Common Sense Isn't Very Common

As I delve deeper into my schooling, I find more and more that common sense isn't very common in this next generation. It's sad because I am seeing first hand the critical thinking skills of today's future. It's a very scary thing to say the least.

Many college students who I've talked to have lots of opinions, but once you start asking them

questions they cannot support their opinions in any way. The list of kids I've talked to are students at Ball State, Purdue North Central, IU, Purdue, Harvard, and more. When talking to current college students most of them, as I said, have their opinions. When you question their opinions at all, instead of using facts to support them, they go back to citing their opinion as evidence and proof. This can lead to a whole host of problems. However, the biggest thing here is that it highlights the lack of any developed critical thinking skills in the coming generation.

Some people might wonder why critical thinking skills are even important. This is why critical thinking skills are important. As kids turn into adults the decisions they have to make grow in importance. For instance, at the age of 18 adults begin to vote. When it comes to voting for someone to represent you in the United States government, it is important that that your decision is based off of facts, analyzed through critical thinking. You can't vote for someone based on opinions and emotions and expect a good outcome. A good example of this would be when it comes to welfare. The following is an extreme example to clearly iterate the point. Let's say someone had to choose between two candidates based solely on their stance on welfare. Candidate A wants to give unemployed people as much money as they need to live. Candidate B wants to give unemployed people a smaller amount. If someone were to make a decision based purely on emotion they would choose candidate A. Obviously anyone wants everybody to have whatever they need. This unfortunately is unrealistic. If you were to do a case by case study you'd find that most decisions and opinions made and held by emotion, are both unrealistic and stand with little to hold them up.

It is important that we as a society help strengthen the critical thinking skills of the next generation. However, the way to do that is not how it is being executed in college classes all over the U.S. That is by having professors telling kids how and what to think, and then telling them that they're thinking critically. But that's another blog post.

Seth

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The Real Story Behind College Rape

          Suspect statistics, new rules, fake news stories, and fake rape reports have created a problem where there is not one. Yes, there is a problem on college campuses when it comes to sex, but it is in no way a “rape epidemic.” The problem is that college kids have been sucked into a life of casual drunk sex. They spend their weekend nights partying and having a good time. They then find

themselves waking up in the morning not remembering exactly how they got into the bed they are in, or why they slept with the person. Because after the fact they regret what they have done and with whom they did it, these incidents are called rapes. The push to call these casual drunken hook ups rape has created what is now called the college “rape epidemic.” People will say that girls are drugged at parties just to be taken advantage of. While that happens occasionally, just as it does off campuses, almost all “college rapes” happen when both the man and woman are drunk and their senses lowered. This so called “rape epidemic” is taking away from just how truly atrocious the real act of rape is. It is also ruining the lives of many college students forever, because the accused do not have a chance todefend themselves adequately according to the Title IX rules that are in place.themselves waking up in the morning not remembering exactly how they got into the bed they are in, or why they slept with the person. Because after the fact they regret what they have done and with whom they did it, these incidents are called rapes. The push to call these casual drunken hook ups rape has created what is now called the college “rape epidemic.” People will say that girls are drugged at parties just to be taken advantage of. While that happens occasionally, just as it does off campuses, almost all “college rapes” happen when both the man and woman are drunk and their senses lowered. This so called “rape epidemic” is taking away from just how truly atrocious the real act of rape is. It is also ruining the lives of many college students forever, because the accused do not have a chance todefend themselves adequately according to the Title IX rules that are in place.themselves waking up in the morning not remembering exactly how they got into the bed they are in, or why they slept with the person. Because after the fact they regret what they have done and with whom they did it, these incidents are called rapes. The push to call these casual drunken hook ups rape has created what is now called the college “rape epidemic.” People will say that girls are drugged at parties just to be taken advantage of. While that happens occasionally, just as it does off campuses, almost all “college rapes” happen when both the man and woman are drunk and their senses lowered. This so called “rape epidemic” is taking away from just how truly atrocious the real act of rape is. It is also ruining the lives of many college students forever, because the accused do not have a chance todefend themselves adequately according to the Title IX rules that are in place.Title IX is part of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. The rules contained in Title IX deal with sex discrimination and its prohibition. The rules in Title IX are part of the problem. It is because of Title IX that many of the problems surrounding college rape are occurring.          To accuse someone of rape in college, students are not told to go to the police, but to go to the Dean of Students, or the Title IX officer and fill out a Title IX report. To get another student accused of rape you only have to say that you have been raped. There is no form of evidence that you need to

