Scouting Maverick: Scout Better

Author: Aren Cambre

  • OA’s latest mission and vision confirm: time to abolish it

    OA’s latest mission and vision confirm: time to abolish it

    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.

  • BSA’s new initials mean sexual assault

    BSA’s new initials mean sexual assault

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

    SA means sexual assault.

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

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

    SA means sexual assault:

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

    SA means sexual assault!

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

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

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

  • OA’s pretendian core ceremonies celebrate racist oppression, mock tribes, must be blown up

    OA’s pretendian core ceremonies celebrate racist oppression, mock tribes, must be blown up

    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.

    Example Tonto-talk pidgin, spoken by the Tonto character. It stars at 0:53. Normal in Order of the Arrow ceremonies, Tonto talk is a stilted parody of American Indian speech.
    OA’s legend is inauthentic, comes from Western sources (source of image).

    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.
    A pretendian parody from a June 2023 Order of the Arrow event.
    A pretendian parody form a July 2023 Order of the Arrow event. Even though they didn’t use the preferred costuming option on OA’s approved-attire list (order means things in lists!), the noble-savage tropes and Tonto talk pidgin keep this in American Indian-parody land.

    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:

    From: [redacted]
    Subject: Recent Ceremony proposal
    Date: September 3, 2023 at 12:46:34 PM CDT
    To: [redacted]
    Cc: [redacted]

    All,

    It has come to my attention that many of you probably received an email from [a person who shared GIED works] with … PROPOSED CHANGES TO the OA CEREMONIES.  Let me be clear that this is NOT the current direction of our committee.  We have our own team led by [selected committee members] who are looking at any changes that may be necessary to our Induction process and ceremonies.  This has been a very detailed and methodical evaluation occurring over the past 2 years.  I have forwarded [the GIED works] to [selected committee members] for them to look at, but that is it.  [The sharer’s] proposals by no means reflect the direction of the OA at this time.

    The OA leadership remains in close working relationships with the BSA leadership and the BSA Mission and Reputation group regarding our plans moving forward and we will continue to keep the OA National Committee updated and they will vote on changes when appropriate.

    Thanks,

    [redacted]

    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.

  • Dear NEB: up up down down left right left right B A B A (it’s time to unlock superpowers!)

    Dear NEB: up up down down left right left right B A B A (it’s time to unlock superpowers!)

    Hey, National Executive Board (NEB)! It’s time to use the Konami code: unlock your superpowers!

    Your composition has changed: You’re smaller, and some of the old guard departed. You can be quite effective!

    You’ve got to save Scouting from its #1 existential threat: A culturally rotted, poorly performing national organization, that sees itself as its own customer, which is winning a decades-long war of attrition against the base.

    The national organization is winning its war of attrition against the base, which started in 1972.

    To do this, you’ve got to use the Konami code and make some bold decisions uncharacteristic of past NEBs.

    (Technical note: Some things I speak to might be delegated to other bodies, like the National Executive Committee. Because of BSA’s precarious state and decades of BSA’s failures to correct itself, I feel it’s important for the NEB to set some expectations directly.)

    Two key measures of NEB effectiveness

    In 2023, the NEB approved a five-point plan to start turning BSA around. This plan has a lot of great things. But it doesn’t directly address two issues and a method that I find so foundational, that without them, it’s unclear if this turnaround can succeed.

    The two issues: Ending bigotry and driving away those with bad ideas.

    The method: Providing uncharacteristically clear direction to the national bureaucracy.

    Priority 1: Ending bigotry

    The NEB must make a shot across the bow and finally end BSA’s rampant bigotry, killing harmful policies concerning girls, gays, and God. The NEB’s history of piecemeal, reluctant steps, sometimes requiring chiding from its own leader, are unacceptable, insufficient.

    Remaining bigoty includes BSA’s misogynist-appeasing, separate-but-equal regime for girls, which also slaps the transgender community, and BSA’s bigotry towards atheists and agnostics, a perversion of James E. West’s original intent1.

    The action plan is simple:

    Priority 2: Running off poor performers or those with bad ideas

    This sounds cynical, but it’s crucial.

    National has a lot of great people who are genuinely committed to Scouting’s success. But these dedicated folks are overwhelmed by 1. many gold-looper volunteers and professionals with bad ideas or who perform poorly and 2. by program committees that moat themselves off from the base, create little or no value, do things the base does not want, and exist mainly to affirm the elite-ness of their members.

    You know what a useful national program committee doesn’t do? It doesn’t foment a misogynist-appeasing policy on girls, it doesn’t convey folklore and misinformation as if they are fact, it doesn’t doggedly defend a bad policy, it doesn’t ignore withering criticism from the base, it doesn’t haughtily lecture the base in public webinars, it doesn’t allow its members to tell sexist jokes, it doesn’t allow its members to wear a DEI hat while promoting a separate-but-equal regime for girls. Importantly, a good committee wouldn’t be six years into a bigoted policy and still not have lifted a finger, as this September 2023 Reddit comment reveals. Will the NEB set an expectation that national program committees start being useful?

    The NEB must take concrete steps to affirm that this culture will change.

    Ending bigoted policies–my prior point–is a big part of this.

    The other part is to affirm a culture of accountability for the national organization. Our fundamental accountability measure for all national roles or committees must be, “What value do you produce for families, Scouts, and unit-level volunteers?” If we can’t find a straightforward, net-positive answer to that question, then we must have a time-boxed proposal to get there. If neither can happen, then we abolish the committee or role or seek the net positive by replacing those in the role or committee.

    This will set new expectations. For example, BSA’s lack of a public apology for or public repudiation of its 2023 war on Cub Scout camping shows this is considered acceptable conduct for its bureaucrats. With a new expectation of producing value for the base, wars against the membership will, for the first time, be considered unacceptable conduct, initiating correction to seek the net positive.

    This also stops throwback reactionaries from morally bankrupting BSA. Allowing them to use BSA as a tool in their culture wars was always harmful to the base. If we’re serious about putting an end to gold-loopers’ attacks on the base, then we’ve neutered the throwback reactionaries!

    This will cause some to feel uncomfortable. It will induce departures. Those preferring an environment of unaccountability or of tolerating uselessness will leave.

    Lesson learned from the United Methodist Church

    If we make poor performers or those with bad ideas feel uncomfortable, we’ll get departures. That may cause some disruptions. But it’s necessary. The United Methodist Church (UMC) just showed us why.

    The UMC had bigoted, anti-LGBTQ+ policies for decades. Naively, many in the UMC believed that we could reform those policies while appeasing our bigots. We tried this for decades and failed. Not only did this naivete delay reform, the bigots kept jabbing the knife deeper.

    It wasn’t until the 2020-2024 mass exodus of bigots that the UMC could finally reform. And it finally did so last week, repealing bigoted policies.

    The BSA is in a similar position. We’ve wasted decades coddling poor performers and those with bad ideas. This appeasement has brought us to our knees. If we want a viable BSA, the appeasement must end. But we may have to shrink to grow.

    You may counter with, “But wait, [group x] and [group y] already fled. Isn’t that enough?” No. Their culture remains firmly in place. National continues to not give an inch on its performance problems or its bigotry. More departures are needed to right this, and these departures can be encouraged by the NEB setting clear and appropriate expectations.

    Let’s talk about departures: Who cares? Really, who cares? Some people at national need to find a different way to serve humanity. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! In my campaign to put sunlight on the national organization’s manifold sins, I have come across so many good, caring, competent, rational people who could be shoo-ins for vacated roles. The easiest part is abolishing or refilling vacated roles! (Related: To succeed at re-filling roles, national has to stop using gold loops as a reward to long-term loyalty. Instead, national must seek competent innovators from all levels of tenure.)

    This will pivot the NEB from being a board of bystanders

    The NEB has two key jobs:

    • Appoint and supervise CEOs.
    • Set corporate strategy.

    Instead of doing those jobs well, or at all, prior NEBs were mainly boards of bystanders.

    Kowtowing to the bureaucracy

    Evidence comes with decades of terrible CEO appointments.

    Instead of appointing competent leaders to the CEO role, past NEBs kowtowed to BSA’s bureaucracy, limiting its CEO candidate pool to former District Executives surfaced by BSA’s awful career system. Thanks to this, the NEB caused decades of harm by saddling BSA with CEOs who were visionless bureaucrats with weak leadership skills.

    Roger Krone, who was appointed in 2023, broke this mold! He is the first CEO with leadership chops since Harvey L. Price, who in 1976 began to countermand his predecessor by restoring BSA’s outdoor-adventure focus.

