SAMOA NO YOU DON’T!
Girl Scouts slam Boy Scouts’ poaching bid
The Girl Scouts are at war with the Boy Scouts.
The wholesome, green-vested purveyors of Thin Mints and Samoas are feuding furiously with their male counterparts, accusing the Boy Scouts of America of trying to poach female recruits.
In a scathing letter, Kathy Hopinkah Hannan, president of the GSUSA, accuses the Boy Scouts of targeting millennial parents in a “covert campaign to recruit girls,” calling it “reckless” and “unsettling.”
“We were disappointed in the lack of transparency as we learned that you are surreptitiously testing the appeal of a girls’ offering to millennial parents,” Hannan wrote to Boy Scouts President Randall Stephenson in a letter sent Tuesday and obtained by BuzzFeed News.
“It is entirely dishonest to claim to be a single-gender organization while simultaneously endeavoring upon a co-ed model,” Hannan wrote, slamming the Boy Scouts for trying to undercut the Girl Scouts.
Boy Scout membership has plummeted by a third since 2000, to just more than 2 million as of 2016, according to The Washington Post, and the letter suggested the Boy Scouts were using proposed programs for girls to prop up “declining membership.” They should try to appeal to boys not involved in the BSA instead, Hannan argues. “Boy Scouts should instead take steps to ensure that they are expanding the scope of their programming to all boys, including those who BSA has historically underserved and underrepresented, such as African-American and Latino boys. “We are confused as to why, rather than working to appeal to the 90 percent of boys who are not involved in BSA programs, you would choose to target girls,” Hannan wrote.
The letter also accuses the BSA of making “disparaging and untrue remarks about the Girl Scouts” during “family meetings” where the new programming was outlined.
“Starting off any program when people are feeling bullied is not in keeping with the founding ideals of either Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts,” Hannan wrote.
The Boy Scouts responded that they were “exploring” recruiting girls “based on numerous requests from families.”