present. When a student is convicted of rape the Title IX officer on campus will send them a letter. The letter will contain a written notice of the things the student has been accused of. The list of charges does not have to be a complete list, and in most cases it is not. This makes it very trying for any accused person to defend themselves. For a student to be accused of the crime there just has to be a 50.1% chance that they are guilty. This means that once an accuser is able to prove that there is a more likely than not chance of a rape, the defendant can be convicted. Colby Bruno who is an attorney explains in College Students Fight Sexual Assault Accusations, “Accused students often expect to be held to the criminal standard of evidence, that it was beyond a reasonable doubt that they had committed a crime. However, the US Education Department actually advises colleges to use a lower standard of proof, a preponderance of the evidence.” (1) Preponderance of the evidence merely means that the accuser only has to prove that there is a more likely chance than not of the defendant being a rapist.          There is what is called a Hearing Panel that is in charge of running these hearings. Their job is to find if the defendant is guilty or innocent. The Hearing Panel is comprised of one to three individuals, or panelists. These panelists are chosen by the Title IX officer on campus. These rules surrounding rape on campuses are in place to make sure that real rapists in college do not get away, but in turn they are tarnishing many names of accused and wrongly convicted students. The reason for the standard to convict someone, and the reason women are urged to take it to the Title IX officer and not the police is because it is hard to prove that you have been raped in a real courtroom. So in an effort to make sure that rapists do not get away with rape, these lower standards have been created. In doing that it has made it easier for some girls to take advantage of the situation. There are cases when women have accused someone of rape to protect themselves in one way or another. In an open letter titled Higher Education about Sexual Violence, Brett Sokolow of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management (NCHRERM) highlights a case where a women accused a man who she had been cheating on her boyfriend with of rape. The reason for this? Her boyfriend had found out she had cheated on him so she tried to cover it up. The accused man had to prove himself innocent, as opposed to being proven guilty. Luckily he was able to do that by showing a text message thread reading, “Him: How do I compare with your boyfriend? Her: You were great Him: So you got off? Her: Yes, especially when I was on top Him: We should do it again, soon Her: Hehe” (4)If this student had not been able to produce this text message conversation because he had deleted it, as most people would have, then he would have been accused and convicted of a rape that he had not committed. That conviction would have ruined his life, wasted thousands of dollars that he had spent for the worthless partial college degree he now possessed, and the years of his life that he had spent on campus.
          So as you can see there are cases where there is clearly not a rape involved, but this man had to walk around campus as a rapist until a hearing could be arranged to prove that he was innocent. There are other cases like this one. The following case is a more typical case. A woman will accuse a man of rape awhile after they break up, because presumably they become jealous, or grow to regret the relationship. Soklow also addresses this type of rape in his open letter, “A long-term relationship between two students involved many consensual sexual acts. The couple broke up. The male student started dating another student on campus, at which point the former girlfriend filed a complaint that there were non-consensual acts amongst many prior and subsequent consensual acts that they had engaged in.” (5) The NCHERM did their investigation and found that there was no merit to what the girl was saying. These accusations take away from just how atrocious actual sexual assault is.Judith Grossman, who identifies herself as a feminist, explains in A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast, the unjust ways her son was treated when an ex-girlfriend accused him of rape. These alleged rapes occurred with consensual sexual acts while the couple were dating. Grossman explains, “Worst of all, my son would not be afforded a presumption of innocence.” (1) This is one of the biggest problems with how Title IX works. The accused are not given the common innocent until proven guilty title. They are guilty until proven