    Declining to set strategy

    More evidence of poor past NEB performance comes with how it declined to set sound strategy, instead fomenting a leadership vacuum. This vacuum handed the national organization’s rudder to its moribund bureaucracy and to throwback reactionaries.

    The bureaucracy’s hand on the rudder is demonstrated by how BSA’s programs, advancement system, uniforms, and more have drifted listlessly for decades, now confusing and bloated with unchecked accumulation of random ideas. Yeah, yeah, I know, a lot of responsibility for these failures nominally falls on program committees, but since they historically are puppets of or allies with the bureaucracy, the fingers point back to the bureaucracy.

    Throwback reactionaries’ hand on the rudder is evidenced by BSA’s moral depravity–our bigoted flexes on gays, God, and girls–and dire fiscal conditions. While NEB declined to provide useful direction, throwback reactionaries used BSA as a tool in their culture wars. Throwback reactionaries’ bigoted flexes were so extreme, in addition to destroying much of our goodwill and 80% of our membership, we now have a $439 million white elephant that’s underwater, digging the hole deeper with staggering annual losses.

    As long as bigotry and tolerance of poor performance still have the upper hand in BSA, we should expect continued brand damage:

    The NEB must stand up to the moribund bureaucracy

    Back to my point: If the NEB is serious about its mission, in addition to setting clear direction on ending bigotry, it will stand up to the bureaucracy, setting expectations that its lousy performance will no longer be tolerated. This starts by denying a proposal to stall elimination of the coed ban.

    Some background: Reliable informants convey that the NEB is set to end the coed ban this week! But the NEB still plans to kowtow to the bureaucracy which predictably is asking for it to stall reform: A useless pilot program is proposed. Given BSA’s normal practices, this should stall reform at least another year.

    BSA’s pilot programs are useless, bureaucratic stalling exercises. In recent times, all major knowledge produced by BSA’s pilot programs, if any (!), could have been predicted by a competent professional or volunteer. But recent pilot programs seem to produce so little. Examples:

    Instead of pilot programs, we need competence.

    And we should have that competence: With coed older-youth programs for 56 years, BSA has had plenty of time to figure out coed. It has had coed Cub Scouts since 2018 (sorry, rulemongers, virtually all packs flouted national and ran coed programs since 2018!). And many troops have chosen the moral high road, flouting BSA’s separate-but-equal regime for girls, instead running undercover coed operations. BSA already has all it needs to navigate full coed across every program.

    But let’s suppose I am wrong? (I’m not, but let’s pretend.) BSA has unlimited phone-a-friend to other USA youth-serving organizations, nearly all of which are fully coed or permit it. We also have unlimited phone-a-friend to all of BSA’s WOSM peers, which have been fully coed for decades.

    The NEB’s repudiation of the coed ban must be full, final, and immediate. The bureaucracy has no reason to stall this. If the repudiation is not full, final, and immediate, then we’re inviting bigots and some bureaucrats maintain control. Back to the proposed bureaucratic stalling tactic–the pilot program–it is an invitation for those with bad ideas to sanitize their folly by clinging to any part of the coed ban they can save. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them warp the pilot program to validate single-gender patrols. The current coed-related rules applicable to Cub Scouts or Venturing are already an overreach (I have a future article developing on this). Any post-coed-ban standards that go beyond those are almost certainly evidence of uncorrected cultural rot.

    How each community navigates its coed experience must be up to that community, unencumbered by even a single vestige of the separate-but-equal regime for girls.

    Conclusion

    BSA is at its most fragile point in its history. Suffering a recent, catastrophic membership loss, teetering on a second bankruptcy, reeling from decades of appeasing those with bad ideas and poor performance, and with programs and services badly needing a cleaning up and realignment, it’s crucial for the NEB to take a shot across the bow.

    The NEB must set clear expectations now, in a visceral way, that bigotry, bad ideas, and poor performance are no longer welcome in the national organization. It starts this by deleting all bigoted policies (the separate-but-equal regime for girls and religious bigotry) in a full, complete, and final way, which importantly includes denial of bureaucratic stalling tactics (pilot programs).

    1. I have yet to write about this, but James E. West, the first Chief Scout Executive, created the original language that is behind today’s Declaration of Religious Principle (DRP). When understood through the lens of the USA’s Third Great Awakening, it’s unlikely James meant for the DRP to become a ban on atheists and agnostics or to be as in-your-face as it is today. ↩︎
  • BSA’s Summit Bechtel Reserve, a monument to bigotry, is failing

    BSA’s Summit Bechtel Reserve, a monument to bigotry, is failing

    BSA’s Summit Bechtel Reserve (SBR) is a fantastic spot for quadrennial Jamborees.

    It has a dark side. Protecting BSA’s bigotry is its raison d’etre. With program revenue a tiny fraction of expectations and staggering debt, it’s worth less than zero and is a major fiscal strain on BSA’s fragile national organization.

    BSA has never shared a plan to turn SBR around. As a Scouting-themed amusement park in a remote location that lacks national-scope repute, a turnround seems extraordinarily challenging.

    Bigots love BSA’s leadership vacuum

    BSA has a decades-long leadership vacuum. Special-interest groups filled this vacuum, freely using BSA as a tool in their culture wars. They are why BSA have squandered so much treasure and goodwill on membership controversies.

    Special-interest groups are also why BSA became a stalwart of immorality, aggressively litigating a right to be bigoted all the way to the Supreme Court. And it won this shit prize in 2000.

    BSA’s bigoted flex put it at odds with society. Government agencies, pivoting from discrimination, were increasingly resistant to associate with an organization that was openly bigoted on gender, sexual orientation, and religion.

    BSA’s bigotry endangered its ability to use government facilities for Jamborees. Seeing this, Congress twice protected BSA’s access to government facilities. The 2002 Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act provided general protection, and the 2005 Support Our Scouts Act protected the Jamboree.

    BSA’s reaction? Walk away.

    Preserving bigotry: SBR’s main point

    Here’s the irony: BSA used Fort Walker for Jamborees 1981-2010. Then, it was named named Fort A. P. Hill. A Confederate, A. P. Hill was a traitorous scoundrel and fool. Hill and his co-conspirators waged an illegal rebellion, bankrupting southern states to engage in a devastating, bloody war of choice, just to preserve bigotry.

    Acolytes of special-interest groups follow Hill’s example, morally and fiscally bankrupting BSA so that they can wage war against society, in interest of promoting their bigotry.

    An outcome of the special-interest groups’ bigoted flex: SBR! Yup, BSA built SBR to preserve its bigotry!

    Former Chief Scout Executive Robert Mazzuca, one of a succession of incompetent CEOs, spills the beans in the first few seconds of this video:

    Robert’s admission: “taking our destiny back and seeing if we couldn’t find a place and a home for our new Jamboree”. (I am certain he said “new” in the wrong place, meaning to say “new home for our Jamboree” SBR is the new home for the traditional, not-new Jamboree.)

    Why would you need to find a new home for the Jamboree? Why do you need to take your destiny back? It’s because, despite two acts of Congress, BSA still feared that its bigotry would end access to Fort Walker, its Jamboree home since 1981.

    BSA could have dropped its immorality. Instead, BSA made foolish fiscal choices, just to perpetuate bigotry.

    None of the other reasons make sense

    In the above video, other gold loopers gave flimsy, alternate excuses for developing SBR. They were shared starting at 1:01:

    • Summer camp
    • High-adventure base
    • Leadership center

    These are affirmed by SBR’s website, which lists these three uses, along with a “Family Adventure Camp”.

    None of these uses make sense.

    Summer camp makes no sense

    BSA had no need for another summer camp.

    Thanks to the BSA national organization’s war of attrition against its own membership, by 2010, BSA’s market share of youth had shrunk 46% from its 1971 peak. We had well under-grown our infrastructure, which was affirmed in a late 2010s speech by former Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh. (As of the end of 2023, we’re down an astounding 80%!)

    BSA is winning its decades-long war of attrition against its own membership. Its 2023 market share of youth is 80% below its peak.

    In this context of decline, how is the base served when national competes with declining council summer camps?

    Leadership center makes no sense

    The leadership center may be the dumbest excuse to build SBR. It was not needed, and it’s too remote.

    Again, thanks to its decades-long war against its own membership, BSA has been under-growing a diverse array of national and council facilities since 1971: camps, office buildings, and more. In fact, BSA had so much surplus capacity, it sold a silly, Westlake, Texas training facility to contribute funds to the bankruptcy settlement.

