New Eagle Scouts are blazing trails
As the organization evolves, female members make marks
Jen Chalom’s face flashed on screen and her proud parents beamed.
The Boy Scouts announced its inaugural class of nearly 1,000 female Eagle Scouts, including Chalom, in late February online, sending the clear message that “girls can do anything that guys can do.”
“I know that sounds cliche,” said 18-year-old Chalom, a member of Boy Scout Troop 755 in Northville. “But it’s nice to see an organization like Boy Scouts finally showing that by allowing girls in.”
The Novi resident, along with 34 other girls and young women from Michigan, earned the highest rank in Boy Scouts, a distinction that, for more than a century, was just for boys, and they are now part of a group that other Eagle Scouts say certifies them as accomplished and creates networking opportunities that they might not yet realize.
“Scouting’s benefits are invaluable,” Roger Mosby, president and CEO of the Boy Scouts of America, said. “We are elated that the opportunity to become an Eagle Scout is now available to even more youth — young men and young women alike.”
In the same year Kamala Harris became America’s first female vice president, the first female Eagle Scouts are being feted by the Boy Scouts, as well as local and national media, for leading the way for other girls.
And for the moment — despite the mounting challenges the Boy Scouts still face — the girls are enjoying a flood of congratulations. The newly minted, female Eagle Scouts are, as Harris said about her own achievement, the first but “will not be the last.”
The Boy Scouts welcomed teenage girls into its career and adventure-oriented programs for older scouts in the early ’70s — initially in Exploring and later Venturing — but there was no path for girls to become Eagle Scouts until just two years ago.
“This expanded opportunity will empower generations of young people,” said Jenn Hancock, the Boy Scouts’ national chair for programs, adding that boys and girls will “earn this rank and become leaders in their communities, in business and our country.”
Among all Boy Scouts, only 6% or so reach the Eagle rank.
To become an Eagle Scout, a boy — and now a girl — must hold leadership positions in their troop and their community; earn at least 21 merit badges that cover a range of topics, and develop and complete a community service project all before turning 18.
Eagle Scouts are considered the best of the best.
Will the Boy Scouts survive?
Still, the national focus on the first female Eagle Scouts is not going to fix the organization’s problems, which include a pandemic that makes it difficult for Scouts to meet, a dwindling membership, and a growing number of legal and financial threats.
As early as 2019, a Washington Post article posed a crucial question in a pessimistic headline: “Lawsuits. Possible bankruptcy. Declining numbers. Is there a future for the Boy Scouts?”
Newsweek went a step further, publishing an opinion piece by an Eagle Scout, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and energy company executive, who concluded: “the Boy Scouts of America is not fit to lead.”
And a New York Times headline argued: “Save Scouting. End the Boy Scouts”
In a decade, Boy Scouts, with 2.2 million youths, has lost about a fifth of its members. More likely will quit as troops wrestle with pandemic fears and mandates that limit meetings and activities.
In recent years, Boy Scouts has sold properties, including more than 2,000 acres in Michigan alone, to cut expenses and raise millions of dollars to shore up sustained operational losses.
It also has reorganized for efficiency and become more progressive.
And to help fend off about 95,000 sexual abuse claims, the organization was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year to keep operating.
Yet even as the Boy Scouts makes changes, the organization is being squeezed by criticism from those grumbling about its evolution, and those who say it’s doing too little, too late.
Some, for example, feel the decision to open its doors wider for girls takes away from the organization’s core mission to develop boys into men, while others feel it has not opened its doors enough by segregating boys and girls into separate troops.
And in what might seem like a twist, one of the most vocal critics of the Boy Scouts’ efforts to recruit girls has been the Girl Scouts, a separate youth organization for girls that was inspired by the Boy Scouts.
In December, the Girl Scouts stepped up the pressure and filed a federal lawsuit in December against the Boy Scouts, which started dropping “Boy” from its name, arguing unfair competition and trademark infringement.
