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Shelter structure at Camp Hilaka, owned by the Girl Scouts of North East Ohio.
Some Girl Scouts in Ohio are refusing to participate in cookie sales this year, to protest the closing of some rustic campsites and the opening of more modern camps. One apparent point of contention? The new camps, called Premier Leadership Centers, will feature indoor plumbing.
Rebecca Shaffer, the director of marketing and communications for the Girl Scouts of North East Ohio, told Reuters News, “It saddens us that we have this disagreement over the camps in our area,” she said . “We surveyed the girls a few years back and the number one response to our questions about what they wanted was more inside plumbing.”
Leading the camp-closure protest is Lynn Richardson, one of the organizers of a group called Trefoil Integrity. According to their website, “the main problem is not fewer camps–it’s the way the board has dealt with the issue.”
Full disclosure: I’m a Girl Scout mom. I have three daughters who are active in scouting, and our council is one of many across the country that’s faced with the likelihood of closing down campsites due to financial issues. With my daughters’ troop, I went camping last summer at a Pennsylvania campsite that’s slated to be shut down. Despite the platform tents and (gag) pit latrines, we all had an amazing time. That campsite, though rustic, is in the midst of exceptionally beautiful wilderness.
Suspecting that flush toilets were not at the heart of the issue, I spoke with Lynn Richardson today.
7-year-old Bobby Montoya dresses and acts like a girl.
Bobby Montoya is biologically a boy. But he is called she. She looks like a girl, dresses like a girl and acts like a girl. So it was no surprise when she wanted to become a Girl Scout.
But, as the Huffington Post reports, when her mother, Felisha Archuleta, tried to sign her up with a troop leader in Denver, they were denied because regardless of how the 7-year-old feels, the troop leader said Bobby has “boy parts.”
Archuleta tells 9 News she said, ‘Well, what’s the big deal?’ and the troop leader replied ‘It doesn’t matter how he looks, he has boy parts, he can’t be in Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts don’t allow that [and] I don’t want to be in trouble by parents or my supervisor.’
Bobby was devastated. Continue reading »
In Hazelwood, Missouri, just like in the rest of the country, Girl Scouts sell cookies to eager customers for just a few weeks out of the year.
One family got creative about their cookie sales. Instead of going door-to-door to elicit sales from their neighbors, they let the customers come to them by setting up a “cookie stand” in their front yard. For six years, the girls did a booming business in girl scout cookies.
Then a neighbor complained about the traffic their cookie enterprise brought to the block. The city shut down their operation for violating zoning laws. Now the girls are suing for the right to sell their cookies.
Danielle Fairchild wearing the prize-winning device.
Three-year-old preschooler Danielle Fairchild from Duluth, Ga., was born without fingers on one hand, which kept her from being able to grip a crayon or pencil. A prosthetic hand would have run the family a few thousand dollars — a big investment for something Danielle would have quickly outgrown.
So a team of researchers set out to design something affordable that would help the girl. What they came up with was the BOB-1, an adjustable, adaptable and inexpensive device that has, indeed, helped Danielle learn to write.
Okay, but here’s the amazing part: that team of researchers? Not a single high school diploma between them. Continue reading »
Do scout manuals perpetuate gender stereotypes?
Here’s one for you. University of Maryland Sociology student, Kathleen Denny, reports that a study she recently conducted found that the Scout manuals for the 5 million American kids who are active Girl or Boy Scouts deliver messages that are full of gender stereotypes. The study concludes that Girl Scouts are steered away from scientific endeavors while the boys are steered away from artistic pursuits.
And here I was thinking that it was all about the badges. And it is. Well, kind of.
Girl Scout Cookies!
Forget Klondike bars. The most irresistible dessert in America – at least during this time of year – is the Girl Scout cookie. Everyone has their favorite flavor: mine is Tagalongs, aka Peanut Butter Patties. My friend Lane Moore loves Samoas, also called Caramel DeLites. She wrote about her unending desire for the gooey treats in a post on Jezebel called “The Emotional Cost of Girl Scout Cookies,” in which she revealed something I was shocked to hear.
A 31-year-old woman in Florida was jailed recently for hitting her roommate in the face, chasing her with scissors, striking her with a board, biting her in the breast (hello?!) and hitting her with a sign. What exactly made this grown woman lose it? Her roommate ate her Thin Mints. (As Charlie Sheen would say, “Winning. Duh.”) Continue reading »
Girls Scouts are cutting back on cookie offerings
In response to a rough economic environment, the Girl Scouts are trimming the fat in their cookie catalog, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Little girls will still be hawking cookies at your office and on your doorstep. But you’ll have fewer flavors to choose from, and get fewer cookies per box. Some flavors will now arrive in cheaper plastic packaging, instead of the classic boxes.
It’s hard to imagine the economy intersecting with something as traditional as Girl Scout Cookies, but of course the cookie sales aren’t just a tradition. They’re big business. And since the economy crashed, the scouts have been looking for ways to make their business more efficient.
Fine for them, you say, but what about my cookies? Will I still be able to get my Samoas?
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