innocent. A New York based attorney, Andrew T. Miltenberg, asserts in an article called College Students Fight Sexual Assault, “However … there is a presumption of guilt put upon the accused, and that is a critically flawed process.” (1) The way these hearings are run conflict with the way this country's courts have ran for hundreds of years. While it seems well and good to make these changes for these types of hearings, it may not be worth the backlash. These changes make it easier for someone to be wrongly accused of a crime that ruins their name for life. A professor at Occidental College, Danielle Dirks, who is quoted in an article titled Sexual Assault Injustice at Occidental convinced a freshman woman into reporting what the freshman later confessed was voluntary drunken sex as rape. She told the freshman that her partner “fit the profile of other rapists on campus in that he had a high GPA in high school, was his class valedictorian, was on [a sports] team, and was ‘from a good family.’” (1) This does not sound like the profile of someone who commits a violent and heinous crime. That is not to say that someone who has good grades, plays sports, and has a good family cannot become a rapist, or other type of criminal. However, if this is the profile of a rapist, then it seems our goal as a society is to create men who fit the profile of being rapists. Heather Mac Donald interviewed a student at Virginia University for her paper The Campus Rape Myth. The interviewed woman claims that her friends would retaliate against her if she turned in the man that raped her. Mac Donald writes, “[This is] presumably because they wouldn’t believe her accusation. Students are often more skeptical of the campus rape-epidemic claim than are the denizens of women’s-studies departments, because they see the ambiguities and mixed responsibility of drunken campus sex.” (1) If a women is actually raped it is hard to think that her friends would retaliate against her if she reported it to the police. Why? Because girls in this day and age do not have to be afraid of any sort of retaliation by the police or school, for reporting actual sexual assault.          Everyone talks about how 1 in 5 women are raped in college. The one major flaw with the 1 in 5 number toted by so many, and the reason it is so high, is because women were asked in the survey that is regularly cited if they ever had a regretful sexual encounter. So many women who had regretted a totally consensual sexual encounter while they and their partner were drunk answered yes. The reason the number for unreported rapes is so high is because most women do not think to report their regretted drunken consensual sex as rape. These women do not think to report these incidents as rapes because they are not. There should be no blame placed on just one person for the drunken mistakes made by partners. When colleges do their own reports on campus crime it is found that colleges are one of the safest places. The Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey found that women are less likely to be raped if they go to college, as opposed to going straight into some kind of work out of college. It was also found that the percentage of women raped in college is much lower than the well known 1 in 5 statistic. It was found in the study that 6.1 women per 1000 are raped in college.          Currently in colleges there is a terrible culture of binge drinking and hook-up sex. When students wake up the next morning and do not like what they see next to them, they call it the “roll and scream.” These are the types of so-called rapes that are so prevalent on college campuses. Women feel like they are being taken advantage of by men who have sex with them while they are drunk. What is always left out is that the men are drunk too. There are many other cases that follow these stories where the women regret what happened so they report it as rape. There are actual sexual assaults in the world, and these are not them. These cases take away from just how terrible rape is. When people hear about all of the rape that happens on college campuses they are being misinformed. Glenn Reynolds in The Great Campus Rape Hoax writes, “Even one rape is too many, of course, on or off of campus. But when activists and politicians try to gin up a phony crisis, public trust is likely to be a major casualty.” (1) When you look at the recent studies and statistics you will find that colleges are a safe place for the young adults of today. They have just subjected themselves to an environment where it is easy to drink to much, and make bad decisions. If we want to fix the college “rape epidemic” we need to rid our colleges of binge drinking, and the casual sex culture.

