[robonerd]

Speaking as a girl, I've never at all been interested in doing PR or spirit. That's not why I joined a robotics team. We're never pushed directly away from design or building, but we've often encountered sexist attitudes from other students - not the experienced members, who know to back off, but newbies who seem to think they know everything.

Sometimes our lead mentor makes jokes about us not being able to drive. He never questions our mechanical abilities, and we know he actually doesn't believe in whatever it is he's saying - he's an equal opportunity offender - but his jokes lead others to think that those kind of comments are acceptable.

Many of the girls on the team have grown so sensitive to this issue that any time someone says something that can be looked at as sexist, we jump down his throat. There's a whole culture change that needs to occur to fix this.