I get it now. It can’t change! Its most urgently needed reform–dropping its racist, pretendian practices–will reveal an amalgam of unrelated activities, with access gated by a popularity contest.

Who needs that?

OA’s 110th birthday is in 2025. The best way to celebrate this is to quickly abolish OA while it can still happen in an orderly process. Some of OA’s programs have value, and we can preserve their legacy by reassigning them to Venturing.

Doing anything else is allowing OA’s slow suicide. If allowed to persist, OA will slowly self-immolate in a cauldron of conflict, dragging into chaos the parts that had value.

It’s time to move on. None of SA’s WOSM peers have a weird, racist, secret society. I am unaware of any USA youth-serving organization other than SA with a weird, racist, secret society.

All of SA’s energy needs to be focused on creating a better future. To succeed, we must eliminate all distractions, like OA.

Appendix: How about cheerful service?

This article focuses on the youth-serving aspects of OA. What about “cheerful service”?

While OA claims a character-development aspect of service, especially influenced by the Billy Clark story, the notion of youth providing community service needs to be engrained at all levels, not something claimed by a weird, racist, secret society.

I therefore do not feel it’s a strongly addressable need in the context of this article. Service must be an emphasis of all of BSA’s programs!

However, camp service remains valuable. I hear too many stories of how it enhances councils’ ability to deliver programs.

I recommend creating a new council-camp-service society. It must not be a renewed OA: No mockery of American Indians, no secrecy, no gating by a popularity contest, no national committee moated off from the base. It would be a clean-sheet society open to all who wish to serve.

An achievement system, whose main input is service hours, could be the recognition system. Councils would be well advised to develop appreciation systems to recognize camp-service achievements.

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:

• SA means sexual assault on YouTube
• SA means sexual assault to the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault
• SA means sexual assault in research generated by the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine
• SA means sexual assault at Tualatin High School
• SA means sexual assault at Brunel University
• SA means sexual assault to Voices for the Truth
• SA means sexual assault in research produced by the University of Washington and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• SA means sexual assault to the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs
• SA means sexual assault to Sitkans Against Domestic Violence
• SA means sexual assault to the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault
• SA means sexual assault to the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic & Sexual Violence
• SA means sexual assault to the Winnipeg Health Sciences Center
• SA means sexual assault to Joseph L. Jordan, attorney
• SA means sexual assault to researchers from Western Michigan University
• SA means sexual assault in trigger warnings (example)
• SA means sexual assault to the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault
• SA means sexual assault to the City of Alexandria, Virginia
• SA means sexual assault to the City of New Orleans
• SA means sexual assault in research produced by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Stanford University School of Medicine, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston University School of Medicine, and Duke Health
• SA means sexual assault to the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence
• SA means sexual assault to the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault
• SA means sexual assault to the Association of American Medical Colleges
• SA means sexual assault in research produced by the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, the University of Barcelona, the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, and the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona Children’s Hospital
• SA means sexual assault to the Community Solutions to Sexual and Domestic Violence: Virginia
• SA means sexual assault to LifeSpan
• SA means sexual assault to the Ohio Department of Health
• SA means sexual assault to the Andersen Air Force Base
• SA means sexual assault to the Illinois Infonet Data Collection & Reporting System
• SA means sexual assault to the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence
• SA means sexual assault to the South Central Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center
• SA means sexual assault in research produced by the Brigham Young University College of Nursing
• SA means sexual assault in the Wisconsin Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence CCR Toolkit
• SA means sexual assault to the City of Philadelphia
• SA means sexual assault to the Women’s Center
• SA means sexual assault to Westchester County
• SA means sexual assault in research produced by the University of Lethbridge and the University of Calgary
• SA means sexual assault to the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence
• SA means sexual assault in research produced by the University of Michigan and the Henry Ford Hospital
• SA means sexual assault to McMaster University
• SA means sexual assault to My Sister’s Place
• SA means sexual assault to Australia’s Government of Northwest Territories
• SA means sexual assault to the Oregon SATF
• SA means sexual assault to Kennesaw State University
• SA means sexual assault in research produced by the State University of New York at Buffalo
• SA means sexual assault to a Scout who was recently sexually assaulted

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.