Works Cited

Donald, Heather. "The Campus Rape Myth." City-journal (2008): n. pag. 2008. Web. 3 Nov. 2014. <http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html>.

Education about Sexual Violence from Brett A. Sokolow, Esq. and The NCHERM Group Part." 

Goldberg, Matthew S. "Death and Injury Rates of U.S. Military Personnel in Iraq." Military Medicine 175.4 (2010): 220-26. Web.

Grossman, Judith. "A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast." Wall Street Journal. N.p., 16 Apr. 2013. Web. 8 Dec. 2014. <http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324600704578405280211043510>.

Reynolds, Glenn. "The Great Campus Rape Hoax." USA Today. N.p., 15 Dec. 2014. Web. 15 Dec. 2014. <http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/12/14/campus-rape-uva-crisis-rolling-stone-politics-column/20397277/>.

Rocheleau, Matt. "College Students Fight Sexual Assault Accusations." Boston Globe. N.p., 27 June 2014. Web. 8 Dec. 2014. <http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/06/26/students-accused-campus-sexual-assaults-fighting-back/HiierdwFHb3o35w6oZXOJJ/story.html>.

Shibley, Robert. "Asssault Injustice at Occidental." Fire (n.d.): n. pag. Fire. 4 June 2014. Web. 12 Dec. 2014. <http://www.thefire.org/sexual-assault-injustice-at-occidental-college-railroads-accused-student/>.

Sinozich, Sofi, and Lynn Langton. Rape and Sexual Assault Victimization Among College-Age Females, 1995–2013. Rep. U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice 

Statistics, Dec. 2014. Web. 12 Dec. 2014. <http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf>.

Sokolow, Brett, Scott Lewis, Saundra Schuste, and Daniel Swinton. "An Open Letter to Higher 

Letter to Open Letter. 27 May 2014. MS. 116 E. King Street, Malvern, PA.

Making a Decision to Join the Marine Corps Reserves

I've wanted to serve in the military for a long time. I wanted to be a Seal for as long as I can remember. However, I also want to have a family, and be able to support them. As a serviceman it is hard to provide for a family. I give my greatest thanks to those men and women who have made this sacrifice. Having come to realize this as I pondered my own future has caused me to have an even greater appreciation for those who have enlisted to protect and serve their country.

With this in mind I have for the most part decided against enlisting as an active duty soldier in any

branch. However, I am currently considering joining the Marine Corps Reserves. This has brought me to another bridge. Boot camp is a 12 week course. I am paying for my entire college tuition by myself. I am not taking out any student loans. This means that I need to be making about $20,000  during a period starting in the spring, and ending at the beginning of the school year. You are paid during boot camp, but that pay does not come close to what I make working 60-80 hours a week. It is next to impossible for me to give up that time, and still be able to pay for college. Many others have had this same struggle, but selflessly made the sacrifice. Just another thing to applaud the men and women in our Armed Forces for doing.

If you are in the Marine Reserves you need to give 1 weekend a month, and two weeks in the summer to the Marine Corps. For your weekends you make about $275 depending on your rank. Again, this does not seem so bad, until you realize that these men and women are most likely trying to get through school, supporting a family, or even both. These soldiers might also be sacrificing more than money. They will have to catch up on their studies if their away training for the weekend. Maybe they are religious and have to miss a church service each month. This might not seem like a big deal to many, but to some it is a huge sacrifice.

I am not sure what I want to do yet when it comes to joining the Armed Forces. I may join the reserves, I may not. I will be considering the options that are in front of me. The main reason for this post is to point out some of the more hidden sacrifices of our armed forces. When someone thinks of the sacrifices made by soldiers, it is mostly that they are willing to give their life for our freedom. The truth is that even soldiers in the reserves, who will most likely not see much combat, make huge sacrifices for us. Some of these sacrifices I had never considered, until I started looking more indepthly into serving. It gave me a sense of pride for our nation. Men and women all over this country clearly think that it is worth sacrificing a lot to protect this great nation. God bless America, and God bless our Armed Forces!

Finding Happiness

"I only want to be happy in life! Is that too much to ask for?" That's a line that everyone hears, and I'm sure most people have used it. This is a lot to want and ask. How do people achieve the goal of being happy? Only wanting to be happy is a great thing to want, but it's a lot to achieve, and almost impossible to achieve the way most people go about it. 

Being happy means, according to the oxford dictionary, "Feeling or showing pleasure or contentment". Think about this, for you to be happy with your life you have to be content with your life. Not just with your life, but with where you are right now in life. How can you be content with your life, if you haven't gotten the promotion you want at your job, don't have the right amount of money in the bank, don't have the kind/ size of family you want, or don't have the car you want. How can you be content with your life, if you haven't made it to where you want to be? You can't really. What happens when you make it to that next position, what happens when you get the promotion you wanted? Maybe you're happy for a few days, weeks, possibly even months. But what happens then? You're ready for the next promotion, and thus the cycle continues. This goes for everything. We always want something new, something better. Now this is not a bad thing. In fact, this is one of the reasons that our capitalist system works. Everyone wants more, and they act in their own self interest to get it. However, this is no way to gain happiness. Will getting that BMW really make you happy? Will that be what brings everything together? The answer is no it will not. You might think it will, but shortly after getting it you'll realize it's not all that it's cracked up to be. 

