It is an International Olympics Committee rule.
While I was reading this, I kept thinking that it smelled like the IOC. I guess I don't quite understand the point of Romney-bashing at this point of the campaign; but I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of it over the next six months.
If only to convince people they're doing the right thing by refusing to vote for him so Obama can get re-elected.
Volunteer groups: boy scouts and the army
In the early Games, apart from the presence of the army in performing functions given over to volunteers nowadays, the boy scout movement, officially founded in England by Baden-Powell in 1907 (8) , also played an important role.
The boy scouts' contribution began at Stockholm 1912 and basically consisted of delivering messages, maintaining order and safety, helping the public and carrying our various physical functions, such as carrying flags and replacing obstacles: “there was a number of boy scouts and Varingian guards under the command of Messrs, B.E. Lithorin and E. Wernström, for the purpose of giving necessary aid to the public.” (9) This is the first written record of the great work to be carried out by the scouts in many Olympic Games and also of the Scandinavian voluntary spirit.
Pierre de Coubertin (10) himself referred to the work done by these boy scouts with this rather curious observation: “A record: a Swedish woman, Mrs. Versall, had six children who participated in the Games, the youngest as boy scouts enrolled to maintain order and deliver messages. This seems rather trivial. However, the IOC gave her a special Olympic medal.
The links of the boy scouts with the Games went further than purely organisational tasks. For example, an international meeting or jamboree of boy scouts began and was held every four years, following the Olympic pattern. Until the 1920s, sports competitions and parades of all those participating were also held at these jamborees. (11)
According to Nikolay Gueorguiev, the contribution of the scouts continued to grow in various Olympic Games before the Second World War, such as those of Antwerp 1920, Paris 1924, and, especially, Amsterdam 1928.
The scouts were organised into camps and helped out in providing service to the public and in ensuring safety. Once again we can refer to Coubertin's "Memories" in which he praised the spirit shown by the young at the Antwerp Games. (12) Similarly, we also find a reference to the boy scouts' salute during an official ceremony at the Paris Games of 1924. (13) By the Chamonix Games, the boy scouts were participating in the opening and closing parades as flag bearers.
At the Berlin Games the boy scouts were replaced by members of the Nazi youth movement, ideological groupings diametrically opposed to the pacifist, naturalist and fraternal ideals of Baden-Powell. In fact, in the years previous to 1939, in both Italy and in Germany efforts were made to disband the scout movement, (14) which was later to play a role in a number of countries (France, for example) during the war in the resistance movement against totalitarianism and Nazi occupation.
After World War II, the boy scouts continued to participate in the Olympic Games. In Helsinki 1952, the scouts and other youth organisations played an important role, their main task being the delivery of messages, though they also did other work: “While the Games were in progress, 2,191 members of the department (1,617 boys and 574 girls) were engaged in unpaid work. Of this number, 59 squad leaders and 434 ordinary members sold programmes, 130 worked as ushers and 1,568 were employed as messengers”. (15)
These statistics from Helsinki 1952 were the first explicit mention of female volunteers, even though the first girl guides had been formed in France in 1912, also along the lines of the boy scout movement. Without any doubt, female protagonism among the volunteers was to increase significantly in later Olympics in parallel to their increased presence in civil society and politics.
All in all, the Games in which the scouts played the biggest role were those of Melbourne 1956. The Youth Organisations were composed of three blocks: the boy scouts, the girl guides and the members of the Air Training Corps. All of them worked on a voluntary basis and performed a variety of different roles. In the case of the scouts, more than 3,500 members participated from November 1955, in return for which they only received meals. (18) The scouts were present at 90% of the venues and, in all cases, the Arena Managers expressed their complete satisfaction with their efforts. As mentioned already, at Melbourne the scouts carried out numerous tasks, such as for example, helping the public and children, helping the police, reception and attention to distinguished guests and acting as guides for the delegates from the different sports federations who had congregated in the University of Melbourne.
At the Tokyo Olympic Games of 1964, the spontaneous and indirect help provided by the boy scouts and other organisations was notable, where they were entrusted with raising the flags for brief periods of time, both day and night.(17) Once again in Japan, this time in Nagano 1998, the boy scouts played a clearly visible role in a given task the raising of flags at the Olympic Villages.
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Scouts were volunteers at most Olympic games, summer and winter, in the USA and overseas. That's what made the Utah decision stand out- the rules were new.
It’s a Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee rule.
Here are the IOC rules:
http://www.olympic.org/Documents/olympic_charter_en.pdf
That's what I had been wondering. The IOC is a pretty PC and corrupt organization.