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.

[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.

[Lil' Lavery]

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

[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.

[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.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

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.

I understand - it was necromanced so I found it a good opportunity to bring up a point.

[ATannahill]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

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.

To emphasize your point. This thread's last comment before today was from the first month I was in high school. I have since graduated from a 4.5 year university.

If this conversation continues (which I do not discourage), it might be a good idea to start a new thread and allow the conversation to start fresh.

[Sirdickey]

Diversity should not come at the cost of showcasing excellent and proper work. Ever.

[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.