People normally measure happiness by their possessions, their job, their income, their home, their anything that needs to be attained.  This is the biggest flaw when it comes to wanting to be happy. You don't need to be making $100k a year to be happy. You don't need a 2 story home to be happy. You don't need a $50k car, or even a $10k car to be happy. You don't even need a family to be happy. All you need is something to be thankful for. You could have nothing, but your life and a few bucks in your pocket. That doesn't mean you can't be happy. You just have to be thankful that you have life, that you can interact with people, that you can see the sunrise or sunset. Being happy isn't a matter of having the perfect life, yeah that would be nice, but even the most perfect life won't bring you happiness. If you find things to be thankful for, you can still be ambitious, buy more things, try to move up the corporate ladder, and still be happy before you make it to the finish line. You don't need to attain anything to be happy, just be thankful.

Getting out of Debt

Someone is struggling with money. They keep digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole. They want to pay of their debts, but the payments are to high. Not to mention there are too many of them. What is this person supposed to do? Turn to Dave Ramsey's seven baby step plan.

Dave Ramsey is a financial author, radio host, and motivational speaker. Dave Ramsey has helped thousands upon thousands of people get and stay out of debt. And not just that, but build wealth and a legacy. The debt snowball method that he teaches has been proven by the Kellogg School of Management to be the most effective way to go about getting out of debt.

Here are the seven baby steps

1. $1000 in an emergency fund
2. pay off all debt with the debt snowball
3. 3 to 6 months of expenses in savings
4. Invest 15% of income into roth IRA's and pre-tax retirement plans
5. College funding
6. Pay off your home
7. Build your wealth and GIVE

Step 1

Step one is simple, set aside $1000 to pay for any type of emergency that might arise. Examples of this would be a car problem, emergency doctors visit, house repairs, etc.. When you have the $1000 you don't have to worry as much about something happening during the month, and then not having enough to make your payments. It gives you peace of mind.

Step 2

Step 2 is paying off all of your debts. You're supposed to do this using the debt snowball approach. This is where you pay the smallest debts off first. Ending finally with the largest debt. This approach is used for two reasons. First, by paying off a debt you feel like you've accomplished something so it gives you motivation to continue. Second, in the end you'll end up paying less money in interest. The proof of this second reason is shown in the Kellogg School of Management's study. They took a look at 6,000 unique cases and found that using the debt snowball approach you don't spend as much money as if you would do the opposite.

Step 3

Step 3 is setting aside 3 to 6 months of expenses. This is to give you extra peace of mind, and a way to deal with most life crisis that might arise. Such as losing your job, a family member, or suffering an injury that stops your flow of income. By this point in the program you should have a monthly budget worked out. So figuring out what 3 to 6 months worth of expenses should be easy.

Step 4

Step 4 is investing 15% of your income into roth IRA's and pre-tax retirement plans. This is basically just your beginning to setting aside money for your future.

Step 5

Step 5 is starting a college fund. Depending on your age this could be for you, or for you child(ren). The amount you can put in the college fund will depend on your situation.

Step 6

Step 6 is paying off your home. This should be the last debt that you pay off. After you complete step 6 you should be completely debt free for the rest of your life (or until you buy a different home). This is the big tipping point. Once you pay off your house you can really start building your personal wealth and giving to charities that you believe in.

Step 7

Step 7 is building wealth and giving. Once you reach step 7 you can start really building your wealth. By building wealth you can give your children a better future, and depending on how well you could even give their children a better future. This is the step that you can also give away more money to charities that you believe in and make a difference.


