Reply to Discrimination by boyscout Troop

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "Discrimination by boyscout Troop"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have two Arrows of Light Webelos who will be bridging very soon.  That is terrible to hear that a troop would do something like that.

I recommend that you contact Dawn Greenwood ([b]dawn.greenwood@scouting.org[/b]).  Dawn is the district executive for the Old Dominion district of BSA.  That is the district for which all troops in Falls Church, Arlington and Fairfax belong.  I think you need to make the district executive aware that a troop in her district did something that is very much in violation of the intent of Scouts USA.  Scouts USA wants to rebuild their image as an all-inclusive organization and this should not be allowed.

Whether she does anything or not, it needs to be brought to her attention for her to research at a minimum.  And record for future record in case they try something like this again.  [/quote]

Appreciate the contact information. The size issue is legitimate and was a condition of this troop starting with other more established troops nearby. But it's one thing to have a size limitation and it's another thing to use it to cherry pick or discriminate against kids.

It absolutely felt pre-planned and deliberate. Our den leader, who arranged it, claimed that somehow the other kids were told to apply when they found "extra space" but didn't tell us. Even his excuse was lame.[/quote]

Regardless of the size restriction, the fact that they cherry picked which children to "invite to apply" and those were the non-special needs children, but the special needs children were excluded is still an issue that the district executive needs to know.  Scouts USA has been trying to rebuild the image of the scouting and this type of thing is exactly the thing that is the one step backwards in "two steps forward, one step back".  It needs to be addressed even if it doesn't change anything for the excluded boys.  The troop in question needs to be put on notice that they need to be aware of appearances and that they need to be more careful about such actions.

Besides, over the last few months, I've attended a scouting "Meet the Troops" where I spoke with about 12 troops in our area and we have now had 4 troop visits.  We've visited large and small troops and I have not yet found a troop that had a size limit.  All have generally been open to any and all applications.  They should have let all of the potential Webelos apply and then made their decision.  To include some but exclude other scouts from the same den from applying is about as wrong as possible.

So, I still encourage you to send an email to the district executive and tell her how slimy the troop was.  If nothing else, you want to make sure that the district eyes are on this troop so they don't try to pull something like this again next year or the year after to some other scouts.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics