Girl Scouts get taste of 'CSI' today at SUNY Canton
CANTON — Dozens of Girl Scouts will scour the SUNY Canton campus for clues from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today.
The girls will become crime scene investigators for a day and learn about fingerprinting, evidence and interrogations, among other things. At the end of the day, they each will come away with a light blue patch with pink edging and a silver fingerprint stitched on the front.
"The girls were asked what they wanted to do, and with the success of all the 'CSI' series on TV, girls were saying they wanted to do something with forensics," said Karen D. Strife, program manager for the NYPENN Pathways Girl Scout Council. "They analyze clues, they look at fibers, tire tracks, DNA, blood splatter; and when I saw this, I knew SUNY Canton had a forensics program, and I thought it would be a great partnership."
The Girl Scouts have been partnering with SUNY Canton for four years so the girls can earn their "uncovering the evidence" patch.
Forty girls will come to SUNY Canton from as far away as Oswego and Onondaga counties to participate. In the past, the event was capped at 25 girls in fourth to eighth grades. Every year, there has been a waiting list, so this time the program was expanded.
Alpha Phi Sigma, the college's criminal justice honor society, is running the event with the help of the criminal justice club, which is helping for the first time. About 16 students will run the event, with their criminal justice professor, Elizabeth A. Erickson, there to make sure everything goes smoothly.
The SUNY Canton students will teach the Scouts about fingerprinting, crime scene sketching and interrogating suspects.
It's not just a day for the Girl Scouts to pretend to be their favorite characters from popular crime shows and earn another badge; it helps SUNY Canton students with their major.
"It really helps solidify what they've learned because for some of them, it's been years since they've had these classes, and for others, it's been a day," Miss Erickson said. "They really look forward to this; this is their big spring event. They spend all 15 weeks preparing for it."
The students will teach the girls to sketch a mock crime scene and show them what hairs and fibers look like under a microscope. The Scouts also will press ink prints of their own fingers on balloons and blow them up to show more detail. The SUNY Canton students will set up six stations for the girls to cycle through and learn about different aspects of forensics.
"Without the girls even realizing it, they're learning about math, chemistry and physics," Mrs. Strife said. "That's the age they start to get into other things, so we want to do things that will grab their imagination. It's a chance for them to explore the world of science that is so open to them. It's just a myriad of options they can explore."
This is the only kind of program available to Girl Scouts in the northern part of the region, according to Mrs. Strife. The program is so popular, Girl Scout staffers are trying to find another school south of Syracuse for girls farther away from Canton.
"We're traveling at the speed of girls, and they travel far and wide. So girls traveling from Syracuse, they'll come this far," Mrs. Strife said.
