Ethnic and Gender diversity in FIRST

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by FourPenguins

Don't support diversity by excluding people or by favoring people who don't care about your team or about robotics. Support diversity by reaching out to the communities you wish to attract.

This is the most important thing said in this thread. It goes along with my feelings on "No Child Left Behind" - too often it becomes "Don't let anyone get too far ahead". Don't take away opportunities from someone because another person is disadvantaged. Rather, seek to extend the opportunties to all.

In an environment with limited resources - only so many openings in a freshman college class, only 1 or 2 job openings, only 30 spots available on a FIRST team - it becomes a challenge to serve all who want to come. Work to create more opportunities, not to restrict.

[Pavan Dave]

I'm a minority so this issue would effect me personally. I don't like this ethinc/gender quota your team has to abide by because [culturally as well as other factors] different people work different ways. Somebody might draw a picture, somebody might mumble some works, or somebody might tap their foot. Everybody has a unique way of thinking and when you pick and choose with a quota you may be weeding out the best thinkers [whatever race/gender they may be].

You pick the best person for the job whether they are black, white, asian, hispanic, female, or male; NOT so you 'look good' when they publish your team picture in the school paper, but because they can get the job done right, on time, with a passion.

Pavan.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Pavan

You pick the best person for the job whether they are black, white, asian, hispanic, female, or male; NOT so you 'look good' when they publish your team picture in the school paper, but because they can get the job done right, on time, with a passion.

It is often difficult to discern whether an affirmative action program is intended to make a group look good, or whether it's intended to address issues with causative links to race, ethnicity, culture or other such things. Indeed, it's probably a bit of both.

There is a limited place for picking someone who isn't necessarily the best for the job, because there's a reasonable probability that their experience will lead to improvement in the underprivileged group that they represent. But I agree, picking minorities simply to embellish photo-ops is unacceptable.

[Mr. Freeman]

I really don't understand why everyone likes to advertise how diverse their team/company/organization/etc. is.
My personal belief is that a team should be open to anyone who wants to join and put in the necessary effort, period. Race, religion, favorite ice cream topping, etc. should never be discussed in relation to admissions.

I believe that the best admission system is one in which the applicant has any personally identifying information on their application run through a hashing algorythm and talks through a mediator to the evaluator. Thus, the evaluator cannot be biased towards or against the applicant regarding their race, religion, etc.

Back on topic, let's take the following example:
Let's pretend a population is 25% Hispanic, 25% black, and 50% white. If EVERYONE is on the robotics team, then the team will be 25% Hispanic, 25% black, and 50% white.
Does this mean that the team is not diverse?
Of course not, but it looks that way on paper.

What happens if you kick out half of the white team members? Then the team is 33% Hispanic, 33% black, and 34% white. Does this mean that the team is more diverse?

When someone says that their team is made up of X% minority students, it really doesn't say anything. Is their team diverse because the population in the general area is diverse? Is it because they have a quota system (ruled unconstitutional for college admissions because it actively discriminates against majority students)? Is it because they simply don't give recruiting presentations to majority students and concentrate on the minorities? Is it because the majority students at the school aren't interested in robotics and the minority students are?

The truth is that there's no way to know why a team is diverse unless you launch a reasonably intrusive, impractical, probably expensive, and tedious investigation to determine the actual cause.

Denying people a chance to be on the team because it makes your diversity figures bad is pretty close to actively recruiting minority students over majority students. In both cases, you're trying to influence who will join, not because of their skill or merit, but because of their race, religion, etc. And I haven't seen a single argument that will make me believe that favoring a demographic of people (minority OR majority) is a good thing.

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by anonymousrobot

The issue is that of the 6 students last year that were not white not male, 4 dropped out near the begining of the build season.

Have you considered or discussed why they dropped quickly?

Wetzel

[N7UJJ]

One of the missunderstaning about or diversifyijng affirmative action is that standards or performance expectations have to be lowered. If an organization is trying to attact more people and applicants are not qualified, the organization expands their search area. e.g. If my community is 95% male Anglos, to increase the female applicants, we would not lowere the standards to qualify the few females in the community, but rather recruit outside our nieghborhood for qualified females.

In a school setting, where are there a lot of minorities or females. (calculus class? Tennis team? MECHA club?) Talk to their leaders and find out what aspect of the robot club would especially appeal to them and adjust your recruiting to appeal to that group. New members should be admitted because they are fully qualified.

Another aspect is to honestly evaluate your club behaviors and be especially sensitive to unintended discrimination. It happens all the time and no one really notices it, but some groups feel there is a subtle message that they do not really belong. It's difficult to identify (hopfully) but it is important to try.

Team 842 is mostly minorities and about 50% female. We are always amazed at the stupid things we do without meaning to make someone feel uncomfortable. Our "Leave the Boys at home" experiment last year really opened our eyes to the subtle and almost constant message girls receive every day. As a result we make sure prospective girls are encouraged to work on electrical, mechanical, and driving positions, not just scrapbook, buttons, fund raising and "gofor" positions.

Anyway, don't insult anyone by lowering your standards, rather increase the recruiting pool. Find the highly qualified females and minorities and recruit them. It may take a few years before there is any really significant gains because you are really "changing the culture", not filling a quota.

[Adama]

While minority issue hasn't come to my ex highschool yet Im not sure what the team would do if it did. There are maybe 12 to18 minority students in the entire school. we could certainly use more female involvement but the minorities just aren't there to join in the first place. Most of the county is in the same situation (were the only robotics team in the county since
1464's existance in the 2008 season is questionable at the moment). It just isnt practical for anyone involved for such a mandate to come from the school board that applies to any sort of team so i dont see it being an issue in the future. Our doors are open but no one is in line.

