Girl Scouts – Unhinged

Look at what the BSA is focusing on: Family.

Take my family, for example.

I’m a Scoutmaster, and have been for coming up on four years. Our oldest son is an Eagle Scout. Our youngest son is a Life Scout, with only an Eagle project in his way to that ultimate reward, and is also a member of the Order of the Arrow.

My wife both works for and volunteers for the local council. She gets paid as the council food coordinator, guiding the council through food- and nutrition-related aspects of feeding Scouts at the council’s three Scout camps. She also gets paid working as a commissary director at Treasure Mountain Scout Camp for eight weeks in the summer, a role she’s had at two camps for the past six years.

We also have a daughter. Thanks to Venture Scouting, which has allowed girls 14 years and older to join for a very long time, she’s involved in Scouting as well. She’s worked as a Scout camp counselor and has been to Cedar Badge. Twice.

Clearly, we’re a Scouting family.

But our daughter’s missed some of the adventure. She went to many a Cub Scout meeting with my wife when she was a pack leader and then the den chief, but couldn’t earn any of the rewards. She saw her oldest brother earn the Eagle rank and participated in many an activity – including his Eagle project – but couldn’t earn the rank herself.

This is the target audience the BSA is looking at first and foremost: Girls who are members of Scouting families and could participate fully in Scouting if the organization allowed it.

As a Scoutmaster, I’ve participated in a few online surveys regarding the BSA’s potential inclusion of girls. What the Girl Scouts is calling “secretive” to me appears merely to be consulting with existing Scouters to get their feel for whether and where girls might fit in the program. In other words, they’re researching. They’ve asked questions along these lines:

1.      Would you support the formation of girls-only troops for girls between the ages of 12-14? (Fourteen, remember, is the age limit already wet where girls can already join Venture Scouting, in either co-ed or girls-only crews.)

2.      Should girls be allowed to earn the Eagle Scout award?

I don’t see anything sinister in these questions. It clearly makes a lot of sense for the BSA to ask current Scouters how they feel about including girls, and how they should be included, before any decisions are made.