This is in no way an in depth look into Dave Ramsey's Seven Baby Step plan. It is just an overview, so you can decide if it is something that you might be interested in. I know that it has helped me to know where to put my money. It definitely helped my parents, as they are now debt free. In this day and age it is important to be debt free, and know what and how to handle your money. This is a good way to accomplish those goals. Best of wishes to you in your financial endeavors. Leave a comment if you know of a different, or better program!

The Best One Piece of Filmmaking Gear

So your probably on a budget when it comes to filmmaking and you want to know what the one best most versatile piece of equipment is. This all depends on your needs, but in my opinion a steadicam is the best one piece of gear. Let me explain why.

Let's just start with the con. It takes a lot of practice to become good with any type of steadicam. This could mitigate the benefits, because you might never be able to find enough time outside of shoots to master it.

Now let's move on to the pros. First a steadicam is a great way to get smooth, quick, dolly like, and professional looking shots. So if your a run and gun type of person this is a huge plus. Second you can use the steadicam as a tripod by either holding it, or putting it on a table and extending the bottom pole. Third the steadicam can be used as a slider. Four the steadicam can be used as  a crane.

So if you get a steadicam here are the things you might be able to forgo. A dolly, crane, tripod, fig rig, and slider. That's a lot of money saved that you can either spend on sound, lights, better glass, or even a better camera. I hope this helped!

If you're looking for a well built and cheap steadycam, then read this.

Cops Aren't the Problem

With today's current situation, many people are saying that cops are the problem with the division we have in race. They think that cops treat black peoples lives as if they don't matter. The idea that this is actually the resounding case is ridiculous. The statistics show a very different story. The statistics show that it is actually black on black crime that is the problem in our society. Cops don't kill black people because their lives don't matter.

Every year the FBI releases statistics related to homicides. This year, those statistics showed the same

thing they show almost every year. (Keep in mind while looking at these statistics that white include both the caucasian and hispanic races.) The data shows that a white person is more than twice as likely to be killed by a black person, with 16% chance. As opposed to a black person being killed by a white person, with a 7% chance.

Black on black murders are much higher than white on black murders, black on white murders, and cop on black murders. This past year there were 200 cop on black kills. Almost all of these kills were considered justified by the judicial system that Americans put in place through the constitution. During the same length of time there were 6000 black on black murders. This number is gigantic compared to the 200 black people killed by cops. Black lives do matter, and it is important that we try to solve this problem that we have.

Taking a look into the past to gain a different perspective is important. In the year 1981, according to the CDC, cops killed black people at a rate of 4 deaths per a million blacks. That number is now below 2 deaths per million. The CDC shows that in 2012 there were 140 black people killed by cops, and 386 white people killed by cops. That means that more than twice as many white people were killed by cops. Now to prove that I'm not cherry picking numbers. From 1999 to 2012, 2,537 white people were killed by cops, and 1,270 black people were killed by cops. That is just three white deaths off of being twice as many black people.

There was no doubt a problem with cops targeting blacks in America's past. However, there is not the surge of cop on black murders that are being reported in the media. Cop on black murders have gone down considerably. Where as black on black murders are extremely high. The problem in America is not the cop on black murders. It is no doubt the black on black murders that are the problem. Black lives do matter, and we need to find a solution to solve the problem that we have. We don't need to make up problems, and then waste resources on fixing them. Please leave your thoughts on this destructive topic in the comments.

Judging The Quality of Schools

When you're moving to a new school district, or deciding what school to put your child in, there's a statistic you need to look at. One that you might not have thought about looking at, or maybe just didn't think it would be politically correct to look at. The statistic I'm talking about is the breakdown of how students do based on race.

This is an important statistic, because on average different races do better or worse than others in

school. Asians are at the top of this chart. This means that a school with a lot of asians would have higher scores across the board, then if there was a different race that held the majority.

This is also an important statistic, because some schools have better scores when it comes to one particular race, but they might not necessarily have an overall better score. So by knowing this statistic you can be sure that you really are giving your child the best education.

The public school district that I live in claims to have wonderful schools. They claim to have public schools that are better than any around. The district doesn't have terrible schools. What they actually have is an average school system with a very undiverse demographic. There isn't one race that score leaps and bounds higher than the same race from a different school. The school district is just filled with a race of kids that on average score higher.