To put it plainly: The Girl Scouts accused the Boy Scouts of poaching members.
How Boy Scouts started
Boy Scouts who have earned their Scouting Heritage Merit Badge — one of the 137 that the Boy Scouts awards — know Boy Scouts started in Britain just after the turn of the 20th century.
In 1906, Robert Baden-Powell, a British army officer, wrote a paper, “The Boy Scouts — A Suggestion,” that set forth his ideas about a youth program. It was based on some of the other programs like it, such as the Boys’ Brigade and YMCA.
The next summer, he took some boys camping on England’s Brownsea Island.
And a year after that, he published “ScoutBefore
ing for Boys,” the first Boy Scout handbook.
Then, in 1909, an American newspaper publisher, William Boyce, ran into a Boy Scout.
The story goes — and this is straight from the Scouting Heritage merit badge pamphlet— that Boyce got lost in a thick London fog as he was preparing for an African safari. A boy, maybe about 12 years old, walked up to him and led him to his destination.
Boyce offered a tip for the boy’s trouble. But the youngster declined, saying he was just doing his daily good turn as a Boy Scout.
Boyce was so impressed he decided to learn as much as he could about Boy Scouts and brought the concept back to America. Boyce incorporated a youth organization for boys of all races and religions modeled on Baden-Powell’s philosophies.
By 1912, the Boy Scouts of America was ready to confer its first Eagle Scout rank to 17year-old Arthur Rose Eldred, a member of Troop 1 in Oceanside, New York.
Eldred would go on to Cornell University, enlist in the Navy, become a businessman and serve in public office. After Eldred’s elevation to Eagle Scout, more than 2.5 million boys and men have followed in his footsteps.
They include Ernest Green, the first black student to graduate from Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas, and later Michigan State; Neil Armstrong, the Ohio test pilot and first man on the moon, and Gerald Ford, America’s 38th president.
Scouting also is for girls
Another Scouting milestone also occurred in 1912.
Juliette Gordon Low, a Georgian who also had a house in England and went by the nickname Daisy, met Baden-Powell. But instead of a youth organization for boys, her vision was a to start a similar group just for girls.
Low, according to the Girl Scouts, wanted girls to have an organization that would let them “embrace, together, their individuality, strength, and intellect“and set it in motion with a telephone call to a cousin.
She said she had an idea and “we’re going to start it tonight!“
The first Girl Scouts played basketball, hiked, swam, and camped. They studied foreign languages and how to tell time by the stars. Despite the fact that this was eight years before women had the right to vote, they believed girls could do anything.
The organization flourished and now describes itself as an “all-female environment of a Girl Scout troop creates a safe space where girls can try new things, develop a range of skills, take on leadership roles, and just be themselves.”
And this is where Chalom becomes a part of both organizations’ stories.
becoming a Boy Scout, she was a Girl Scout. She started in kindergarten as a Daisy Scout. As a teen, she also joined Boy Scouts’ coed Venturing program, and then — when it opened to girls on Feb. 1, 2019, the traditional Boy Scouts program.
“I’ve grown up around Scouts my whole life,” Chalom said, adding her older brother, Tim, also is an Eagle Scout. Her father, Morton, is a scoutmaster. She’d tag along to her brother’s meetings. “I always wished I could be a Boy Scout.”
But she didn’t abandon Girl Scouts. Instead, she earned the Girl Scouts’ top achievement, the Gold Award and goes down in future Scouting Heritage as having been among the first girls to attain the highest rank in Boy Scouts, too.
“It takes most Scouts between six and seven years before they get to Eagle,” she said. “It took my brother until two days before his 18th birthday, and I’d say most Scouts do it that way. To do it in two years was a struggle.”
A separate group for girls
Chalom believes both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts now benefit girls.
“Yet, the two programs are more different than people think that they are,” she said. “Girl Scouts can be very similar if your leaders do a lot of campouts, but we didn’t, and I always wanted to learn survival skills and outdoorsy stuff.”