    Silly Westlake, Texas training facility (map) that was sold to help pay the bankruptcy settlement (image source).

    There was no need for more training space in 2010. Yet we solve that phony problem with an expensive, new facility in the middle of nowhere?

    Regarding “middle of nowhere”, let’s review the trip plans of those who attended the January 2024 separate-but-equal Wood Badge1 at SBR and used Amtrak or flights:

    Contrast this to, say, BSA’s Irving headquarters, where the trip choices would mainly be:

    Oh, wait, need a camp facility with an option of bunk houses? Got you covered. Let’s go to Camp Wisdom! What that would look like:

    We add value to an unneeded training facility by hiding it in a remote location?

    High adventure makes no sense

    Nothing done at SBR is high adventure.

    BSA’s description of high adventure:

    A high-adventure trek is a joyous opportunity—beyond the scope of the routine. It is more than just a scenic outdoor experience. It is more than just a physical challenge. It is an experience in living and cooperating with others to meet an exciting challenge. It is learning to overcome difficulties and learning to live in harmony with nature.

    Passport to Adventure, Boy Scouts of America, 2011 printing, p. 4 (emphasis added)

    The last phrase is key: “learning to live in harmony with nature”. That crucial context colors what you get at BSA’s genuine high-adventure bases, which are at the Florida Keys, Rocky Mountains, and northern boundary waters.

    SBR is phony high-adventure: A Scouting-themed amusement park built on an area already terraformed by extensive surface coal mining, SBR defies nature! Those enjoying SBR’s headline attractions are using man-made facilities on a scraped landscape.

    78% of SBR’s 2023 attendees attended its middle-school summer camp program or programs focused on SBR’s amusement-park rides:

    Only 22% of SBR attendees are doing high-adventure:

    “Hold on a second, didn’t you say no high adventure was done at SBR?” Correct! Attending a high-adventure program at SBR means you leave SBR, instead going to New River Gorge National Park or adjacent areas!

    The New River Gorge National Park did not need a nearby, $439,000,000 white elephant for Scouts to enjoy it. If SBR was never developed, then New River Gorge National Park would be like a regular national park: fully available for Scouting adventure!

    Poorly utilized

    Those percentages I wrote about in the prior section? They split a tiny number.

    Back to the video shared earlier, starting at 1:44, a gold looper shares that SBR will be a “high-utilization site” with projected usage to be “somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand kids a summer”.

    Let’s split the difference at 75,000 kids. What was the 2023 utilization? 2,428 kids, 97% less than projected.

    Might as well be zero!

    Of those 2,428 kids:

    • 921 did summer camp (That means attendance at all summer-camp sessions was comparable to my council’s single week of winter camp!)
    • 535 departed SBR to do high adventure
    • 972 focused on amusement-park rides

    That giant sucking sound: massive financial failures

    SBR’s financial piggishness started in its infancy.

    Per a 2013 Reuters exposé, SBR’s actual cost was 99% higher than estimated, accompanied by a 32% fundraising shortfall. Given a $439 million facility with a $343 million fundraising goal, this means a $220 million cost overrun met by a $108 million fundraising shortfall.

    Now let me admit limitations of these numbers: This is from a mid-2013 article. BSA is invited to share if it got closer to fundraising goals or meaningfully addressed the overruns (unlikely given massive bond debt outstanding; see below). But it will take tremendous shifts from the Reuters article’s numbers to get out of clown-show territory.

    More sucking: a SBR-sized heap of debt

    (This section is complicated. The main point: Arrow WV, Inc. is a nonprofit controlled by BSA, and it owns The Summit. Arrow WV likely owes Boy Scouts of America, Inc. well over $350 million. It does not seem likely Arrow WV can ever pay this back. BSA reports this amount owed to it as an asset, and that one asset accounts for 41% of all of BSA’s assets!)

    SBR is underwater, and the negative fiscal trends are accelerating.

    More info on the financial numbers below and the meaning of Arrow WV, Inc.

    SBR is owned by Arrow WV, Inc., a nonprofit controlled by BSA. Numbers specific to SBR come from Arrow WV’s IRS Form 990s.

    Numbers specific to BSA come from BSA’s IRS Form 990s.

    As of press time, the latest Form 990 available covers 2022. Unless specified otherwise, the numbers are as of the end of the 2022 fiscal year.

    Thanks to steadily increasing liabilities, Arrow WV, SBR’s owner, went underwater in 2022 with a net worth of -$1,742,9892:

    This is fueled by annual operating losses:

    Let’s look more into the liabilities.

    For 2022, Arrow WV had total liabilities of $370,598,2503. Of that, $783 is “Accounts payable and accrued expenses”, and the remaining $370,597,467 is an intercompany payable.

    This intercompany payable is funds that Arrow WV owes to other entities within the BSA family. This common accounting tactic means 1. that other corporations within BSA’s family spotted Arrow WV $370 million to cover its shortfalls and 2. Arrow WV is expected to pay them back.

    The author’s campsite at the 2017 National Scout Jamboree at SBR. (Photo credit: Aren Cambre.)

    Boy Scouts of America, Inc.–the main corporation in this family of entities–has an intercompany receivable of $356,180,2804. Reported as an asset, it’s money owed to BSA. It’s likely that all, or nearly all, of this is money owed to BSA by Arrow WV. (BSA’s intercompany receivable is about $14 million less than Arrow WV’s intercompany payable. This suggests that Arrow WV owes at around $14 million to other corporations in BSA’s family.)

    Let’s assume all of BSA’s intercompany receivable is from Arrow WV. About half that receivable is BSA’s guarantee on county bonds issued to finance SBR’s construction. Fayette County, WV issued $225,000,000 of bonds5 in 20106 and 20127. As they are guaranteed by BSA, BSA must pay them off. As of the end of 2022, the bonds still have an outstanding balance of $185,799,3858.

    Subtract the bonds from the intercompany receivable, and this means Arrow WV–AKA, SBR–owes BSA $170,380,8959 for other reasons.

    I suspect these “other reasons” fall into two categories:

    1. BSA covering for Arrow WV’s start-up expenses that weren’t covered by bonds or donor funds.
    2. Daddy BSA paying for things each year that Arrow WV can’t afford.

    The expectation may have been that Arrow WV pays this back. But it hasn’t, and it can’t due to staggering annual losses. Arrow WV’s intercompany payable (amounts owed) keeps growing, which is not surprising given its large deficits.

    Of BSA’s $902,582,447 of total assets10, 41% are that intercompany receivable. (Yes, corporations can report money owed to them as assets.) In other words, 41% of BSA’s assets may be worthless!

    $18 of youth membership fees = SBR deficit

    BSA’s annual youth member fee has had meteoric increases:

    Meteoric increases in BSA’s annual youth member fee.

    If BSA produces any significant savings, its first priority is to provide relief to its youth members from the staggering annual fee increases.

    Let’s suppose BSA sold SBR and paid off the bonds. This means BSA no longer incurs about $18,344,608 of annual losses11 related to SBR.

    Divide that $18,344,608 savings by BSA’s 1,015,056 youth members, and you get $18 per Scout.

    Think about it: $18 per Scout is equivalent to the deficits of a failing facility that few will ever use. If we had no SBR obligations, BSA could reduce the annual youth membership fee from $85 to $67.

    Yeah, I know, bean counters may spin some yarn about a corporate accounting trick that disassociates member fees from SBR. I could care less. The loss is real, reported on Arrow WV’s own IRS 990 form. No accounting trick takes away that the highest priority for operational revenue savings needs to be relieving youth from exorbitant national-fee increases.

    I had a great time at the 2017 Jamboree

    I was a Scoutmaster of 2017 National Scout Jamboree’s Troop 4116. SBR is an outstanding facility for Jamborees! I loved my time there.

    2017 presidential address to the Jamboree, where President Trump told Scouts about sex orgies, then bashed immigrants so intensely, some of my troop members cried. (Photo credit: Aren Cambre.)

    But my fondness cannot change that SBR is a failed, money-losing pig.

    Closing thought

    The Army removed names of Confederate scoundrels from many facilities. We need to follow the Army’s example and remove bigoted culture from BSA. If only we had started that decades ago…

    Wishful thinking can’t change today’s reality. We now own this white elephant, courtesy of special-interest groups. And it’s proposed as the home of the 2031 World Jamboree. (Nov. 26, 2024 update: This bid fell through.)