[Ellery]

I Figure I might as well add my 2 cents in this conversation to compliment what Ed has mentioned earlier. Diversity is just another term to promote a non-stagnant culture. It does not necessarily mean purely gender or race either.

I know Xerox is one of the most diversified companies out there and to that end is one of our strengths due to the many new creative ideas brought from all parts of the world. So in brining this to our team it's one of our strengths. Sure we'd love to match the makeup of our school but it's hard to add specific aspects if you can't get any applicants in that area. Another way we focus on in our team is to make sure that students are balanced from Freshmen to senior year as well. (that helps balance th egraduating class each year to make recruting more consistent.)

The key is to provide the opportunity to those you are lacking in. That's all you can do. If they don't jump on board there's nothing wrong with filling it up with whomever applied. You just have to make that extra effort to diversify but don't blind yourself to the concept. Our team make up is pretty unique but as Ed mentioned before the Rochester City School District only has a 51% graduating to college percentage and typically 95% of all our students from the last 15 years have all gone to college. Believe me we're not specifically here for the straight A students. It's the ones who aren't motivated enough to even go to class that we try to enlist to partner up with the straight A students we do have.

For those who complain about minority benefits, I can assure you as an asian minority growing up in NYC. I didn't get any benefits in my lifetime yet, so don't throw that "minority" term around loosely since it is not all encompassing.

[falconmaster]

Ok you all dragged me in. While it is difficult to sometimes see what you might be doing to some else. It is always a great experiment to try an imaging placing yourself in their shoes. Sometimes district policies seem like they make no sense or at least they seem to be going about trying to solve the perceived situation the wrong way. Open dialog between the two parties, the team and the district, open means both sides are willing to look at the other side's point of view can usually result in a compromise that will benefit both parties.
Another way to take this situation is to turn your situation into a challenge to show how your team can over come these issues with gracious professionalism. A story comes to mind. Most of you won't know who I am talking about but the story still makes a point.
A famous marathon runner by the name of Bill Rodgers was asked once what he thought of racing and how he mentally was able to stay on top for so long. (He won 4 Boston and 4 New York Marathons, a feat no one else has done) His answer was that is was hard when he would go to races and see that there was no competition. He knew that he would win the race, but he would not be at all excited about it. He then said that when he did see people that were great runners and a threat to him that he felt excited. When asked if he got nervous or scared that he would loose, he answered no. When asked why, he said that he looked at it like this. If no one else should up that could beat me the race would be mediocre and just another race, however if some showed up that could beat me then I was looking forward to setting a world record! Its all in his attitude to make the situation work for him. So I guess my advise would be, make the situation work for you not against you.

[ctt956]

Originally Posted by Pavan Dave

I'm a minority so this issue would effect me personally. I don't like this ethinc/gender quota your team has to abide by because [culturally as well as other factors] different people work different ways. Somebody might draw a picture, somebody might mumble some works, or somebody might tap their foot. Everybody has a unique way of thinking and when you pick and choose with a quota you may be weeding out the best thinkers [whatever race/gender they may be].

You pick the best person for the job whether they are black, white, asian, hispanic, female, or male; NOT so you 'look good' when they publish your team picture in the school paper, but because they can get the job done right, on time, with a passion.

Pavan.

Well said.

[Chris Hibner]

This is an interesting thread. These topics can be difficult to talk about, but it's one that's interesting and important to me. I think diversity is very important, for multiple reasons.

First, with respect to being competitive, having a diverse team has many benefits. This isn't just in terms of FRC, but also in engineering and business in general. It's easy to fall into the thinking of the "best" (by whatever measure you can imagine) people should be on the team. The thing is, you'd be surprised how much diversity impacts the problem solving process. When you have people of many different backgrounds try to solve a problem, different people with different backgrounds bring different thought processes to a situation. This leads to some great ideas during brainstorming that may not happen with a group of people that all think alike. It really is a competitive advantage to be diverse - especially in the real world.

The second aspect is social responsibility. To many people, they don't understand how to get from their lot in life to somewhere else because they don't have the example of how to do it. I have a great personal example. I became an airline pilot. For me, that was something that "other people" did. I didn't think it was something that just anyone could do - you had to join the military, know someone, have some type of connection, or whatever. Then I knew someone that did it. I found out that it wasn't beyond the scope of possibility. More importantly, I found out from this person exactly how to do it - what I needed to do to make it happen. I followed their example and did it myself. I would have NEVER thought it was really possible without having that example path to follow. As mentors in FIRST, we owe it to the kids who think that becoming a successful professional is something that "other people do" to show them exactly how to get there.

[Lil' Lavery]

For those of you not diligent about checking dates, keep in mind this thread is from 2007.

[bstew]

Just so everyone is aware, this thread is from 2007.

Edit: Not to minimize any discussion, see Lil' Lavery's post below.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by bstew

Just so everyone is aware, this thread is from 2007.

Oh, in that case diversity is no longer important.

Sorry for the sarcasm.

In all seriousness - I don't care about the date. The topic is still a big deal in my mind.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

Oh, in that case diversity is no longer important.

Sorry for the sarcasm.

In all seriousness - I don't care about the date. The topic is still a big deal in my mind.

While I can only speak to mine, I don't believe either comment regarding the date was intended to shut down the discussion. It was simply attempting to make people aware that the OP's specific problem has likely evolved significantly in the past six years, and directly responding to the OP's scenario is both unlikely to be seen by the OP and quite possibly no longer relevant to the OP.