I simply could not read the letter “Don’t associate with Boy Scouts” without reacting. It is easy to find one little detail about an organization and to latch onto it as being a complete description. People who call the Boy Scouts a bad organization based on the issue about gays most definetely don’t have much experience with them. I have been a member of the Scouts since the first grade. I am an Eagle Scout. I have three younger brothers in Scouting; one is a few steps away from Eagle. My parents have both been heavily involved with Scouting for as long as I can remember.

The point about not allowing gays to be adult leaders is that a person’s sexual preferences have no place in Scouts. No teenager wants to hear about an old man’s sex life, heterosexual or homosexual. If a Boy Scout knows that a leader is homosexual, it is because he (or she) was public about it. I am sure that any Scout leader that starts talking about his girlfriends at a Scout meeting would be dealt with just as severely.

The Boy Scouts has an obligation to protect the Scouts from sexual abuse. There are very specific supervision policies that must be followed when females are present on trips to prevent abuse. It gets significantly more complicated when there is a chance that the male leaders would try to abuse the boys.

I won’t say that all Scouts are good people–there are bad eggs everywhere. But to say that the organization is not something we should have associated with RPI is ludicrous. The purpose of Boy Scouts is not just, “Let’s walk into the woods, light fires and play with knives.” It’s much more than that. Especially at the higher levels, the emphasis is on learning how to plan ahead, organize people, and work a plan from idea to finished product. Skills that everyone can use in the working world. Leadership.

The comment was made that APO shouldn’t be supporting Scouts. They obviously don’t realize that APO was started by former Scouts with the intent of furthering the principles of Scouting and doing community service work. APO has had close ties to Scouting since it began. The Boy Scout Handbook even has a page about APO. Many people in APO are former Scouts. If I remember SO correctly, Dr. Jackson publicized that the current freshman class contains 73 Eagle Scouts. It is not just APO that supports Scouting.

Getting rid of the Boy Scouts will not even put a dent in homophobia. There are much bigger sources in our general societal structure. Sources that don’t do landscaping around flag poles, refinish church pews, restore handicapped access ramps, repair public fish hatcheries, improve cemeteries, or collect food for the needy. Sources who don’t produce people like Michael Eisner, Gerald R. Ford, Steven Spielberg, and Neil Armstrong–all Eagle Scouts.

Harry R. Burger