    I encourage BSA to reconsider the vision of a gold-looper who helped found SBR:

    The key to [SBR] is, from an operating perspective, … that it will sustain itself economically in perpetuity.

    -[name redacted], at 7:00 in the above video

    Those who like SBR, who want to keep it for perpetuity, the onus is on you to fix its finances, to hold SBR responsible for its “key” promise. What’s your plan?

    For sure, the plan isn’t what steampunk Baden-Powell’s ghost shared with gold loopers in the 2000s:

    1. You read that right. Grown-ass adults had to pretend that fragile males had to be protected from being “disadvantaged” by females by cosplaying BSA’s separate-but-equal regime! ↩︎
    2. Arrow WV’s 2022 Form 990, line 20 (total assets) minus line 21 (total liabilities) (page 1) ↩︎
    3. Arrow WV’s 2022 Form 990, line 21 (total liabilities) (page 1) ↩︎
    4. BSA’s 2022 Form 990, Schedule D, Part IX, line 1 (page 48) ↩︎
    5. BSA’s 2022 Form 990, Schedule K, Part II, line 3, add columns A and B (page 67) ↩︎
    6. BSA’s 2022 Form 990, Schedule K, Part I, line A, column (d) (page 67) ↩︎
    7. BSA’s 2022 Form 990, Schedule K, Part I, line B, column (d) (page 67) ↩︎
    8. BSA’s 2022 Form 990, Schedule K, Part II, add both numbers in line 3, then subtract from that sum both numbers in line 1 (page 67) ↩︎
    9. This is calculated by subtracting the amount outstanding on SBR bonds from BSA’s intercompany-receivable asset. ↩︎
    10. BSA’s 2022 Form 990, Part X, line 16 (rightmost column) (page 24) ↩︎
    11. This is from Arrow WV’s 2022 Form 990, line 19. ↩︎
  • Abolish gold epaulets, a barrier to reform

    Abolish gold epaulets, a barrier to reform

    Symbols are important to culture. Any symbol associated with national’s cultural rot needs scrutiny.

    Gold epaulets are an example. Representing elitism, they obstruct reform.

    (Epaulets, cloth devices worn on shoulder loops on uniforms, indicate the “level” of one’s role in Scouting.)

    Explainer: stratified by epaulet

    BSA’s most important adult-leader roles directly serve units, like Assistant Cubmaster. The remaining roles are outside of a unit, like National Territory Director.

    BSA’s non-unit roles fall in two buckets:

    • Silver epaulet: Council roles.
    • Gold epaulet: National roles.

    Gold epaulets mean little

    When someone with gold epaulets enters a room, the response is as if a god appeared.

    This mistaken fawning comes from two myths:

    MythFact
    The national organization is powerful.Poorly regarded, at perpetual war with the base, and increasingly scrutinized, the national organization’s inability to regrow membership and immense debt (example; there’s also a pile of debt on Philmont) places it at risk of a second bankruptcy (and this is independent of whether the original bankruptcy is shot down, which may cause a death spiral).
    People in national roles have superior competence and leadership skills.BSA’s professional and volunteer advancement system is neutral on one’s competence and skills.

    The system’s crowning achievement–decades of internally-sourced CEOs–were unsuited for the role. The strongest thing signaled by rising to national is one’s willingness to be loyal to a bureaucratic culture that is so moribund, despite massive 2020 layoffs, it still squanders staff time on clownish pilot programs that can’t produce new, useful knowledge.
    Myths fueling gold-epaulet worship.

    A new way: dull-bronze epaulet

    I recommend a dull-bronze epaulet for all non-unit roles. This conveys transformative messages:

    • All non-unit roles are to serve the base.
    • Youth members, their families, and unit-level volunteers–all part of the base–are the most important roles in Scouting.

    Third place means serving the base

    Youth and families are first place. Unit-level volunteers are a close second.

    Bronze means third place. Bronze symbolizes that non-unit roles’ value rests entirely on how they serve youth, families, and unit-level leaders. Making the bronze dull avoids shininess, affirming a posture of service.

    This sets a fresh expectation for the national organization. Today, national acts like its main customer is itself. With its record over the past decades, national’s overriding priorities appear to be covering up its own malfeasance, embarking on hare-brained schemes, or validating the bigotry or insecurities of some of its own professionals or volunteers.

    A national organization embracing a third-place role would act differently:

    Written by a National Scouts BSA Committee member in fall 2023, this shows that a key national program committee may lack value. Years after BSA enacted a separate-but-equal regime for girls, the National Scouts BSA Committee remains disinterested in doing the morally-straight thing: openly calling for immediate cancellation of the specious coed ban, which is super easy to do. If the National Scouts BSA Committee embraced its third-place role, it would have never supported a separate-but-equal regime.

    The silver epaulet also goes, and this is good

    It is important that national’s cultural improvements permeate the entire movement. Therefore, since the dull-bronze epaulet applies to all non-unit roles, it also replaces the silver epaulet.

    With this, councils symbolically affirm national’s new cultural expectation: Serve the base.

    Gold is old and busted, dull bronze is the new hotness

    We have a long journey to restoring morality, relevance, and responsiveness to the national organization. Setting strong cultural expectations is a crucial, early step.

    Again, symbols are important to culture. Part of setting strong new cultural expectations is addressing symbols that are associated with cultural rot.

    Gold epaulets must go.

  • Graceless and bigoted, BSA’s Declaration of Religious Principle slaps Jesus

    Graceless and bigoted, BSA’s Declaration of Religious Principle slaps Jesus

    BSA uses its Declaration of Religious Principle (DRP) to bar atheists and agnostics. This graceless, bigoted policy is offensive to Christianity.

    Jesus’s words and deeds command Christians to radical grace, compassion, and inclusion. Those are the opposite of BSA’s Declaration. Those who follow Jesus cannot support a policy of excluding those who are different.

    (This article speaks to what I know, a Christian perspective. If you have a different faith perspective that leads to inclusion and tolerance, leave a comment!)

    The Declaration’s contemporary point: bigotry

    Religious observance, faith exploration, and tolerance have been encouraged since 1911 by the “Reverent” Scout Law (source, see page 10). That law gives full justification to features like the Religious Emblems Program or the Scouts’ Own concept.

    Supplemental language that largely resembles today’s DRP was created around the same time. In its context–the tail end of the Third Great Awakening–the DRP was almost certainly intended as a magnanimous statement reflecting then-contemporary norms.

    Religious extremists have warped the DRP into a statement of religious bigotry. This was affirmed by BSA’s litigation team.

    The point of this article is that today’s religious-extremist interpretation of the DRP forces Christians to contradict Jesus’s words and deeds. Christians who prefer not to slap Jesus cannot align with the extremists’ interpretation of the DRP. That is the focus of this article.

    The Greatest Commandment and Golden Rule: core to Christianity

    Crucial to Christian faith are the Greatest Commandment and the Golden Rule:

    1. The Greatest Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
    2. The Golden Rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

    Source: Matthew 22:35-40. (The added boldface will be relevant later.)

    Jesus commands you to love your God and love your neighbor. Any Christian belief or practice that contradicts this is heretical.

    The next sections explain why Christians who value Jesus’s “main point” cannot support the DRP.

    We must love the despised

    The Parable of the Good Samaritan is Jesus’s first expansion on the Golden Rule.

    In this parable, someone is severely injured by robbers. He is left lying on the side of the road.

    A priest and Levite pass the injured man, leaving him for dead. In those days, priests and Levites believed they would be defiled if they touched a corpse. By moving to the other side of the road before passing the injured man, these two avoided becoming unclean.

    Then comes a Samaritan, the Good Samaritan. He rendered aid and paid for the victim to convalesce at an inn.

    Back then, Jews violently hated the Samaritans. The Jews believed the Samaritans had corrupted their worship of God and added false gods into the mix. The Jews felt they would be contaminated by Samaritans even with indirect contact, such as by using a dish once touched by a Samaritan. The hatred was worse than the worst modern societal conflict that crosses Americans’ minds. Like BSA’s DRP, maximal separation from a hated group was the goal.

    Yet Jesus illustrated his Great Commandment with a story featuring a Samaritan as the good guy! The Samaritan was not to be hated. The Samaritan was worthy of grace and love! A dreg of humanity acted better than the the priests and Levites, holiest of society!

    If we take Jesus’s words seriously, we can’t act as if atheists’ and agnostics’ presence defiles us. But we play that stupid game, acting like the priest and Levite, when we support the DRP.

    When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re copying the sins of those who Jesus condemned.

