
Eagle Scout Sydney Ireland (center, in uniform) celebrated her new rank at the office of NOW-NY with friends and family, including Taylor Abbruzzese from Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney’s office, Jim Nedelka, NOW-NY President Sonia Ossorio, college friend Zora Duncan, her father Gary Ireland, her brother Bryan Ireland and family friend Paul Marshall, along with her dog (pictured at the bottom), Scout. (Photos by Maria Rocha-Buschel)
By Maria Rocha-Buschel
UPDATE: See below for a correction to this story.
Stuyvesant Town native Sydney Ireland will officially be recognized as an Eagle Scout after a board of review voted to approve her Eagle Scout project on Tuesday evening.
Now a freshman at Amherst College in Massachusetts, Ireland returned to New York this week for the first time since starting school so that she could meet with the board that ultimately approved her, officially making her an Eagle Scout.
Ireland has been fighting to be recognized by the organization since following her older brother into scouting at the age of 4, and although the Boy Scouts of America officially changed the name of their premier program to the gender-neutral “Scouts BSA” to allow young women to participate starting this year, Ireland herself was not being recognized for the work she had already completed.
The BSA even previously recognized her as a catalyst for the changes that were made to the program but denied her Eagle Scout rank by claiming that all the work she had done up to that point didn’t count, likening it to auditing classes in college. Although she had already completed one Eagle Scout project, she finished a second project in June, officially finishing all the requirements to become an Eagle Scout and making the board of review official.