re: Boy Scouts to change name after allowing girls to join

Man, there is so much misinformation and ignorance in this thread. I guess it is easy to make fun of scouting though. It seems like you all would be more supportive of scouting since you all are always talking about how millennials are so worthless and women can't do shite anymore.

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That's the troop leaders fault...

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When it's a single troop... it's the leader's fault.

When it's hundreds of troops... it is an organizational failure.

Another Eagle Scout here who fully supports this decision by the National Council.

I have daughters (no sons) who have tried Girl Scouts and it was an epic disaster. They are poorly run, leaders are poorly trained. Even the cookie sales are poorly run... the only reason they make money is because the cookies sell themselves.

They spend two months a year selling cookies, two months every fall selling candy/nuts, and the rest of the year doing very little. The national council of Girl Scouts is a den of SJWs and over the top liberalism.

I so very much want the Girl Scouts to be a successful organization. But that ship has sailed.

If a girl wants the opportunity to learn the life skills, outdoor skills, leadership skills, survival skills, etc that the Boy Scouts teaches... why deny that?

This isn't about the BSA changing. It's NOT going to change. The program is and always will be what the same. All we are doing now is allowing more people to access the program. And as others have said... at least initially... most of the participants will be the sisters of current Cub/Boy Scouts.

All this talk about the organization becoming soft or liberal or whatever is crap. If a gay boy or a straight girl wants to learn how to survive in the woods and wants to learn the proper way to retire a US Flag... why is this a bad thing?

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All this talk about the organization becoming soft or liberal or whatever is crap.

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Well that’s not true at all. The leadership’s taken a pretty consistent path the last decade.

I was an assistant scoutmaster for 14 years. I stepped away when the decision was made to allow gay boys in troops. Not because I'm against gay kids. It's because the national organization left the local volunteer leaders hanging out there. There are MANY rules in place to protect the kids and leaders from bad things. Changes were made without thinking about how those rules extend.

For instance, others have mentioned that in Venture scouts both girls and boys are in a crew. One rule is boys can't sleep in the same tent as girls. So, can gay boys sleep together? It's not a question of if something will happen. It's a matter of when and the local leader will be the scapegoat.

Now, the reasons Girl Scouts fails is because of local leadership. There simply isn't enough women that want to go into the outdoors for long periods of time. It takes more than one to make a successful outing. This will also be the problem for girls in the BSA. In Venture, anytime there's a girl on an outing you must have a female leader. I have seen many Venture crews fail because of this simple requirement. The same female leader can't make every outing and then trips start getting cancelled. I imagine BSA troops will fail when they can't find enough female leaders and have to cancel trips for both boys and girls due to a lack of female leadership.

Prior to the rules allowing girls into BSA our troop tried this within the then current rules. We had a very large and successful boys troop. We created a venture crew so girls could join. We allowed the girls crew to join and attend any outing that the boys were going on. Sometimes they wanted to do the same campout, others they would go do their own thing. The stipulation always was that they had to find a female leader to attend. The crew failed due to lack of female leadership.

A lot of women showed interest but this isn't a gig for the typical soccer Mom that wants to hand out oranges after a game. You have to be willing to live on the trail for a few days without a bath and crap in a hole when the time comes. They also need to be willing to step off the trail and take a whiz while the rest of the group stands there and waits. There are many women who will do this just not enough to make the program successful.

Once you take away these hard core outdoor activities the kids lose interest and then you do soft skill things at meetings. In other words, it becomes the Girl Scouts.

kingbob was spot on.

my son is currently heavily involved as a cub scout. We recently attended a cuboree and girls were already there in uniforms. I did not talk to my son about it yet be he did notice the girls as asked me why they were in uniform. Later on that day i informed him that girls were now allowed and he honestly didn't know what to say. I told him to think about it and I'd support him what ever decision he makes to stay or leave.

So later that night a few parents started talking about it. Turns out one of the pack leaders will not return and 2 out of 10 parents in our den not sure if they will return next year.

I understand the girl scouts is horribly run and it needs a major renovation but allowing girls to join is not the answer. sorry just my opinion. yes maybe restructure the girl scouts to follow some of the activities and such but totally wrong. too much can go wrong here.

I support this, we need to make our women tougher for the pending civil war.

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(they also forbade women scout masters, but that's besides the point).

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That was changed in the late 80s.

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the BSA has a quasi-religious undertone to it. They don't care what god you believe in, but prefer you believe in something.

