A high-energy executive with the Boy Scouts of America, Stricherz was previously based in Omaha as development director for the BSA’s Mid-America Council. In February, she moved to Ann Arbor as the new “scout executive” for the Southern Shores Field Service Council, overseeing eleven southern Michigan counties.
“I am focusing on building relationships,” says Stricherz, one of the BSA’s few female top execs. There’s a lot of building to be done, because scouting fell out of favor in Ann Arbor after a controversial court case.
Back in 2000, explains ACLU of Michigan legal director Mike Steinberg, the BSA “argued all the way to the Supreme Court” for its right to exclude what it called “known or avowed homosexuals.” In a case brought by former Eagle Scout, assistant scoutmaster, and gay-rights activist James Dale, the court held that the BSA could legally ban gay youth as members, and gay adults as leaders.
In Ann Arbor, that legal victory was a PR disaster. The ACLU teamed up with gay rights activists to go into schools to educate them about BSA’s policies. Steinberg said the campaign was “very successful,” and as a result, at least four schools stopped sponsoring troops: Bach, Eberwhite, Emerson, and Honey Creek.
In 2013, BSA leaders voted to lift the ban on gay members. Last year, the group also announced that it would accept gay leaders. CEO Robert Gates–who as Secretary of Defense oversaw the end of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy–explained that scouts “must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be … The status quo in our movement’s membership standards cannot be sustained.”
That pragmatic argument recognized the importance of religious congregations in scouting–most troops are sponsored by faith-based organizations, and one in six is affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a strong opponent of gay marriage. Though the new policy on gay leaders allowed an exception for church-sponsored troops, Stricherz’s predecessor, Matt Adams, braced for a possible backlash when it was announced last July. But, he says, “I didn’t get a single phone call, for or against.” Even the Mormons, who initially threatened to form their own alternative scouting group, decided to stay in the organization.
Stricherz hopes to rebuild BSA’s relationship with the public schools, “getting to know the superintendent, and then working down to the principals. I have to determine what our current relationships are … who are the community leaders.”
Recruiting efforts will include everything “from going into the classrooms, to handing out flyers, to mailing flyers to their homes, putting yard signs up, to book markers to billboards, to whatever we’re able to secure,” Stricherz says. Since 95 percent of Boy Scouts start as younger Cub Scouts, Stricherz and local leaders will be focusing on first- through third-graders when the new school year begins this fall.
Some churches welcomed the BSA’s belated turnabout, including First Methodist, home to Troop 4. Rich Meints is scoutmaster of the troop, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year.
“One of the great things about Boy Scouts,” says Meints, “is you get a chance to explore what may be a career.”–along with camping, fishing, and hiking, scouts now earn merit badges in everything from robotics to animation, and game design. By Stricherz’s count, “of the 100+ merit badges Boy Scouts can earn, 56 percent of them are STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] related.”
As divisive as the gay rights issue has been nationally, Meints says, “to the youth it’s a nonissue. I don’t say that lightly or glibly. It’s usually the adults who struggled with it.
“The youth want to go camping, kayaking, canoeing, to a museum. The other stuff, it’s not their focus.”
