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Brown CS Department Hiring Student Diversity, Inclusion Advocates
theodp writes: Brown University's Department of Computer Science is seeking to hire student advocates for diversity and inclusion as part of its new action plan to increase diversity. The new hires, who will also serve as members of the CS Diversity Committee, will support students, plan inclusion activities, and educate TAs on issues of diversity. Also on the diversity front, Brown touted last weekend's Hack@Brown, the school's annual student hackathon, as being "unlike any other hackathon" -- welcoming, inclusive, and inviting to students of all experience levels." A cynic might point out that Hack@Brown's tech giant sponsors boast track records that are quite the opposite. By the way, Brown@Hackathon certainly upped the ante on conference Codes of Conduct, warning that those anonymously-charged with making others feel uncomfortable on the basis of "gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion (or lack thereof)" will be "expelled from the event without travel reimbursement at the discretion of the event organizers." Brown explained that travel reimbursements were provided to promote "economic diversity", ensuring that students who couldn't otherwise afford to get to and from Providence could attend the Ivy League event. Hey, what "economically diverse" kid wouldn't want to go to a conference where rubbing someone the wrong way could leave them stranded in Rhode Island!
>warning that those anonymously-charged with making others feel uncomfortable on the basis of "gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion (or lack thereof)" will be "expelled from the event without travel reimbursement at the discretion of the event organizers."
Waitwaitwait. You mean if some Anonymous decides to make up some bullshit they can get anyone expelled without questions?
I imagine that only apply to people that aren't "diverse" enough or "equal" enough, or that would quickly become a problem.
Pity to see good intentions paired with such an unbalanced plan to enact those intentions.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Dear Mr. whiplash:
These diversity stories:
-have little, if anything, to do with technology (The sociology of the software industry is not itself technology.)
-attract outsiders from both sides with an agenda to push
-inspire a lot of vitriolic posts from both sides
-persuades no one and generates ill will from both extremes and the people who have a more centrist position
Can we simply not have these anymore? It may be good for attracting page impressions but it results such bad feeling among posters that it doesn't make business sense to allow them when you're trying to revive /.s fortunes.
Seriously? Do they send them to a neighboring school for the hard subjects?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
One can make substantial criticisms of the way Brown and some other universities are approaching these issues, but the summary seems a bit off. Yes, it is possible to file a complaint about harassment anonymously but the form makes clear that isn't likely to get much attention by itself. The form says "This form is anonymous, unless you choose to provide a contact method in the case of something that requires follow up."
As for codes of conduct in general, there's a certain fraction of people who aren't apparently happy with them. However, it is pretty clear that a lot of people at conferences and conventions are sexually harassed sometimes severely. Unfortunately, there are circumstances where organizers have erred heavily on the side of not doing anything, and other situations where they've erred too far in the other direction. As always, the key is to strike a reasonable balance, and some issues will always go too far one way or another, and those instances will be used as political ammunition for whichever side the anecdote supports.
It's "whipslash". Slash, like Slashdot. Get it? Just playing. Your concern will be taken into account.
and indoctrinateTAs on issues of diversity.
FTFY
Just another day in Paradise
So your argument is an appeal to absurdity. You concoct a ridiculous example that clearly would never happen in real life, unrelated to TFA (an web form) and cite it as evidence to support your position.
TFA mentions that they will probably just ask you to stop if you do something antisocial. It doesn't say, but I think it reasonable to assume they would use judgement and discretion, considering the care with which the CoC was written.
If you like I'll make a joke about your mother, and we can put your claim to the test.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I TAed a class at an Ivy League CS department last semester. It was sad to see that students would rather wait in line to talk to me (a male TA) during office hours than approach the available female TA sitting next to me. This behavior does not help anyone. This is probably the kind of problem that Brown's student advocates will be addressing, not recommending to fire/expell faculty/students or influencing faculty hire decisions.
Don't be ridiculous, a desire for and acceptance of an open and frank discussion of gender issues in tech is a manifestation of the privilege that while males have.
For the sake of marginalized groups, we must instead have carefully controlled discussions of gender issues where the permitted arguments and conclusions are all determined in advance to avoid making anyone feel unwelcome.
If the geek can't accept an open and frank discussion of gender issues in tech, then Slashdot has no future.
An open and frank discussion is very very welcome.
Where do we get one?
Because the framework of teh discussion, the one we are presented with, is me in IT are sexist pigs.
It's the equivalent of going up to someonje and calling them a vile name, and then when they get angry, saying "See? See? All the proof you need that I am right!"
There is no frank and open discussion because the problem is already "solved" no other possibility is allowed.
So here is the problem as I have read it.
Young girls have the eexact same passion for STEM careers as young boys.
