Enjoy!
"Girl Scout councils under fire for efforts to close camps" by Ryan J. Foley | Associated Press, June 08, 2013
IOWA CITY — When it came time to draw up a budget, one of Iowa’s regional Girl Scout councils reviewed its programs and made a proposal that would have been unthinkable a generation ago: selling its last four summer camps.
Troop leader Joni Kinsey was stunned. For decades, the camps had been cherished places where thousands of young girls spent summer breaks hiking, huddling by campfires, and building friendships.
Without the sexual abuse and homosexuality of the Boy Scouts?
Kinsey, whose daughter learned to train horses at camp, immediately started a petition to fight the idea.
Other scouting alums and volunteers have taken up the cause, packing public meetings, sending letters to newspapers, and recording a protest song for YouTube. When those efforts failed, they filed a lawsuit.
Nationwide, Girl Scout councils are confronting intense opposition as they sell camps that date to the 1950s and earlier. Leaders said the properties have become a financial drain at a time when girls are less interested in camp. Defenders respond that the camping experience shaped who they are and must be preserved for future generations.
‘‘Those camps still belong to us, not just literally as members of the organization, but as people who feel like, ‘That’s part of my home life,’ ’’ Kinsey said. ‘‘When camps get closed, it’s devastating. I mean, heartbreaking.”
Camp activists have boycotted cookie drives, held overnight camp-ins outside council offices, filed legal actions, and tried to elect sympathetic volunteers to governing boards.
The other side has responded with its own aggressive tactics. At public meetings, some Girl Scout councils have hired facilitators to tightly manage the agenda and security guards to watch protesters. Others have used parliamentary moves to call protesters out of order.
It's endemic, America. This place is fascist, man.
Both sides insist they want what is right for the girls, but compromise is hard to find.
In Ohio, police were present to keep protesters off council property at a ceremony last year to mark the closing of Camp Crowell/Hilaka. Opponents have raised $80,000 to pursue a lawsuit, so far unsuccessful, seeking to keep it and others open.
‘‘Democracy has been completely squelched,’’ said volunteer Lynn Richardson of Bedford, Ohio, who recalled how police were at their campouts on the council lawn and parliamentarians have called her out of order. ‘‘They will hide behind rules and regulations, but they are shutting us down.’’
Because of declining camp attendance and rising maintenance costs, the Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars subsidizing camps. But the group backed down from its proposal in March, one day before its board was to vote on the closings.
The board agreed to keep the camps open for now and to turn Camp Conestoga into a modern residential camp. But the council still plans to eventually sell unused parts of three other sites.
Diane Nelson, chief executive of the 20,000-member organization, said the decision to keep the camps came after an outpouring from volunteers who promised to promote and manage them at a lower cost. But she blasted ‘‘a small group of individuals’’ for ‘‘taking the negative approach.’’
They are the ones that start conflicts, yeah.
Nelson acknowledged hiring facilitators to ensure that meetings were not dominated by a few individuals and bringing in security guards as a safety precaution because of fears of rowdy protests, which did not materialize.
Imagine a rowdy girl scout riot. Must be a comedic film from Hollywood, right?
The Girl Scouts, which began a century ago, established hundreds of camps nationwide as the group expanded. But in recent decades, the group has consolidated its local councils. That process accelerated dramatically under a plan that cut them from 330 to 112 by 2009.
The restructuring left groups with more properties to manage, many with old cabins and dining halls in need of upgrades.
This camp sucks!
Today’s Scouts are accustomed to technology and comfort and have more summer activities to choose from.....
Gregory Copeland of Domokur Architects in Akron, Ohio, a consultant to local councils, said by 2020, the number of Girl Scout-owned camps could easily be cut in half.
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He said the newly merged groups have a glut of properties they cannot afford to maintain, let alone fill with programming.
‘‘While it’s a hugely emotional issue, there’s just realistically no way they can end up sustaining that amount of land,’’ he said. ‘‘The emotional ties have nothing to do with logic or dollars or anything else. People just don’t want to lose what they feel is theirs.’’
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