46.0°,
Light Drizzle Boy Scouts of America to welcome females starting next year
Girls allowed
After the Boy Scouts of America announced on Oct. 11 that it would welcome girls into its program, adult leaders and high-achieving scouts from local troops expressed varying levels of confusion, concern and cautious optimism.
“It’s Boy Scouts,” said Thomas Varney, scoutmaster of Rockville Centre’s Troop 40, formerly Troop 1, one of the oldest in the United States. “I think it’s for boys.”
Patti Norton, the Troop 40 committee chairwoman, said she was still trying to figure out what she thought about the change. “I was a little surprised by it,” she said, adding that the decision would require BSA to make some adjustments to its facilities. “You know, you go to Onteora [scout camp], and there’s a latrine. You have to figure things out a little differently.”
The BSA’s board of directors unanimously approved welcoming girls into its Cub Scout program, the Boy Scouts’ younger contingent, and offering a scouting program for older girls that will enable them to earn the highest rank of Eagle Scout. The decision came after years of requests for inclusion from families and girls, according to a BSA news release.
“The values of Scouting — trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, brave and reverent, for example — are important for both young men and women,” Michael Surbaugh, the BSA’s chief scout executive, said in a statement. “We believe it is critical to evolve how our programs meet the needs of families interested in positive and lifelong experiences for their children.”
Despite the decision, Myra Plonsky, mother of former Cub Scouts from Rockville Centre’s Pack 31, said, “It didn’t come as a surprise. We knew that international scouting is just Scouts, not Boy or Girl Scouts.
“We have Venture Scouts,” Plonsky added, referring to a co-ed branch of the BSA for 14- to 24-year-olds. “It’s not like there hasn’t been this aspect of scouting before.” She admitted, however, that co-ed scouting changes the dynamic.
Plonsky said that her concern stemmed more from the lack of information from BSA than anything else. “We have not heard at all how they’re going to implement this.”
Most of the guidance for troops has come from the Oct. 11 statement, which said that girls could be signed up for Cub Scouts starting in 2018. “Existing packs,” it read, “may choose to establish a new girl pack, establish a pack that consists of girl dens and boy dens or remain an all-boy pack. Cub Scout dens will be single-gender — all boys or all girls.” The scouting program for older girls is expected to begin in 2019.
Rockville Centre’s packs have not yet decided what route they will take.
“It seems like there are very few things in life now that are just for girls or just for boys,” Plonsky said. “I don’t know whether that needs to change.”
According to Elana Wills, the Girl Scouts of Nassau County’s chief volunteer for Rockville Centre, the single-gender system is important. “Girl scouting gives them the opportunity to go and do things without anybody saying, ‘Just let the boys do it,’” Wills explained. “The program is for girls and about girls, and the girls get to choose.”
Donna Rivera-Downey, a spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts of Nassau County, said that the BSA decision came after discussions between the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts about the issue broke down. “There seems to have been some miscommunication or some misdirection between them,” she said. “The term I would use is, ‘not playing fair.’”
Samantha Horowitz, who earned a Gold Award — the highest honor in Girl Scouts — earlier this year, called the situation “a struggle between two organizations with two very different values.” She said that she “didn’t want to make assumptions,” but thought that BSA membership was driving the dispute, citing what she called the Boy Scouts’ “dropping numbers.”
The organization has roughly 2.3 million members between ages 7 and 21, down from about 2.6 million in 2013. According to an annual BSA financial report, “the National Council’s total net assets decreased in 2016 by $34,537” from the previous year, which is a 35.4 percent greater dip than the $25,506 decrease in 2015.
Horowitz said that girls should have the right to choose which scouting group to join, adding that Boy Scouts use “more of a physical skill set,” while Girl Scouts are “more focused on values.”
But when an individual chooses Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, he or she is also choosing an award to aspire to: the Gold Award or Eagle Scout.
The nation’s first Eagle Scout, Arthur R. Eldred, came from Boy Scout Troop 1 in Rockville Centre in 1912, and since, nearly 2.5 million young men have earned the rank.
“The Eagle and the Gold Award are similar,” Horowitz said, “but the Eagle Scout rank is viewed more highly or more prestigiously than the Gold Award. I think [letting girls into Boy Scouts] is only going to further perpetuate that idea. It’s a bit condescending, a bit offensive.”
Horowitz’s brother Alex, an Eagle Scout, said he knows what it means to earn a Gold Award. “My sisters definitely put in a lot of hard work through their projects,” he said. “It’s not that one is better than the other. It’s that one is more known about. And maybe people just need to learn about it and what it is.”
“It was an all-boys world for a long time, and that is what gave [the Eagle rank] its prestige,” Rivera-Downey said. “The world has changed.
“Now that women are coming into the workplace,” she continued, “and in larger numbers, we can begin to use [the Gold Award] as a tool. It’s not there yet. It’ll get there.”