    We must not harm children

    The Declaration of Religious Principle is kin punishment, punishing children for a grievance against the parents.

    Civilized societies have long moved past kin punishment. BSA’s DRP sends us back centuries, punishing innocent children over an alleged sin of the parent.

    Belief systems of youth are mainly their parents’ beliefs:

    Therefore, BSA’s Declaration slaps innocent children.

    Contrast BSA’s approach to Jesus’s: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)

    Jesus was not barbaric. He did not impose a religious test. He ministered to all. BSA could learn from Jesus.

    When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re harming children.

    We must not be rulemongers

    Jesus’s Great Commandment was in response to a question from a Pharisaic “expert in the law” (a lawyer). Notable about the Pharisees was their obsession with rules, especially ones concerning purity.

    Jesus’s responses to Pharisaical interrogations often illustrate how their rulemongering distracts them from what’s important. Tragically, the Woes of the Pharisees align with the woes that underly BSA’s Declaration, an obsession with outward appearance and superficiality.

    Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan in response to questioning of another “expert in the law”. Jesus was once again addressing someone obsessed with rules.

    And in that parable, the priest and Levite were examples of people who were so rulebound, they missed opportunities to minister.

    If Christians take Jesus seriously, we need to avoid the Woes of the Pharisees. We need to avoid allowing an obsession over rules to cause us to miss opportunities to grace and ministry. Essentially a Pharisaical document, BSA’s Declaration can’t be reconciled with Jesus’s own teachings.

    When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re missing opportunities to minister due to our rulemongering, a trap Jesus warned us about.

    We must show grace towards the vulnerable

    People are complex. Simple decisions can mask difficult circumstances leading to them.

    Many atheists or agnostics are recovering from harms caused by past church experience. Avoiding the institution that caused harm could be a crucial part of that person’s recovery.

    As an example, let’s use United Methodist Minister Teresa MacBain. In the nine years of her ministry, spiritual malpractice she experienced in her childhood–problematic biblical teachings from a different denomination–haunted her, creating questions so immense, the only reasonable path forward for her was to renounce religion entirely, becoming an atheist.

    But Teresa’s story does not end there. A few years later, she came back to faith.

    And who demonstrated the same gracelessness as BSA’s Declaration? The prominent atheist, former-clergy group she was in.

    In addition to slapping Jesus and innocent children, BSA’s Declaration slaps adults who may simply be doing their best to overcome spiritual malpractice.

    When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re contravening the Golden Rule, which Jesus said is one of two most important commandments.

    We must not compel faith tests outside of church

    In the Greatest Commandment and the Golden Rule, Jesus used second-person pronouns, “your” and “yourself”. It’s hard to miss what it emphasizes: Your faith expression is your own private, personal, and core matter. Jesus’s key concern is your own faith, not how you coerced your neighbor.

    This doesn’t mean your can’t share your faith. For example, a mainstream Christian practice is corporate worship experiences. You know, going to church. Regularly attending a church conveys to that congregation, and anyone who sees you walking in the door, your alignment with that church’s beliefs.

    But how about outside of a voluntary, religious setting? That is where we find secular organizations, like BSA. In Matthew 6, Jesus cautions against demonstrations of religiosity in the secular world:

    • Don’t practice righteousness in front of others.
    • Gifts to the needy are to be done in secret.
    • Don’t be like the “hypocrites” who visibly pray. Instead, pray in secret, behind closed doors.
    • Don’t pray loudly by “babbling like pagans”.
    • Don’t put on a show of somberness while fasting.

    He follows with the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer again emphasizes the individual’s own relationship with God: individual reflection and individual acts. Corporate petitions (“our”) are on behalf of the voluntarily aligned in a religious community.

    There’s much more to unpack from Matthew 6. But further exegesis won’t change Jesus’s strong preference for private religiosity and a focus on one’s own faith life. Jesus was deeply skeptical, sometimes condemnatory, of open demonstrations of religiosity, especially when one uses public religiosity to seek affirmation of others.

    Let’s recap. Jesus exhorts us to a faith that focuses on the individual’s private relationship with God.

    Religious tests in a secular organization oppose this. These tests are one party compelling a demonstration of religiosity out of another party. This isn’t the same as respectfully participating in a prayer at a Scout event. It is a test of an individual’s private matter.

    It is difficult to reconcile a zeal for Jesus’s words and deeds with support of compelled religious tests in a secular organization.

    When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re disrespecting those who prefer to obey Jesus’s expectations for how individuals are to conduct faith practices and relate to others of faith.

    We must offer immense grace

    Another parable on grace is a cautionary tale. Jesus’s Parable of the Unmerciful Servant describes a servant who had received unexpected, undeserved grace in the form of cancellation of a massive debt. Shortly after that debt cancellation, the servant demanded payback from a peer who owned him money. Due to his lack of grace, the servant’s debt was un-canceled, and he was thrown in jail until he could pay it back.

    Part of Christian theology includes a Christian’s receipt of wholly unmerited salvation. That is a profound act of grace given to us. We are expected to emit at least that much grace: “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” (source)

    We are to show unimaginably vast grace to our fellow man. That starkly contrasts seeking to exclude others from a secular organization over a mere lack of outward religious signs.

    Christians who use the Declaration to exclude others are not showing 77x grace or even 7x grace; they are sucking grace out of the room!

    Part of grace is setting aside one’s pride and compassionately engaging with people unlike you. That includes theists doing the opposite of BSA’s Declaration: engaging with with and ministering to atheists and agnostics.

    When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re declining to show grace, contravening Jesus’s expectation of us to show 77 times as much grace as we receive!

    We must serve society

    Religiously unaffiliated people are already a large plurality that will keep growing:

    Pew Research on trend towards religious disaffiliation in the USA (source).

    Religiously unaffiliated are a mix of beliefs, occupying a spectrum from atheist to non-participating traditionalist. But 37% of religious “nones” are identify as atheist or agnostic (source):

    Pew Research on religious “nones” in the USA (source).

    Also, for 67% of religious “nones”, “disbelief/doubt/skepticism” is an “extremely or very important reason” for why they are a none (source).

    By banning a large and growing percent of society, the DRP’s bigotry and gracelessness cause BSA’s irrelevance.

    If society shifts, relevant organizations must shift with it. BSA has already shown the folly of trying to change society: costly, harmful, and stupid membership controversies that still sully BSA’s reputation.

    BSA can be relevant by deleting the DRP and instead promoting tolerance and understanding in the world it inhabits. Or BSA can cling to the bigoted, harmful, backwards DRP and accelerate its decline.

    A note about bigotry

    The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines bigotry as “blindly devoted to some creed, opinion, or practice” along with “having or showing an attitude of hatred or intolerance toward the members of a particular group…”

    Just like BSA’s old gay ban and its “separate but equal” regime for girls, the Declaration of Religious Principle is bigotry.

    “Legal” and “morally straight” are different

    Private, secular, membership organizations, like BSA, have a Constitutional right to slap Jesus. BSA squandered enormous funds and goodwill to preserve this right, taking it all the way to the Supreme Court with BSA v. Dale.

    But “legally permitted” and “morally straight” are different. A mentally awake and morally straight Christian cannot support a secular organization’s Jesus-slapping religious test.

    Summary for Christians

    When we use the Declaration for what religious extremists want–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–we’re rejecting what Jesus said is the most important of all: loving God and others.

    How we solve this

    While the DRP was originally a magnanimous statement, religious extremists have warped it to suit their agenda. It is now poisonous, warped beyond recovery.

    We don’t need the DRP! We already have the “Reverent” Scout law. That alone is sufficient to justify appropriate, voluntary observations of faith in BSA’s programs.

    The DRP must go. Just delete it.

    Families must be entrusted to define “Reverent” in the way that makes sense for them. And BSA must stop compelling Christians to behave in ways that contravene Jesus’s words and example.

    Finally, BSA’s own mission statement calls it to “prepare young people … by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law”. BSA’s bigotry countermand this, limiting access to those who have already reached some preferred answer. If we’re serious about the instilling part, we have to be open to all, even to those with whom we disagree, with those whose answer is different than our preferences. Otherwise, we’re failing our mission.

    Acknowledging my bias

    I am a practicing Christian, a lifelong United Methodist. My view of the DRP is expressed through that lens.

    Photo of the book holder in the pew in front of me at the 11 AM service on Sunday, August 27, 2023. The United Methodist Hymnal was tragically missing, forcing me to grab a hymnal from the book holder to the left.