Moreover, Girl Scouts is focused on girls. “Everything in Girl Scouts is very girlbased,” Chalom said, adding that programs are oriented toward “being a successful woman.” Making Girl Scouts more appealing to boys, she said, likely would take away from what the group is about.
Moreover, Chalom said, there is a need for groups like Girl Scouts which try to address discrimination, inequality and issues unique to women. Girls, and women, still are not fully included in many areas.
Boys, she said, “have a place to be boys everywhere else in the world.”
And while Boy Scouts welcomed girls, Chalom also acknowledged resistance.
Some was subtle teasing — such as boys saying, “no girls allowed.”
But there also has been outright misogyny, especially on social media.
Consider a sampling of Facebook comments on a recent posting of a short CBS segment with journalist Norah O’Donnell about the inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts:
“So Awesome, expect great things from these young ladies.”
“Is there any boys selling girl scout cookies sales person of the year yet?”
“This is stupid ... girls should not be in boy scouts, nor should boys be in girl scouts.”
In what seems like a compromise between those who wanted Boy Scouts to become coed and those who felt there were virtues in having it remain boys only, troops are supposed to be organized into single-sex groups.
But Chalom and others said that sounds a lot like “separate but equal,” adding that while she doesn’t want to stir too much controversy, the official set up is “a cop-out” which allows girls in Scouts, “but not really.”
Single sex or coed
Some troops, like Chalom’s, have, in effect, combined the two groups — the larger one for boys and smaller one for girls — by meeting at the same time and coordinating just about all their activities as if they were one troop. So far, Chalom said it seems to have worked. But, what happens when one of the girls wants to lead the combined groups?
Chalom predicts as the Boy Scouts evolve, troops will become coed.
In contrast, Heidi Kreindler, the scoutmaster of Troop 1001 in Birmingham, an all-girls troop that meets separately from boys, advocates for keeping the genders apart from each other.
“I was against girls entering Boy Scouts,” said Kreindler, who has a 21-year-old son and two daughters, 19 and 16. “I had worked so hard for years with my husband running the boys troop. The boys need to be with boys and the girls need to be with girls.”
Their son, she said, is an Eagle Scout, and their youngest daughter, Chloe, now is, too.
Chloe is one of five girls in the troop in the inaugural class, and, Kreindler said, was the reason why she formed the troop. Chloe wasn’t satisfied being in the Venturing program, she wanted to be an Eagle Scout.
Kreindler said she doesn’t blame Girl Scouts for objecting to Boy Scouts targeting girls.
She believes the “Boy Scout program is better,” but isn’t convinced a truly coed organization is what is best for everyone.
Boys and girls develop differently and act differently, she said. Girls are more verbal, more studious, and more motivated to earn merit badges. And when boys are around girls, they start to behave differently.
‘They can actually do it’
Still, some wonder if the Girl Scouts may have less to worry about than they think.
Some Boy Scout troops report their recruitment of girls hasn’t been as successful as some expected or hoped, and boys still vastly outnumber girls. Each year in the last decade, about 50,000 to 60,000 boys become Eagle Scouts.
Chuck Williams, the decades-long scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 179 in Farmington Hills, is part of a family that is tied to the Boy Scouts. He was among the troop’s first Eagle Scouts. His two younger brothers are Eagle Scouts, and so is his nephew.
And, he added, his wife, Connie Knie, more active in Boy Scouts than him.
“I’ve been a proponent of girls becoming Scouts and, of course, becoming Eagle Scouts since the 1980s,” Williams, 61, said. “That was a big segment of our population that wasn’t getting the benefits of Boy Scouts.”
Williams also was briefly a Girl Scout leader for his stepdaughter, Claire Knie. She later joined the Boy Scouts Venturing program, which is coed. At the time, girls could not become Eagle Scouts.
“I wish she could have,” Williams said. Troop 179 now has two female Eagle Scouts, Elizabeth Schmidt and Susie Silvagi.