But society forces young girls into other careers by abusing them with things like Barbie dolls, Dongle jokes, fat shaming, and using a playmate model's face as a subject for image processing. Now re-read that and see if it makes any sense to you. If it wasn't given as exact examples of why women don't go into STEM.
And the men are terrible sexist, harassing pigs.
Okay - there is the framework Those are what chase women who have a passion for STEM away from it. And it is the fault of males 100 percent.
Now if we were having an open and frank discussion, I would be allowed to ask questions.
Here they are.
Does none of these issues exist outside of STEM?
Many young women go into business. If those issues I stated keep women out of STEM - how does the fact that many business employ escorts, women whose job it is to entertain out of town guests. And when I mean entertain, I mean go to dinner, have a nice evening and then hop between the sheets, for some in-depth entertainment.
Having worked in IT, I know of no women who are employed to have sex with men. I know if I was female, I'd go apeshit crazy over that. I know my wife who worked in the business world, encountered some very personal and very intensively real sexual harassment. Oddly enough, instead of running away, she ended up destroying the guy in question.
Next question is - have these career choices that women are not chased away from not ever have any situation in which the woman or young lady was made uncomfortable? That would be a pretty charmed existence indeed. If the worst thing I ever had to listen to was two women telling dongle jokes, well first I'd laughh - I cannot imagine I would ever try to get them fired.
Now I would like to ask a positive question - Why now are fields such as veterinarian rapidly becoming the sole province of women? Is there something that can be learned from the overwhelming success the field has had in attracting women that can be learned?
Next in this discussion, I wouldn't even be considered competent to address these issues, but I have a long history of working to recruit young ladies into STEM careers. We did a lot of recruiting, and a lot of work with young ladies to try to get them interested. The results? almost zero. Most young ladies wanted to be lawyers, next up was vets. More girls wanted to be pop singers than STEM workers.
In addition We were doing as much as we could to hire and retain women. We even fast tracked them for promotions. I gave up several promotions for that purpose.
And experience wise, when I started there in the mid-70's, there were more women working in the STEM positions. Some retired, some left over time, some switched careers.
In the end, I developed an opinion that runs contrary to what we are told is the problem.
Young ladies as a demographic are simply not interested in STEM. The first wave of women who graduated college in the early 70's tried out many careers. After the initial experimentation, they settled on careers they liked. Business, medical, financial (for careers considered professional.
That being said, there are also women who are interested in STEM. I've worked with a number of them, and tthey do
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This is exactly the kind of politically correct garbage that has led to the rise of Donald Trump. Be careful what you wish for. What Brown, and many other Universities I suspect, is doing is reverse discrimination. Plain and simple. White males are getting screwed over at the expense of people of color.
Were there injustices in the past? Sure, just ask the Jewish, Irish, Chinese and Italians. Not to mention Native Americans. But how does tipping the scales the other way help? All it does is promote resentment. Meanwhile the diversity fanboys prance around claiming the world is a better place.
What ever happened to earning your way based on merit? Schools, of all places, aught to be promoting this. Education should be the great equalizer. It is one of the few areas where you can succeed solely on hard work, talent and drive. There are countless examples of people that have succeeded in higher education despite coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and despite not being a white male.
What really makes this infuriating is the corporations lining up to support it. The end game for them is more H1-B visas. By promoting diversity they help to indoctrinate the idea that we should have more people of color in IT jobs. And where do you suppose those people are coming from? Well, they are not coming from the UK or Europe. They are coming primarily from India, China and increasingly from Vietnam and the Philippines. It is nothing more than a cheap source of labor.
Now getting back to Trump. Love him or hate him events like this are giving rise to people like him. People that see America getting taken advantage of again and again. People that see our generosity being taken for granted. People that observe others that shun our laws. People that see our jobs disappearing. They see all of this and they are pissed off. Pissed off that our elected officials not only stand by and allow it to occur - they actively participate in it.
Not all of us are narrowminded basement dwellers... Some of us are actually interested in things beyond neckbeard technology articles. (Which isn't what made Slashdot great in the first place.)
Then find them elsewhere. There's whole Internet out there with all the inclusiveness debate and articles a person interested in them could want, and then some.
This is a technology oriented site, there's only more technology out there and diluting the content to make it some kind of catch-all site for things doesn't make this site better, it makes it worse. What made Slashdot great wasn't stories about hot button social issues, but stories about technology. Technology has only multiplied since I signed up -- there were no tablets, smartphones, solid state disks, etc etc etc" 10+ years ago.
Inclusiveness and other related debates are largely political and sociological -- you could just find-replace "IT" with "law" or "marketing" or "accounting" or any other field and largely have the same debate.
And calling it "a debate" is pretty thin to begin with, it's more of a set of accusations by one side who then use the terms of their own accusations to negate any opposition. 'White males in $field are privileged and use their privilege to suppress $group." "No, they aren't." "Your privilege prevents you from seeing the problem, your arguments are invalid."