BSA fixes deadnaming issue, after scouter speaks up

The BSA’s Internet Advancement system has been updated to display preferred names, rather than legal ones, on unit calendars and rosters.

• The “bug fix” came out in November, after Ryan Tashma, a scouter in the Portland area, flagged the issue and worked to get it on the BSA’s priority list.

Why it matters: Many queer and trans people use different names than the ones that might be on their birth certificate. The ability to have their preferred name used in Scouting’s internal systems avoids “deadnaming,” a practice that, while not always malicious, can hurt mental health.

• “It’s an LGBTQ inclusion item, but it’s also just a general inclusion item,” said Tashma, noting that multiple scouts in his unit use preferred names—sometimes because they’d rather an Americanized name over a less familiar ethnic one.

How it happened: Tashma has always been the IT person in his kids’ units—the go-to for navigating Scoutbook. When the BSA moved calendar functions over to the Internet Advancement system earlier this year, he noticed that legal names were showing up everywhere: on reports, rosters, calendars and profiles.

• Tashma immediately went about trying to fix it. “It occurred to me as something that was important to make sure everybody felt included,” he said. An initial attempt to raise the issue on the BSA’s discussion forums yielded little interest.
• After stewing for a bit, Tashma turned to the LGBTQ Scouts and Allies group on Facebook, where commenters suggested that fixing the deadnaming issue might be at the bottom of a long backlog of bug fixes.

The next step: Tashma knew that one way to get something to become a priority for the BSA was to get council leaders to speak up. So after some equivocating, he shot an email to his council executive, Gary Carroll, who happens to be the first openly gay scout executive in the country.

• Carroll responded 15 minutes later. “Gary didn’t let it wait until the next day,” Tashma said, in awe. “It was awesome.”
• “I didn’t know this was an issue at all, I had no clue,” Carroll said; he was grateful that Tashma raised it. Carroll emailed the BSA’s heads of IT and DEI, and got on a call with them the next day.
• Carroll was happy to hear that everyone agreed it was an important fix, and no one pushed back on the rationale. “As we move forward, DEI continues to be at the forefront of everything we do,” Carroll said, describing the BSA’s priorities.
• In short order, the BSA issued a tech update that allowed nicknames to display by default. “In most of the places where members, leaders, parents interact with the system, they will now see a member’s preferred name,” Tashma said.