Scouting a New Image : Movement Looks to Demographics, Social Relevance

Dressed in their classic khaki and green, standing in a solemn line between the Stars and Stripes and their unit banner, the 17 boys of Troop 239 recited the words that are as main-street America as a Norman Rockwell painting.

Duty to God and country. To help others. To be physically strong, mentally awake, morally straight.

The rest of their weekly night meeting at Wilshire Presbyterian Church hall in Santa Ana was spent working on their next merit badges, planning the next campout, and being taught the principles of exemplary character, citizenship and fitness.

This was, of course, yet another gathering of the Boy Scouts, one of the most enduring of world institutions, whose alumni in America since 1910 have numbered well into the tens of millions.

And Troop 239’s leader, Paul Rodriguez, views his Santa Ana unit as no different from all the others. “We believe in the Scouting principles. We go by the book here,” the 42-year-old scoutmaster, a one-time Boy Scout, said.

Then Rodriguez, whose sons, Ruben, 16, and Anthony, 11, are in the troop, added: “It isn’t just having fun and being part of a group. Scouting gives you great goals and guidelines. It stays with you all your life.”

Yet there is a shadow on this picture-perfect traditional image. It has to do with a bit of demographic reality for the Boy Scout movement in Orange County.

And the fact that Troop 239 is one of only six troops in Orange County’s predominately Latino areas--a very small number in the face of current statistics.

For the county’s Latino population, which has grown dramatically in the past decade, is now about 440,000, or 19% of the county’s overall population. And in the Santa Ana Unified School District alone, the trend is even more impressive: more than 80% of the district’s 33,000-student enrollment is now Latino.

But the Orange County Council of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) says that only 1,200--or fewer than 3% of its overall 48,800 members--are from predominately Latino areas.

Thus, while the Orange County Council has reported steady membership gains throughout the 1980s and is the ninth largest council in the BSA network, this growth is still chiefly in white areas, not among Latinos and other ethnic minorities.

Furthermore, the Latino trend isn’t the only fast-changing demographic that concerns the Orange County Council, which prides itself on attempting to be a true cross-section of economic and ethnic groups.

Although the county’s Vietnamese population is estimated at around 120,000, there are only about 145 members in Scout units serving predominately Vietnamese areas.

These lags have led to the launching this year of new campaigns to recruit Latino and Vietnamese youths and adult volunteers. Each of the two newly created, countywide “districts”--the first of their kind for the Orange County Council--offers greater access to staff aides, funds and other support provided by the council itself.

“This county’s demographic landscape is changing so fast, especially in the Hispanic and Asian communities,” said A. Buford Hill Jr., the Orange County Council’s top executive since 1977. “We have to meet that challenge. We have to make that a part of our Scouting mission. We have to be able to confront social changes.”

Social relevance, or the presumed lack of it, has always been an issue for the Boy Scout movement.

To many during Vietnam-era protests of the 1960s and early 1970s, the Boy Scouts seemed woefully out of step with the times. Nationally, BSA membership, which had peaked at 4.8 million in 1971, plummeted to 3.1 million by 1979.

Even in Orange County, traditionally one of the BSA’s biggest strongholds, the membership plunged from 42,000 in 1973 to 26,000 in 1977.

“Institutions like ours, which championed the traditional values, took the brunt of criticism,” Hill recalled. “Mind you, no one questioned the worthwhile-ness of our work, the positive qualities. But they kept saying we were too goody-goody, too old-fashioned.”

But in the 1980s, as the BSA worked to update its image and be more competitive in the leisure-activity field, nationwide membership again climbed, reaching 4.3 million last year. And last December, the Orange County Council reported a year-end membership of 48,800, a record high for the county.

In Orange County, Cub Scouts (ages 7 to 10) are the largest group with 43% of the membership, while Boy Scout troops (ages 11 to 17) totaled 22%. Explorers, the career and sports-oriented program for the 14-to-20 age bracket that also includes girls as members, totals 35%. The most typical sponsors of Scouting units are still churches, schools, parent groups, service clubs and businesses.

This membership resurgence has helped prod the Orange County Council to embark this year on a $11-million capital improvements campaign, the biggest yet, headed by developer William Lyon, the council’s past board chairman.

One reason for Scouting’s comeback, Hill argued, is quite simple. “The pendulum has swung back to the old values, the ones that have always been the foundation, the essentials of Scouting. Organizations like ours are back in favor,” he said.

George Argyros, the Orange County Council’s current board chairman, put it this way: “Our goal of building future leaders hasn’t changed. But we have to be even more aggressive in our outreach. We have to appeal even more to all segments of the community.”

In order to help remain in favor in the 1990s, the BSA movement is not above marketing its revamped image with greater-than-ever zeal.

For example, the BSA is promoting a tougher, “contemporary cool” and “high adventure” aura for Scouting. In the works is a BSA-produced commercial for prime-time television that features MTV-styled music and visions of Scouts riding the rapids, engaging in cross-country skiing and in other trendy outdoor exploits.

The changing times are also reflected in more controversial arenas of image-changing. Two years ago, the BSA lifted its last gender ban: Women are now allowed to become troop scoutmasters or assistant scoutmasters. About 20 women now hold those posts in Orange County Scout troops.