The Order of the Arrow’s core ceremonies–the call outs and inductions–are pretendian parodies of American Indians and their culture.

The USA has a racist legacy of destroying American Indian tribes with forced Westernization. While that failed, OA’s core ceremonies celebrate the racist legacy’s goal: a dystopia with fully debased tribes, with nobody to own tribal customs.

If we want a useful OA, it must stop mocking American Indians, and it must stop celebrating our country’s cruel, racist sins.

A crucial step is eliminating all American Indian theming in the core ceremonies, just as national youth OA leadership asked.

(Technical note: This article is not about OA’s American Indian Activities (AIA), which are nominally authentic. Unlike the core ceremonies, AIA may have a path forward when it is done in collaboration with tribes.)

The core ceremonies are fake

In OA’s pretendian parodies, Scouts act out fake stories that were created by Westerners, done while employing a mishmash of language, themes, names, and clothing appropriated from American Indian tribes. Even worse, the ceremonies are often delivered with gross Western stereotypes of Indians: garbled with Tonto-talk pidgin, the phony stories are rich with noble-savage tropes.

The ceremonies celebrate the end game of racist oppression

Some defend OA’s pretendian parodies as “respect” or “honor”. In fact, these ceremonies validate our country’s horrible sins.

Our country has a legacy of racist oppression of American Indians. This includes Indian removal, boarding schools, and much, much more. Among the goals of this oppression was to “White”-wash all American Indians: Through forced Westernization, the USA tried to destroy tribes. Had this succeeded, an outcome would have been divorcing tribal customs from any sense of ownership.

If you can’t change them, absorb them until they simply disappear into the mainstream culture…. In Washington’s infinite wisdom, it was decided that tribes should no longer be tribes, never mind that they had been tribes for thousands of years.

Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (source, emphasis added)

OA’s founding was in 1915. Then, the USA was still deep in its racist suppression of tribes. For example, re-education camps Indian boarding schools were still active. Oppressive official acts would continue decades longer, such as the Indian termination policy, which started in the 1940s, and the Indian Relocation Act of 1956.

In the time of OA’s founding, there was likely little moral qualm about treating tribal customs as if they are obsolete, public-domain artifacts.

A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one…

In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.

Richard H. Pratt, founder and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (source, emphasis added)

Thankfully, our country’s racist oppression failed. Tribes are now strengthening their communities, cultures, and identities through tribal self-determination, which started before the mid-20th century and become federal policy in the 1970s.

The ceremonies perpetuate racism

An OA interested in respect and honor would seek authenticity and support tribal self-determination. Instead, with its mocking and appropriation continuing even now, OA acts as if our country’s repudiated, racist agenda actually worked.

“Respect” and “honor” is the opposite of perpetuating a repudiated, racist past. It is the opposite of corrupting young minds, presenting pretendian parodies as if they were authentic.

If respect and honor were OA’s priorities, it would:

• Support tribal ownership of their own customs.
• Only share truth about American Indians and tribes.
• Not mock tribes.

An Order of the Arrow that respects and honors American Indians has no pretendian parodies!

It’s still going on

Racist or tribe-mocking practices remain normative in OA. In the context of pretendian parodies that are portrayed as authentic:

• They use brownface cosplay. In fact, their placement as the first suggestion in Approved Attire for Order of the Arrow Ceremonies shows that OA still encourages costumes that parody American Indians. By only constraining limitations with “should” statements, OA winks at those who wish to cling to appropriation.
• Ceremonialists play fictitious American Indian characters invented by Westerners, such as Allowat Sakima (Chief of the Fire) or Meteu (Medicine Man).
• The ceremonies mention fake characters as if they are historical, such as Chingachgook.
• A phony legend about a real tribe continues to be read. Adapted from the 1826 romance novel Last of the Mohicans, the legend is a fiction written about the Mohicans that OA assigned to the Lenape, a different tribe!
• They falsely convey that historical characters from different tribes, such as Uncas, who was Mohegan, are part of Lenape history.
• The ceremonies continue to use words appropriated from the Lenape tribe.
• The characters speak mostly noble-savage tropes garbled with Tonto-talk pidgin.