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It's not all that "quasi" these days. Every Cub Scout rank requires earning a pin dealing with God/religion. But you're right in that it is open to people of all faiths.

When you join, you're even required to sign a line stating something like "you agree that the only way to become a good citizen is through a belief in God."

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Back in the good ol' days (the 1990's), the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts would recruit at local schools, camp on military bases, and hold their meetings at public schools after hours. This was good for the school as it basically added another extracurricular activity that the school didn't have to pay any money for, and the scouts typically provided lots of free labor for service projects, and it was great for the military as a recruiting tool. However, because Scouting has some deist undertones, the left organized a campaign to have public schools distance themselves from scout troops and by the mid 2000's, they were essentially banned from recruiting in public schools and no longer permitted to hold their meetings there. This was justified under the "seperation of church and state". The Boy Scouts were labeled by the left as a Christian group (despite being far from it), and given the boot from government buildings.

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I believe this was overturned in 2006 or so. Schools would lose federal Department of Ed funding if they refused to allow Scouts to use their schools and whatnot.

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Forced out of the schools, most scout troops resorted to affiliating themselves with church groups. While the official policies of the BSA didn't change, by having direct connections to churches, the packs themselves became more blatantly Christian in nature.

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I think this was always the case. Way over half of all unit chartering organizations are faith based. Largest being The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), more on them later.

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no longer permitting the scouts to hold their National Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill, VA.

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The BSA started looking around for a permanent Jamboree location in 2007...before Obama took office.

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This change in policy, predictably (and likely by the left's design), outraged the church groups that had been hosting scout troops since they had been kicked out of the schools. Now, the churches are rapidly expelling their scout troops and ending their affiliations with the organization. Without churches and schools to recruit from, scouting is dying rapidly.

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This is definitely the case for the Mormons. They are leaving BSA soon (this year?) to form their own scouting youth program. This is nearly 20% of all youth membership, and over 36% of all units. This is a big deal, which led to girls being allowed. Not sure what other religious organizations are doing. I believe the Knights of Columbus has stopped chartering units and passed them along to local Catholic Churches, but the Catholics are still in Scouting.

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taking advantage of the fact that the girl scouts are an absolute shiite show of an organization.

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I don't know about the organization top to bottom, but I do know there seemed to be far fewer older girls in Girl Scouts than older boys in Boy Scouts when I was growing up. Seems they have a major retention problem for older kids. Boy Scouts is far more family friendly than Girl Scouts when it comes to camping as well. Pretty much any family member or parent can attend a Boy Scout camping trip as long as the required number of trained leaders are there, while Girl Scouts only allows trained leaders go on camping trips (as far as I know).

When the decision was announced back in October, the president of Girl Scouts did have a great quote regarding this. She said something along the lines of, "BSA should do a better job of retaining and recruiting boys rather than coming after girls."

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I'm worried this move to allow in girls is going to result in sex scandals that will finally end the organization completely.

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Man, I hope not. That would be terrible.

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Now, it's going to be just another co-ed activity where boys are discouraged from being themselves.

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This is what I worry about. Girls and boys are different, despite how hard some groups try to deny this fact.

I'm a little torn on this subject. The Boy Scout programs are great, and could definitely benefit a girl in life if that's what she wants to do, but I don't want the inclusion of girls in all programs to change what the programs already provide or discourage boys from being boys within said programs. So, on one hand I can see this as good and benefiting girls that want to do it, but on the other I could see this potentially be problematic for boys.

Year-round, travel sports (i.e. baseball, soccer, etc.) have definitely cut into member retention, especially down here in the south, for Boy Scouts.

But the decision to allow girls is purely economics in the guise of helping families with both girls and boys to not have to run all over to different events/organizations, while opening up a great program for learning and adventure to the other half of kids. And as far as I know, as of now the decision to allow girls in existing units is still up to the chartering organization.

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only the anti social and unathletic kids pick boy scouts over travel ball

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Which looks better on a resume', "played travel ball" or "Eagle Scout"?

Scouting programs offer many lifelong awards which one can add to their resume', all of which can be obtained before graduating high school. (BSA programs: Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts), Quartermaster (Sea Scouts), Summit Award (Venturing), and the William T. Hornaday Award (conservation award that can be earned in Boy Scouts and Venturing). Girl Scouts has the Gold Award, their Eagle equivalent.)

Not saying travel ball or playing sports doesn't have benefits, but there are, perhaps, bigger benefits by sticking with Scouting.