    As Christianity is the dominant religion in the USA, and certainly of BSA members, it has pervasive influence. I therefore find it helpful to review this Declaration through a Christian lens.

    This is not out of disrespect to other religious traditions. It is me expressing myself authentically and avoiding speaking for others.

    If you have a different faith perspective that leads you to grace and inclusion, I’d love to hear it! Share your vision for overcoming the DRP’s bigotry in a comment.

  • NOAC 2024 @ CU Boulder to mock Native Americans a bit less

    NOAC 2024 @ CU Boulder to mock Native Americans a bit less

    BSA’s Order of the Arrow is reducing its mockery of Native American tribes at National Order of the Arrow Conference 2024, its biannual national conference: It’s deleting American Indian Affairs activities (AIA)!

    AIA explainer

    A good deal of OA’s AIA is performance art, and much of that art is brownface cosplay, mainly in two forms:

    • Doing Native American-themed performance art without permission of the tribes whose customs they purport to represent.
    • Just “playing Indian”, acting out a whiteboy caricature of indigenous peoples or amalgams of tribal customs.

    And let me be super clear about a point: Some may allege tremendous research and earnest interest in authenticity. That’s great, and I am glad you did that. However, if you are performing without written permission of the tribe you claim your performance to commemorate, you have not separated yourself from brownface cosplay.

    While there is technically more to AIA, like static art, the brownface cosplay-dominant performance art gets most attention.

    Commentary on (phony) tribal permission

    Since before I was a youth in Scouting, OA has swum in allegations of local tribal authorizations of AIA activities. Such authorizations indicate relationships that would be highly valued under a system that alleges to respect Native Americans.

    I have yet to see any lodge publicly share evidence of such an agreement. That absence speaks volumes.

    I have also repeatedly heard local allegations of individual Native Americans endorsing local AIA activities. They, too, are likely phony. But even if not, they are irrelevant: Tribal customs are owned by tribes, not individuals.

    All this notwithstanding, the concern is non-natives appropriating tribal customs under the color of BSA. How Native Americans express their own tribal customs is a private matter between that person and his or her tribe, outside the scope of this document.

    BSA (OA) fights society for improper ends

    Society has wrestled with cultural appropriation of Native Americans for a century. In the past few decades, society’s viewpoint has coalesced on that the appropriation is harmful. Controversies over Native American-themed sports mascots follow this reasoning.

    BSA is supposed to promote leadership. But BSA suffers from a leadership vacuum at the top. Filling this leadership vacuum are inertia and throwback-reactionary culture. Actively preventing leadership, this culture causes BSA to fight for improper ends, such as our costly membership controversies that have served little point than to cause alienation. Included in these improper ends are how BSA clings to anachronisms, such as justifying a “separate but equal” regime using a straight-from-the-1950s hoax that girls are catastrophically different than boys.

    Another anachronism is that it’s OK to “play Indian”. This is why brownface cosplay remains rampant in the Order of the Arrow.

    An example of OA endorsing “playing Indian”

    AIA’s sibling in OA is Inductions and Ceremonial Events (ICE). These are OA’s core ceremonies, which are whiteboy riffs of indigenous customs.

    Approved attire for ICE ceremonies includes “American Indian attire”. This allowance is accompanied with “should”s regarding the attire’s authenticity and approval by tribes it reflects. Because “should” is not “must”, OA members remain free to use phony or unsanctioned-by-a-tribe Native American-ish costumes when they “play Indian”.

    An example “playing Indian” ceremony is the Ordeal ceremony (PDF password is ahoalton, the word for the OA admonition). It starts with pretendian characters whose names are appropriated from the Lenni Lenape vocabulary. The pretendians’ spoken words are garbled through a noble savage stereotype and typically delivered in a stilted manner that resembles “Tonto talk”.

    Warbonnets are among the highest brownface-cosplay-related concerns voiced by Native Americans. Yet we still see warbonnets widely used, such as this April 2023 ICE ceremony:

    Warbonnet worn in a April 2023 Order of the Arrow Ordeal ceremony.

    It’s not the only place where OA uses warbonnets.

    The only acceptable Native American-themed performance art depicts the customs of a tribe that has recently and explicitly authorized this use. But we should also consider the view of most recent national-scope youth leaders: OA should end all Native American theming.

    CU Boulder values Native American relationships

    CU Boulder, the NOAC 2024 host school, is known for its interest in good relationships with the Native American community. Evidence includes its Land Acknowledgement and its Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, which CU Boulder’s chancellor characterized as “long overdue”.

    It’s hard to see how CU Boulder would tolerate OA’s mockery of Native American tribes.

    To match CU Boulder’s ethos, OA should go further and fully implement the above-mentioned desire of its national and regional recent youth leaders, which is “ending the use of American Indian iconography and activities in our programs”. Given that OA is thematically soaked with cultural appropriation, more NOAC changes are needed than just pausing AIA.

    CU Boulder probably did not force this

    A reasonable person may suspect that OA removed NOAC’s brownface-cosplay activities due to a CU Boulder agreement. I have not seen convincing evidence of this. This suggests that OA leadership may simply be doing the right thing.

    This is the RFP sent out by BSA to multiple universities:

    2024-NOAC-University-Host-RFPDownload

    This RFP mentions “American Indian pageants”, so BSA’s starting point assumed brownface cosplay would happen.

    In its “Letter of Intent” response to the RFP, CU Boulder does not regulate Native American-themed activities:

    NOAC24LetterofIntentDownload

    This is a good sign. It suggests OA’s national leadership chose to pause AIA without being forced to.

    When will OA get its act together?

    OA still has no public statement that attests it has decided to stop mocking Native American tribes.

    It was time to rip that band aid off decades ago. OA’s brownface was controversial and managed poorly when I was a kid. I am now old, and OA is still mocking Native American tribes!

    How much longer do we have to wait for OA to clean up its act? Public clarity from OA leadership is crucial!

  • OA top youth leadership calls for end of all Native American-ish activities

    OA top youth leadership calls for end of all Native American-ish activities

    25 recent national- and regional-level Order of the Arrow youth officers, who were in office 2016-2022, have called for OA to end its cultural appropriation. Several of them affirmed this letter’s authenticity to me.

    They call for an end to all cultural appropriation, more than just the brownface cosplay I’ve written about previously.

    Many who support perpetuating cultural appropriation also weaponize “youth-led” as a thought-terminating cliché. I encourage you to reflect on “youth-led”. Perhaps it’s your own anachronisms that need termination?

    The letter, copied and pasted without editing:

    Members of the National Order of the Arrow Committee,

    We are __ current and former national youth officers of the Order of the Arrow, who were elected to represent the interests and voices of Scouting’s youth during our times in office. We believe our organization succeeds only when our traditions align with our values, so we wholeheartedly support ending the use of American Indian iconography and activities in our programs.

    We joined the OA and ran for national office because we believed in our organization’s mission.  That mission is about positive youth leadership. It creates extraordinary opportunity we each benefit from in our daily lives. We want to see that promise continue for today’s members and every young person who could one day wear a sash.

    But we remain worried that mission won’t survive if the OA doesn’t do the right thing. Honoring American Indian communities requires the utmost reverence, and we know our practices cause offense to many. That doesn’t align with our admonition. We must live up to our shared value of loving one another. Just because these traditions are old does not mean they are right.

    This isn’t just a moral argument; these programs hold increasingly less relevance with today’s youth. Many non-members avoid associating with the OA entirely because of these practices. If we wish to survive, we cannot prioritize traditions at the cost of blundering our aspiration of promoting positive youth leadership as an integral part of the Boy Scouts of America.

    The need for change has been clear. We took an oath to faithfully fulfill our duties as national youth officers—duties developed by the committee—including recommending items of policy or other actions for the good of the Order. The National OA Committee should act on the repeated recommendations it has received from sitting national officers to end these programs.

    In advance of your December meeting, we write to make clear that ending these practices has unanimous support among the OA’s top youth leaders for the past __ years. We come from __ different lodges in __ states. We are Scouting’s future advisers and parents, and we believe a successful tomorrow is realized when we live by our values.

    Some may say it’s not the opportune time. We say it’s never a bad time to do the right thing. We urge you to vote to end these programs, so we can all see our true mission succeed.

    In brotherhood,

    [25 signatures redacted]

    I am not including names of signatories. If any wish to be mentioned, I am happy to publish their names.

    It is my understanding that BSA’s Chief Scout Executive, or one or more of his direct reports, is standing in the way of reform. Why don’t you support ending brownface cosplay, Roger?