Further reinforcing its desire to cling to racist practices, OA will train for and host performances of its predendian parodies at its 2024 national conference at University of Colorado Boulder. Many sessions that perpetuate core ceremonies are in the conference program guide:

• Brotherhood Ceremony Evaluations (p. 40)
• Brotherhood: The Legend Continues (p. 40)
• Evaluating Ceremonies (p. 41)
• Exemplar Brotherhood Ceremony Viewing Session (p. 41)
• Exemplar pre-Ordeal Ceremony Viewing Session (p. 42)
• Exemplar Program (p. 42)
• Individual and Team Coaching (p. 43)
• Inductions Advising (p. 43)
• Inside the Ordeal Ceremony (p. 45)
• Inside the pre-Ordeal Ceremony (p. 45)
• Introduction to Ceremonial Skills Workshop (p. 45)
• Pre-Ordeal Ceremony Evaluations (p. 46)
• The Ceremonial Multiverse (p. 49)
• The Vigil Honor Experience: Beyond the Triangle (p. 50)
• Vigil Honor Ceremony Evaluations (p. 51)

What if we flipped the tables?

Let’s suppose that BSA was destroyed. Further suppose that soccer clubs, to given a sense of woo to their elite players, set up a secret society. The induction ceremony has performers dress up in tan shirts and campaign hats, wear our Eagle Scout and Arrow of Light symbols, and do a parody of a court of honor.

Would any sane person allege that honors BSA? Of course not. In the same sense, OA’s parodies of American Indians is neither honor nor respect.

Core ceremonies are irredeemable

Since I was a youth, OA swam in local allegations of American Indian endorsement of core ceremonies. I still hear it today. They typically invoke some random oral blessing from a mysterious American Indian from years prior.

These alleged endorsements cannot be differentiated from the “my Canadian girlfriend” trope. Why? Because they are probably phony. (I would be happy for someone to provide a link to a lodge website where it hosts a copy of an endorsement from a local tribe for its core ceremonies. Leave a comment if you know of one!)

Well, shouldn’t we try to get tribal endorsement of our core ceremonies? That would be inappropriate!

These ceremonies are amalgams of Western stereotypes and Western fictions, employing stories, characters, outfits, and traditions of multiple tribes.

As such, an endorsement would have to come from some group that represents over 2,000 tribes. Given the diversity of American Indians thought, practice, and belief, merely believing such an organization could exist would suggest foundational ignorance of American Indians.

OK, let’s suppose we inventoried every last part of our ceremonies and identify the tribe we stole each part from. The clothing, the language, the themes, etc. That is a herculean task that I doubt is feasible. But what if some amazing soul did it? We would have to approach each tribe and ask for their endorsement of their share of our Western parody that was built on theft. Simply asking that of a tribe is an insult!

Out of respect for the American Indian people and tribes, we must acknowledge racist parodies for what they are: irredeemable celebrations of tribal debasement.

It must stop

Racist and inauthentic, OA’s core ceremonies have no path to redemption. They have to stop.

Recent OA national youth leaders “wholeheartedly support ending the use of American Indian iconography and activities in our programs”.

Can they be reimagined? GIED to the rescue!

A major feature of the Order of the Arrow’s Ordeal experience is the elangomat system. The elangomat is a helpful guide to Scouts who are going through the Ordeal, a joining rite of Order of the Arrow.

I mention this to introduce Bill Hartman, who invented the elangomat system. Bill has a rich history with the Order of the Arrow, and his service continues: Bill leads the Guild of Inductions Experience Designers (GIED), a passion project where he and a team are reimagining Order of the Arrow’s core ceremonies. Among GIED’s goals are to remove cultural appropriation from the ceremonies.

GIED honors OA’s founder, E. Urner Goodman

In addition to disassociating OA from our country’s legacy racism, eliminating cultural appropriation honors a later-life admission of E. Urner Goodman, OA’s founder.