“Little girls don’t have to grow up wishing they could become Boy Scouts,” Chalom said. “Now, they can actually do it. They don’t have to grow up learning that outdoorsy stuff is just for boys.”
And if “outdoorsy stuff ” isn’t just for boys, there’s a lot of other stuff that mostly — and only — men have done for decades that girls and women will be doing, too.
The top executive at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan saw a moderate dip in pay last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic as the state’s largest insurer gave rebates to some of its customers because of fewer elective procedures and doctor’s office visits during the early months of the crisis.
The Blues disclosed Monday that total allcash compensation for CEO Daniel Loepp, 63, was $11.5 million in 2020, or nearly $600,000 less than the year before. The decrease was the result of a slightly smaller bonus ($8.5 million) and less “other” compensation, which counts the value of benefits such as life insurance.
“At many publicly traded companies, bonuses are paid as stock shares or stock option to encourage the CEO to work to maximize shareholder value,” said Blue Cross representative Andy Hetzel told reporters during the Blues’ annual ask-us-anything media call about its finances. “But unlike those companies, we don’t issue stock, we don’t have shareholders. Instead, we pay cash bonuses. But our incentive goal is the same — to encourage strong company performance.”
Loepp, a native Detroiter, author and former state legislative staffer, earned slightly under $1 million when he began the CEO job in 2006. He hit an all-time record for compensation in 2018 with $19.2 million, which was more than what Ford and Fiat Chrysler’s CEOs made that year.
Overall, Blue Cross Blue Shield reported a $120 million operating margin for 2020, or less than 1% of its $30.1 billion in total revenue, and had a bottom-line income of $646 million for its reserves.
The biggest contributor to that positive bottom line was $724 million in income from the Blues’ investment portfolio of stocks and bonds.
Blue Cross is no longer a nonprofit, but a nonprofit mutual that must pay taxes. It reported paying $388 million in taxes last year to
federal, state and local governments, or $34 million less than in 2019.
COVID-19 rebates, fee waivers
During 2020, the Blues says it returned more than $115 million to customers for medical, dental and vision plan premiums.
Those rebates happened because the insurer paid out fewer medical claims during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, when hospitals and medical practices temporary closed for non-emergency procedures. Other insurers issued similar rebates.
Blue Cross also waived $65 million in telemedicine copays during the first wave of the pandemic shutdowns and waived $39 million in copays, deductibles and coinsurance for coronavirus testing.
Additionally, during the early part of the pandemic, Blue Cross advanced $680 million in payments to hospitals and health care providers to keep their revenue flowing in those crisis months.
“We did start to see significant forgone claims when the pandemic hit in March, April, May that was very evident,” Paul Mozak, the Blues’ senior vice president for finance and chief risk officer, said.
Since the fourth quarter of 2020, overall claims have been back to normal trend levels, Mozak said.
Unrelated to the pandemic, Blue Cross gave one-time rebates last year totaling $45 million to customers with individual health insurance plans in 2019.
Those rebates were prompted by lower than expected medical claims in that pre-COVID-19 year, as under the Affordable Care Act, health insurers must pay at least 80 cents of every $1 in premium toward claims and issue rebates if they collect too much.
Blue Cross may need to mail similar rebate checks this year to individual market customers, although details haven’t been finalized, Mozak said.
The Blues received regulatory approval last year for an average 1.9% increase for its 2021 Blue Care Network small group plan premiums and a 0.9% increase for Blue Cross small group plans.
It also received approval for an average 2.5% increase to its individual market Blue Care Network HMO plans and a 1.7% increase for individual market Blue Cross plans.
Buyout numbers not known
Last fall, Blue Cross extended voluntary buyout offers to more than 8,500 non-union employees and an unspecified number of unionized employees to manage administrative costs, according to news reports.
Blue Cross officials Monday declined to disclose how many employees took the buyouts or how much money they aimed to save.
“It generally met our expectations and a lot of those employees chose to leave Blue Cross because they desired to, and to move on to other things,” Mozak said.