So the biggest take away from this is that if you want to give the best to your children, when it comes to school. Then look at all of the statistics. Especially those that breakdown the bigger statistics. This is the same for anything in life. If you want to be sure you're getting the best by measuring statistics, then don't look at the overall statistic, look at the parts you're interested in.

Boy Scouts of America Banning Water Wars

So the Boy Scouts of America are lacking when it comes to being brave. Read this post if you don't know what I'm talking about "Boy Scouts Showing Cowardice." I guess they think they can make up for that shortcoming when it comes to being kind. The Boy Scouts of America have banned any water wars to occur during a scouting event.

Now why would the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) ban water wars? Keep in mind that the BSA was

originally a way for young boys to prepare to become scouts in the military. Apparently, according to Wendell of the BSA, the ban is about more than safety. Wendell says in his blog post about the ban, "A scout is kind. What part of pointing a firearm at someone is kind?" Wendell is saying that it's not kind to point toys that shoot water at each other. Calling a water gun a firearm is definitely a stretch. Yes, water guns work by pulling a trigger causing water to come out of a barrel. However, unlike pellet guns, airsoft guns, bb guns, paintball guns, and the like, water guns can't really hurt you. We've all been shot in the eye with a water gun, it does hurt, but only for a few minutes tops. Most of the time people are able to close their eyes before the water even hits them in the eye. There really aren't any safety hazards being avoided by banning water wars.

An unkind use of water guns would be spraying scouts who don't want to participate in the water wars, but scouts who are going to spray scouts who don't want to participate will do that whether or not they are allowed to. Banning water wars from scouting will in no way prevent it. Anyone with a brain would realize that. The only thing that this ban will accomplish is stealing hours of fun away from scouts across America. When I was still a scout I went to a week long camp for leadership training. The camp is called National Youth Leadership Training (NYLT). At this camp the scouts spend their free time during the week constructing catapults with their patrols, for a huge water war scheduled for the end of the week each year. That was by far one of the best parts of camp. Now it will no longer be allowed.

With the direction the BSA is moving, soon campouts will consist of spending the weekend in an air conditioned building, and spending little time experiencing nature. This is not the vision that Robert Baden-Powell had when he started the Boy Scouts. I know that that statement about what the BSA will become is overflowing with hyperbole. I still don't know how many people want to be a part of the new vision for the BSA that is coming. A vision that includes not standing up for beliefs, and a vision that says it's unkind to have water gun fights. 

The Boy Scouts of America Showing Cowardice

The Boy Scout of America's (BSA) president, Robert Gates, is trying to get the BSA to change its rules on allowing

gay men into its troops across America. The BSA changed the rules for gay youth on January 1, 2014. Any youth, no matter what their sexual orientation could join a Boy Scout troop. This change caused much backlash in the Boy Scout community. More than one family removed their child(ren) from the program. Most families believed that the BSA's sense of values were compromised. 

The Scout Law has 12 points. Those points are as follow, "A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent." These are 12 points that every Scout is expected to live by. When the BSA compromises its values due to its want to stay politically correct, the organization is living by the tenth point, being brave. So when the BSA changed the rule about gay youth, they did so, not living by their own scout law. Thus compromising their values. 

Now with the new push to allow gay leaders in, there is a whole new bar being set for the BSA. Not a higher bar might I add. By allowing gay adults to join, and become leaders in the BSA; they are creating a whole new list of possible problems. I'm not trying to say that gay men cannot show self control. However, because of possible attractions between adults and boys in the troops, awkward situations could and will arise. There will undoubtedly eventually be a story that gets out about a man not being able to show control. The BSA already has the record for the highest punitive damages awarded to a single plaintiff in a child abuse case, in the US. The total for this judgement was 18.5 million dollars. I doubt the BSA wants to risk adding to that. 

It is in my deepest hopes and wishes that the BSA will stay brave when it comes to becoming more politically correct, or holding strong to their values. The BSA is built on being an organization of values and leadership. The BSA's mission statement is, "The mission of the Boy Scouts of America is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law." How does the BSA expect boys and young men to live by these values, if they themselves cannot be an example of it? How does the BSA expect to be taken serious if the go back on their values?