In 1970s living-room conversations with Urner, Bill Hartman recounts him lamenting his “biggest mistake” in founding the Order: utilizing fake legends in the context of naïve Scouts who mistakenly believe they are real history. (To be clear, Urner was only commenting on the factual legitimacy of the stories. Bill does not recall Urner otherwise commenting on the ceremonies’ ethics.)

In addition to providing OA a respectful exit from racism, the GIED’s work addresses E. Urner Goodman’s regret.

The National Order of the Arrow Committee could care less

I have documented several examples of cultural rot of BSA’s national organization. Prominent in the rot are arrogance, a bureaucratic culture of inertia and ineffectiveness, and hostility to outside views. OA’s national committee appears to be no different. In addition to its poor transparency, it’s hostile to outside views.

In a rational world, a long-tenured member who invented a crucial part of inductions would be a valued contributor. His group’s passion project would be given weight. That is the case for the GIED.

The National Order of the Arrow Committee is in a different world. When the GIED’s work was shared with a portion of this committee, a committee member write this to all committee members:

Living up to the cultural rot of the national organization, the committee is actively moating itself off from mere peasants. Of course, everything good that BSA has ever done has been invented from within by a gold looper, right? Of course that’s true. Peasants must know their place, which is to shut up and receive wisdom from wise elites who know better.

Additionally, this reveals that a team has spent two years secretly pondering the ceremonies. That is far too much time, so this committee is obviously engaged in bureaucratic stalling tactics to delay reform further.

Wait, there’s more! The ceremony revisions were finally published in December 2023. Sadly, all the problems with the Ordeal ceremony I identified above are from this revision. (The passwords on the ceremony docs are ahoalton, itisonlyright, and leadershipinservice. Secrets in Scouting are bad, you know?) If this is the result of over two years of work, it’s clear evidence that OA is unserious about fixing its cultural-appropriation issues.

GIED’s works should be considered. There may also be other proposals worthy of consideration. Whatever it does, OA must pivot from the national organization’s norms: Instead of acting elitist, it must stop moating itself off from the base.

Limited patience warranted

A key reason individuals become pretendians, like Elizabeth Warren, Iron Eyes Cody, and Johnny Depp, is “[p]ersonal gain and material advantage” (source, p. 15). OA’s pretendian parodies have given it gain and advantage: a shortcut to creating a uniting theme. This uniting theme substitutes for OA’s raison d’etre. Without the woo from the ceremonies, OA is just a collection of weakly related activities.

OA is facing an existential crisis. Discerning a raison d’etre is hard. Patience is needed while OA improves.

The patience must be limited. OA’s national leadership has only given us decades of stalling. Continued stalling isn’t the answer, but bureaucratic stalling tactics are the national organization’s preferred answer to nearly anything it faces.

Transparent improvement must start now. We need a clear-eyed, open acknowledgement of the inappropriateness of OA’s pretendian parodies. We also need a firm, time-boxed goal for OA to clean up its act.

So far, OA’s leadership has not differentiated itself from national’s cultural rot. For example, in the nine months between a major survey and the AIA announcement, it stonewalled the public, and it still has not shared the survey results.

Again, patience is limited. Should the culture of BSA’s national organization–stalling, hostility to outsiders, intransparency, low performance, and resistance to accountability–continue to be OA’s methods, that signals a lack of seriousness. A lack of seriousness will only lead to OA’s dissolution.

Appendix: Thanking hobbyists

I want to make a brief mention of the Indian hobbyist movement. The USA’s racist attempts to “White”-wash American Indians and destroy tribes succeeded to a degree, quashing some tribes, leaving nobody to carry on their customs.

In some cases, Whites took up the traditions and, to the best of their ability, kept them alive. That was the Indian hobbyist movement.

There was a time and place for the Indian hobbyist movement. Those who kept traditions alive deserve thanks. But that was a century ago. Tribes are strengthening, in some cases re-forming, and reasserting themselves through tribal self-determination.

Today, it is most sound when non-American Indians limit their American Indian performance art to that which is directly sanctioned through the tribe that owns the art. For BSA’s institutional purposes, that sanctioning needs to be explicit and transparent.

All that said, there is no ethical argument for perpetuation of pretendian parodies within an organization that claims to build character.