  • Failing to kill most Cub Scout camping, BSA’s cultural rot on full display

    Failing to kill most Cub Scout camping, BSA’s cultural rot on full display

    BSA’s national organization tried to decimate Cub Scout camping. The base erupted, and national partly backed off! With its reaction, national yet again affirmed how it’s a culturally-rotted enemy of Scouting.

    Scouting is among America’s most valuable traditions. We have to save it from the national organization. A necessary step is not allowing national to hide its malfeasance. That’s why I wrote this.

    Timeline of BSA’s rule on allowed nights of camping for Cub Scout pack-organized campouts.

    A story of arrogance

    For decades, BSA did not regulate the length of a Cub Scout pack-organized campouts. It could be as many nights as the pack wanted.

    True, BSA’s rules for Cub Scout pack-organized camping included the word “overnight” or “overnighter”. But that was widely understood only to distinguish from “day camp”, a kind of camp that does not include overnight stays. The national office’s own use of this word affirmed this understanding.

    In February 2023, BSA blindsided its largest program, secretly adding a word to Cub Scout camping rules: “single overnighter” (August 2022 version, lacking “single”, and February 2023 version). This secret edit decimated camping programs of most packs, demoralizing families and volunteers.

    Yet again, BSA’s national organization eroded trust. But this organization does not care: Following its longstanding habit, it acted hubristically, demonstrated hostility, and stalled for a long time before correcting itself. It has yet to apologize. (I’m expecting to see this same culture in Netflix’s upcoming Scouts Honor documentary. Not only is this rotted culture behind decades-long delays in addressing sex abuse, it’s behind this assault on Cub Scouts, it’s why national still clings to a “separate but equal” regime for girls, and it’s why the Order of the Arrow program has rampant brownface cosplay.)

    As usual, the top-secret national-level volunteer committees made no public statements. Sitting on their hands is no surprise: too many of these committees are do-nothing, inertia-bound puppets of BSA’s bloated bureaucracy. (Some national committees are exceptions, and I value you! You must be more public and distance yourself from the puppet committees.)

    Our national organization is arrogant. Arrogance prevents reform. Until we see clear signs that national wishes to reform, we must keep asking, “What is national’s next blunder?”

    Why national thought it could get away with it

    (This section is a brief diversion from the article’s topic. It provides context. I will eventually separate it into its own article.)

    BSA’s national organization has an anti-leadership culture of mindless rulemongering. This culture expects all BSA members to have an obsession with rules in the mold of the Pharisees of the Bible. This is among the worst attributes of BSA’s moribund bureaucracy.

    The national organization also benefits from a myth that rising to national is a sign of extraordinary competence. Place this atop mindless rulemongering, you get a “worship the gold epaulets” mentality. (Employees or volunteers with national roles wear gold epaulets.)

    The rulemongering and gold-digging cultural aspects foster a third aspect: UNQUESTIONING OBEDIENCE! Following rules is simply one’s highest calling (again, more anti-leadership claptrap). Faced with ambiguity, the solution is to fabricate yet more rules, which induces a need for yet more bureaucracy. It’s a self-dealing system, creating phony work for long-tenured professionals and volunteers. It also negates concerns of the base, because of course the problem is you peasants declined to obey or follow our rules. (Incidentally, that explains national’s hostility to feedback.)

    The alternative to this culture is thoughtful navigation of gray areas. That would be actual work, contradicting a fourth aspect of the national organization’s cultural problems: its main purpose is to provide cushy, make-work roles for those who were loyal to national’s bureaucracy for long enough.

    Volunteer or professional, BSA’s career- and volunteer-role-advancement system’s terminal promise is to promote you far past your Peter-principle competence limit to a cushy “my career is here to die”, do-little, competence-optional role. No real performance expectations, just smile and wave. Professionals lightly manage fawning volunteer patsies they hand-selected into some puppet committee. All feign productivity and usefulness by reviewing numbers, signing NDas, and wasting everyone’s time with bureaucratic delaying tactics like pointless pilot programs and endless surveys that never lead to change.

    Life is great, brought to you by UNQUESTIONING OBEDIENCE!

    This time, it failed. The base erupted. The Cub Scout Volunteers Facebook group and other social-media forums exploded. Rulemongers were shoved aside, so national lost its usual defenders. Scores pledged to openly flout the new rule.

    (Heading off a likely response: Rejecting mindless rulemongering is not endorsing anarchy. Many BSA rules are crucial, such as those that protect youth from abuse or the advancement program. Mindless approaches distracts what’s important and harms our ability to navigate gray areas.)

    National used stupidthink to fabricate a rule

    Insiders with direct knoweldge of the national organization’s thinking shared some insight, revealing how stupidity passes as rational thought in Irving. These insights are part of a false narrative, that national’s secret, February 2023 change was minor, just clarifying a longstanding policy.

    Stupidthink #1: Just read the dictionary

    In a robust social-media conversation on the secret revision, a national source shared the Merriman-Webster Dictionary and Dictionary.com definitions for “overnight”:

    National’s thinking: If a policy is vague, look up its words in a commodity dictionary.

    Paraphrase: “You dummies, why didn’t you check the dictionary?”

    Let’s check those definitions: Dictionary.com‘s definition of “overnight” includes an adjective form: “done, made, occurring, or continuing during the night”. This definition does not convey a one-night limit. With several definitions that generally do not convey a one-night limit, Merriam-Webster‘s definition also does not clarify.

    What this source conveyed, in a backhanded way, is national knew its policy was too vague to connote a one-night limit. In national’s culture, its appears to see its own quality problems as invitations to concoct arbitrary policy.

    Stupidthink #2: It’s always been this way

    A national-organization source conveyed that national believes the rule was always one-night campouts. The source backed that up by sharing an excerpt from the 1991 Guide to Safe Scouting:

    Excerpt from the 1991 Guide to Safe Scouting.

    This only affirms that national’s ambiguous language is a decades-old feature, not a bug.

    If “overnight” was ever meant to be a single-night limit, that clarity exists only in the fever dream of some 1990s-era bureaucrat. Since this bureaucrat did not document his dream, we do not know his intent. Therefore, this 1991 excerpt does not provide useful guidance.

    Stupidthink #3: BALOO conveys a single-night limit

    Per a national source, the single-night limit “is reinforced by required BALOO training”. That is false. Nowhere in the BALOO training material is a single-night limit conveyed. While forms of “overnight” are used, they come across in the same way as the pre-February 2023 Guide to Safe Scouting.

    The source further reinforced the fake news by sharing that BALOO “uses example of an overnight activity in the training”. While that is true, it is a mere case study in a training program. Case studies are not rules.

    Stupidthink #4: National uses “overnight” consistently

    Another national source conveyed that national consistently uses “overnight” to mean one night. Yet more fake news!

    A trivial inspection of authoritative national documents reveals uses of “overnight” in ways that do not convey a one-night event:

    • Accompanying the secret revision to the Guide to Safe Scouting was a secret revision to the Language of Scouting. As of February 21, 2023, its definition for “Webelos Scout overnighter” was “[a] one- or two-night campout”. A key national document legitimized an allegedly disallowed form of Cub Scout camping? That document was secretly changed no later than March 7, 2023 to read “[a] one night campout”. Why “secret”? Despite this revision, the document’s revision date, at its top, remains “February 2020”. Someone was covering tracks!
    • Tenderfoot rank requirement 1.a.: “Present yourself to your leader, prepared for an overnight camping trip.” If the Scout prepared for the troop’s multi-night campout, this requirement cannot satisfied?
    • Scouting’s Barriers to Abuse: “All adults staying overnight in connection with a Scouting activity must be currently registered as an adult volunteer or an adult program participant.” Wait, so adults staying two or more nights don’t need to be registered?
    • Guide to Safe Scouting, Appendix 1: Age Appropriate Guidelines for Scouting Activities: Only “overnight” backpacking is allowed for Scouts BSA and Venturing. If troop members backpack, their campouts are limited to one night?
    • Guide to Safe Scouting, Camping section: “Local council approval is needed for unit-coordinated overnight camping activities involving other units not chartered by the same organization.” Got it, so I can evade this requirement if I plan a two-night campout? Even more rich: This is the same document that BSA secretly revised in February 2023 to add “single” to the Cub Scout part! The very document that was revised is incoherent about the meaning of “overnight”!

