Then she smiled.
Lora Panepinto, an eighth-grader, is one of the first girls in New York City to be officially welcomed into the club that for more than a century had been called the Boy Scouts.
“I didn’t necessarily think about it as creating history — because it’s not always about being first,” Lora said. “It’s about being involved.”
As of Feb. 1, the Boy Scouts of America began accepting girls into all its ranks, including Boy Scouts, the 11- to 17-year-old age group that’s been rebranded as Scouts BSA. In New York City, at least 77 girls have registered so far. Eight all-girl troops have been fully formed in Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County, according to Boy Scout officials, and 20 other troops are in various stages of formation.
It is the final phase of a decision made in 2017 to begin fully integrating girls into the organization — a progressive change in membership policy that began in New York last September when girls were accepted into Cub Scouts, a program for younger children.
“I think it’s fair to say, and pardon the cliché, ‘It’s no longer my grandfather’s Boy Scout troop,'” said Ethan Draddy, chief executive officer of the Boy Scouts of America Greater New York Councils.
Nationwide, more than 5,000 girls have signed up for Scouts BSA in the first weeks of the expanded program, according to a spokeswoman for the Boy Scouts of America. (By comparison, about 1.7 million girls across the country are active with the Girl Scouts, including more than 20,000 in New York City, according to a spokesman for the Girl Scouts of the USA.)
The Boy Scouts of America’s 2017 policy shift was hailed by the organization as a way to shape new women leaders, but it was met with immediate backlash — including vocal opposition from within the 109-year institution and from the Girl Scouts, which saw it as an attempt to siphon off its members to offset declining Boy Scout enrollment.
In November 2018 the Girl Scouts sued, arguing the change in membership policy was infringing on their trademark and causing confusion among potential members. The lawsuit is still proceeding in Manhattan federal court.
Lora had spent years tagging along to her older brother’s Boy Scout meetings. The Girl Scouts, which she had tried twice, was less appealing because it offered fewer of the outdoor activities she craved: fishing, regular camp-outs or practicing how to properly use a knife. Lora hopes to one day be an environmental conservationist.
“We knew a lot of people wouldn’t be as into it,” she said about the addition of girls into the all-boy bastion. “But we wanted to lead the change and show people that we could do scouting too.”
Girls are for the first time eligible to earn the rank of Eagle Scout, a prestigious achievement and the highest attainable rank within the Boy Scouts of America.
Lora’s goal is to become an Eagle Scout.
Though girls are now fully incorporated into the Boy Scouts of America’s program, each troop consists of scouts of the same gender. The boys and girls in many of the region’s troops come together at the start and end of meetings for a traditional flag ceremony, but they remain separated for most activities during weekly troop meetings and on camping trips and outings.
Lora’s patrol — a subgroup within her troop — consists of four other girls. They named their patrol The Riveters, after Rosie the Riveter.
“It reminded us of the World War when all the men went off to war and the girls had to take all the jobs that they normally wouldn’t,” Lora said.
Each of the all-girl troops must be anchored by a permanent female scoutmaster.
“It’s long overdue,” said Snazzy Panepinto, Lora’s mother and the scoutmaster of Troop 222. “In American society, it’s all about women being equal and able to do everything they want to and are capable of.
“There are girls who love to be outdoors, who love learning new skills. And it will help them in life, in leadership and independence.”
Since the 1970s, the organization has had several programs that included girls: Venturing, Sea Scouts, STEM Scouts and Exploring. But Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts had been exclusively male.
In 2018, about 77,000 girls under 11 and their families joined Cub Scouts, including about 2,100 in New York City, during the first phase of the transition.
“If we’re not going to embrace this change here in New York City, how is the rest of the country going to do that?” Draddy said.
He said the change is a way to appeal to children who have never been exposed to scouting of any kind — not an effort to lure participants away from the Girl Scouts.
“There’s plenty of girls, hundreds and thousands of girls, that might have nothing,” Draddy said. “They don’t have any options and we’re interested in serving that market. Both my daughters were Girl Scouts and my sisters were, too. I don’t want to poach a single girl from the Girl Scouts in New York City.”
A priority of Draddy’s during the transition is to recruit in areas of the city that are underserved or largely absent from his organization’s map.
To be sure, it also offers a chance to increase the organization’s shrinking membership.
A 2018 report from the Greater New York Councils showed a more than 5 percent dip in Boy Scout membership from 2017, and a similar but smaller decline in the Cub Scout feeder program.
“Unfortunately, with gentrification and as New York City has shifted, we’ve lost some Scouting programs and I will say, at times, we have not paid attention to that,” he said. “But now we are.”
Volunteer board and staff members, as part of a future outreach campaign, plan to use current membership data to map out neighborhoods in the New York City region that do not have active BSA troops, according to Draddy, in order to focus on recruitment in those areas.
“We’re going to serve both girls and boys in 2019, 2020 and moving forward,” he said. “And we, by God, better look like the communities we’re trying to serve.”
The Boy Scouts of America began loosening membership requirements in 2013 when it lifted a ban on openly gay members. In 2015, it allowed openly gay Scout leaders to volunteer, and in 2017, it announced it would accept transgender members, reversing a century-old stance.
The decision to accept girls was welcomed by many as yet another milestone for the classic-American outdoor-based youth program, but as a result, the two major Scouting organizations are now pitted against each other in court.
The lawsuit aims to end aspects of Boy Scouts of America’s promotional campaign that the Girl Scouts of the USA believes infringes on its trademark, and it asks Scouts BSA to no longer uses the word “Scout” without distinguishing context that would properly identify the organization.
Parents may go to sign daughters up for Girl Scouts and are unwittingly steered toward Boy Scouts, the lawsuit said. Also, the use of the word “Scout,” without gender context is causing confusion among potential members, the complaint states several times.
Despite the pending lawsuit, the Girl Scouts of the USA maintains that it does not object to Scout BSA’s gender integration; it does not plan to make any changes to align with the new competition, according to a spokesman for the organization.
“Girl Scouts’ programming, informed by over a century of expertise in serving girls, is unrivaled in its ability to transform today’s girls into tomorrow’s leaders,” he said in an email.
Scout BSA’s transition has not been without complications.
Pack 9963, an all Muslim Cub Scout pack in New Hyde Park on Long Island that formed about two years ago, is sponsored by the Hillside Islamic Center, and some conservative residents are looking to their mosque to ensure that the new integrated Scout activities properly adhere to their spiritual practices.
“In the community, there’s been some issues,” said Sanaul Islam, an assistant den leader for the Cub Scout pack. He added, “We have a fairly large group of both girls and boy Scouts. We’ve been making progress.”
The Boy Scouts of America has said that the decision to expand its program to include girls into all its ranks came after years of requests.
“I have five kids, and my husband. And we’re all registered with the same organization now,” said Elaine Griffiths, who was a Cub Scout den leader for her daughter’s group in Yorktown Heights, in Westchester. “It’s not a small thing getting to all these meeting places, even if you’ve got just one kid, especially for busy families.”
Her 11-year-old daughter, Kelly, along with 11 other girls joined Troop 164 last month. Kelly, like Lora, was attracted to Scouts BSA after years of watching her brothers participate in classic outdoor Boy Scout activities.
“This feels really awesome,” Kelly said. “There are all these famous women of history and I feel like I deserve to be one of them.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.