(However, the ban against homosexuals as adult volunteers still stands. “They are not considered proper role models,” said BSA national spokeswoman Susan Teplinsky.)

Most of all, the BSA likes to emphasize its latest versions of good-deedsmanship on a massive scale, such as its newest nationwide drives to assist the needy. For instance, in February, in the Orange County Council’s second annual Scouting for Food drive, more than 15,000 youths collected a million cans of food--the largest such drive in the county--for distribution to 217 agencies serving the hungry and homeless.

But no effort in social activism has been more touted by the BSA than its expanded “community awareness” campaigns on substance abuse and child abuse.

The BSA has issued newly detailed materials--included in the 1990 Boy Scout Handbook itself--for family and Scout-unit discussions on how to deal with drug and alcohol use and with molestation and other child abuse.

The latest handbook, the first revised edition in 11 years, also provides information on how children can recognize, resist and report potential or actual molestation situations. There is an expanded section on “sexual responsibility,” including a discussion of the consequences of premarital sex.

“Such an awareness program can’t help but be extremely supportive to what is already being done by the schools, law-enforcement agencies and other organizations,” said Dawn Ahart, past chairwoman of the Orange County Substance Abuse Prevention Network, a coordinating body for public and private agencies.

“After all, there isn’t any organization that reaches families more directly than the Scouts,” added Ahart, who is also a board member of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence/Orange County. “This program provides one more significant and trusted source of information to which families can turn.”

The BSA’s anti-substance abuse campaign has resulted in direct-action projects by some individual units. Consider the Safe-Rides Program run by Explorer posts based at 20 Orange County high schools.

The Explorer teams, who respond to calls from the Safe-Rides hot line, are on duty from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. each Friday and Saturday. They drive home students who have been drinking or who don’t want to ride home with a friend who has been drinking. One post, the Los Alamitos High group, has provided about 100 such rides in the past 1 1/2 years, including 15 last New Year’s Eve.

The ethnic-minority recruitment drives are the very latest Orange County Council effort at keeping up with the times.

A countywide Scouting district, coordinated more directly by the council staff and devoted to a specific group, is not new. Such a district was formed in 1982, bringing together the various units for the physically and mentally handicapped. Most of the 1,600 members, which include mentally disabled persons in their 40s, are based at public and private schools and institutions for the handicapped.

The Vietnamese district was established in January. Its chairman, Dr. Huyen Tran, has been in Scouting for years--in the early 1970s, he was general secretary of the 13,000-member Boy Scouts association in South Vietnam.

But when attempts were made to form Scouting units in Orange County in the 1980s for recently arrived Vietnamese refugees, the results were disappointingly sporadic, Tran said.

“The problems of resettlement, such as language, jobs and a new culture, were very difficult and certainly had an impact on (Scouting) here,” Tran said. In 1982, the membership in all-Vietnamese units totaled 400. Today it is only 145, spread among six Explorer posts, five Scout troops and one Cub pack.

But Tran and other Vietnamese organizers argued that the chief problem is one common to all Scouting units, regardless of ethnic or cultural backgrounds.

“Everyone is so busy with other obligations and activities. So we have to convince them that devoting their time to our programs is vital to them. We have to get the word out but more aggressively,” said De T. Nguyen, staff coordinator for the Orange County Council.

Another community organizer, Phu V. Nguyen, an alumnus of the all-Vietnamese Explorer Post 279, said the program helps refugees to assimilate. “It gives us more understanding of (American) culture and how it works,” said the 29-year-old engineer. “It builds a bridge for us into the system.”

These same organizing themes are sounded for the Latino district, now being formed by a community advisory committee headed by County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez and backed by key Latino organizations.

The Latino district has a financial head start: it is underwritten by a $100,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation. Also, membership in predominately Latino areas has grown in the past two years from 800 to 1,200, staff coordinator Ralph Parker said.

But only half of the 1,200 youths are in regular units--the new district includes 35 Cub packs and six Scout troops. The other youths are in public school programs in which one class a week is devoted to the Scouting program.

Another 700 boys are part of a Scouting-organized soccer group. Although this program is not tied to any traditional Scouting organization, it does offer occasional camping treks and seeks to recruit boys for the regular units.

“These special projects have been very effective because we’re reaching many boys who would not otherwise be reached in the traditional (Scouting unit) way,” Parker said. One factor, he added, may be that Scouting in Mexico is seen as a pastime limited to affluent families.

While Scouting is not viewed as a program directly aimed at combating the problems of gangs, backers say the positive impacts are obvious.

“Scouting has always taught you self-esteem, the value of team work. It is crucial that we reach kids at the earlier ages and provide them with the kind of positive images and role models that you get in Scouting,” said Bob Miranda, a member of the Latino district advisory committee.

“Sure, we hope that we can win over kids who might be attracted to drugs and gangs,” said Miranda, himself a former Scout. “We see Scouting as a real great alternative.”

To Scouting veterans like Troop 239 scoutmaster Paul Rodriguez, the prospects for growth in the Latino areas are more encouraging than ever.

“More parents are beginning to come out to our meetings. More boys are getting interested in us by word of mouth,” said Rodriguez, whose own troop, which had dwindled to only a few members a few years ago is now thriving.

“We’re seeing (Scouting) grow in our community.” he said. “OK, it’s not very fast. But we’re here. We have never given up.”