    The base never bought it

    Fortunately for Scouting, few packs denied adventure to their Cub Scouts: The vast majority provided multi-night adventures before February 2023. My evidence comes from polls in some Facebook groups right after the February 2023 change. They got a huge response:

    Survey in huge Cub Scout volunteer social-media groups affirming overwhelming delivery of multi-night, pack-organized campouts.

    Of all councils, mine would have known

    I am in Circle Ten Council. I was a den leader and Cubmaster of a huge pack for 10 years. We did 4-6 campouts each year, and all of them were multi-night. All other packs I knew of did multi-night campouts.

    We were all open about it, not because we were flouting anything, but because multi-night campouts were not prohibited. If you told my council’s Cub Scout leaders that national limited Cub Scouts to one-night campouts, you would have been laughed out of the room.

    BALOO training is essential training on Cub Scout pack camping. At least one leader present on a Cub Scout pack-organized campout must have completed that training. In my council, our BALOO trainers did not teach a one-night restriction. In fact, when I took BALOO training, we did a planning exercise for a two-night campout! And that is appropriate as, per above, the BALOO training materials do not convey a single-night limit.

    If any council should have been aware of this one-night rule, it’s my council!

    Circle Ten is large and reasonably run. Council administrators are aware of and follow national’s rules.

    The national office is in our geographic territory:

    BSA’s national office is in Circle Ten Council’s territory (source).

    The proximity lubricates relationships between council members and national employees and volunteers, many of whom are neighbors. It is common to see a national employees and volunteers at Circle Ten events.

    It is also common to see professionals or volunteers move between my council and national positions. Our current Scout Executive came from national in 2017! Even better, he was a national Cub Scout division director! If a one-night limit was a rule, certainly my Scout Executive would have known.

    Circle Ten Council has unparalleled proximity to and interplay with the national office. If national truly intended for Cub Scouts to be limited to one-night campouts, Circle Ten Council would have known. But we didn’t, and across the board, our Cub Scout packs openly practiced multi-night, pack-organized campouts! Why? Because there used to be no limit on camping nights!

    Wait a second, some bought it

    In the above chart, a minority of packs limited their campouts to one night.

    Based on social-media discussions, some just preferred this. For example, if your pack is only 10 miles from a campground, a single-night campout can be convenient. That’s fine if it works for you!

    But some packs are in councils that concocted a one-night limit. This is mere rulemongerism. Only reflecting local poor practices, it does not advance a case that national had a one-night rule.

    Nobody knows why national did this

    Why did national make this secret change? It may have been stupidthink. It may have been insurance. We don’t know!

    The national organization is invited to explain itself publicly.

    How national screwed the pooch

    National screwed the pooch:

    • It never consulted the base before making this change.
    • It felt entitled to decimate a key program.
    • It capriciously enacted an arbitrary change.
    • It showed no remorse for its actions.
    • Its professionals and volunteers who have responsibility for or influence over this clammed up for six months.
    • Responsible or accountable parties from national stopped participating in social media, except for denying crisis by posting unrelated PR glurge.
    • It threatened volunteers, which leads me to the next section…

    National threatens adult memberships merely for disagreeing

    Imagine you’re an adult leader. You were just blindsided by a devastating announcement: BSA decimated most Cub Scout camping.

    In social media, you engage in a robust but respectful discussion to understand what just happened and why.

    In that conversation, someone connected with national posts dictionary definitions of “overnight”. (I commented on that above.) A volunteer recognizes the definition-sharer as being connected to national. Without outing this person, that participant provides helpful feedback (top comment is the volunteer’s feedback, bottom comment is the national-affiliated person’s reply):

    Color commentary on the national person’s reply:

    • It starts with a false accusation that the volunteer is contradicting BSA policy. Um, no? There is no policy forbidding disagreement.
    • Next is fake news, that the one-night limit is “not new policy”. As per above, the one-night rule was created in February 2023. Before then, there was no limit on nights of camping.
    • Next is an absurd allegation, that Cub Scouts will be harmed by a second night of family camping. National has yet to substantiate why it believes this. Evidence-free assertions do not become rational simply because the person making the assertion wears gold epaulets.
    • Finally, a threat to expel volunteers for disagreeing with the national organization. This is the reply’s last two sentences. It’s damning commentary on national’s hubris.

    A national-affiliated person mentions the Scouter Code of Conduct in this context for one reason: To threaten expulsion of a volunteer.

    Disagree with a national-organization epic screwup? Face expulsion!

    This is unacceptable conduct for the national organization. It informed a point in a prior article about national’s ham-fisted hostility to feedback.

    What the hell is wrong with our national organization?

    It’s hard to set aside national’s blunder. It’s mind-bogglingly stupid for an adventure-focused organization to decimate its largest adventure program. It’s even stupider to do it secretly!

    Then national amplified its blunder by hurling threat grenades at volunteers, clamming up, seeking no feedback, and not apologizing.

    None of this is acceptable performance.

    Yes, national finally relented. After stonewalling for half a year, a new, two-night limit on pack-organized camping starts September 1, 2023.

    National is so chickenshit, the news had to first be leaked through local representatives. A few weeks after the leaks began, national finally bothered to communicate over an official channel. That mere peasants–err, I mean parents and volunteers–had to first find out via leaks conveys how unimportant our national organization thinks we are.

    While it’s great that two nights of camping are now allowed, it’s just a correction of an epic screw up.

    At the top, I wrote “partly backed off”. Remember that before February 2023, BSA did not limit camping nights for Cub Scout packs. The new rule bans three-night pack-organized campouts, which makes me sad. I led my old pack on phenomenal three-night adventures to Enchanted Rock/Fredericksburg, Caprock Canyon, and San Antonio. These were safe and reasonable, provided exceptional adventures, and created lifetime memories. We pulled them off without a hitch. Now they are banned.

    How do we fix this?

    National corrected itself, so move on? Not if you value Scouting!

    If we allow the national organization to keep sweeping its blunders this under the rug, we are not holding it accountable. Without accountability, national will keep attacking Scouting!

    National has a cloistered culture. Fed by a defective career-advancement system that mainly rewards those most loyal to its moribund bureaucracy, national views itself as its main customer. This is evidenced by its resistance to feedback and endemic throwback-reactionary culture.

    We can’t “forgive and forget”. We can’t work within a system designed to protect failure. Either is simply enabling national’s malfeasance.

    Without public pressure, national’s malfeasance will never end. We’ll also never get fixes for past blunders that still haunt us. For example, the “separate but equal” regime for girls, which rests on misinformation and racist, sexist folklore? That’s another epic screwup, and it’s still harming Cub Scout 5th graders and all of Scouts BSA. (The ban could be rapidly deleted. That takes leadership, which is notably absent in the national organization.)

    The current national organization must improve. If it’s willing to, great, we can keep it around. If not, we need to replace it.

    Hopefully the national organization will be open about its deficiencies and create a plan to correct them. As long as its executing on this plan, we can work with it. Until then, it’s crucial to hold the national organization publicly accountable for its cultural rot.

    Appendix: A note about those who didn’t read “overnight” onerously

    As mentioned earlier, BSA has a cultural problem with obsessions over rules. This devalues important rules, makes navigating gray areas onerous, and encourages us to grab complexity from the jaws of simplicity. This makes BSA less safe, and it distracts us from program excellence.

    It is healthy to prefer simplicity! That is a longstanding truism:

    • “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” -Leonardo da Vinci
    • “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” -Dr. Seuss
    • “Less is more.” -Mies van der Rohe
    • “Brevity is the soul of wit.” -Shakespeare

    This doesn’t mean the simplest answer is always right. But seeking simplicity remains wise and rational.

    Part of seeking simplicity is reducing the number of rules we face. This is rational: The more you are regulated, the more of your time is diverted from productive activity. Volunteers want to deliver great programs. Less energy diverted to compliance is more energy to do what we’re here for.

    When we navigated the bare word “overnight” in a way that didn’t limit to a one-night event, we eliminated a rule while upholding contextually valid definitions of “overnight”. No pretzeled logic involved! One less rule, more flexibility to deliver great adventures. Win/win!

    While I’ve waxed philosophically, this has some precedent in contract law.

    Every adult leader is contractually obligated to follow the Guide to Safe Scouting; it’s part of what an adult leader agrees to when signing an adult leader application.

    Under the doctrine of contra proferentem, ambiguity in contracts are resolved against the interests of the party who drafted the language. BSA’s use of “overnight” was ambiguous. Through its actions, the national organization demonstrated it believed its interest is aligned with “overnight” conveying a one-night limit. Had this issue been litigated, the contra proferentem doctrine may have harmed BSA’s case.