Due to an academic advising meeting I had today, I got to the conference late. In the opening remarks and panel, I was happy to see an ASL interpreter. None of the panelists had their pronouns in their Zoom names.
The panel was some technical talk about computing and the tech industry. I wasn't too interested in the topics being covered. One thing that did stand out to me was when a panelist stated something along the lines of "and that's what we're doing about diversity. We need diverse people bringing their thoughts". However, before stating that, the panelist was talking about her technical work within the company as an engineer. She may have been talking about her ability to be at the table and provide her diverse opinions and advancements. However, the way she said diverse people sounded like she wasn't talking about herself. Either way, she didn't really provide examples of what initiatives her company had. Hopefully I was missing something.
At about 12:30pm, the organizers released a note: "Re: pro-nouns - the omission is unintentional. Thanks for the reminder." The chat was set up so that you could submit questions to panelists and only organizers could post messages to everyone, so I don't know who and what comment this was exactly in response to. I waited about 20 minutes for the panelists to acknowledge the pronoun omission. I understand they were busy responding to questions, but there were many breaks between questions to bring this up. I posed the question "Will the panelists pronouns be listed anywhere?". Then 10 minutes later I got the following response from the organizers "Regarding pronouns, thank you for bringing up that. It is important so apologies for the oversight. We will encourage all speakers to add their preferred pronouns." Then finally, 15 minutes later when moving onto the audience questions, the moderator asked all the panelists to give their pronouns. When given, they were said out loud, and not written down anywhere. It's really disappointing how this was an oversight. This is a conference about diversity. Things like presenters giving their pronouns is the bare minimum in having a space where the LGBTQ+ community is included.
One of the final questions posed to the panelists was about having our voices heard as underrepresented groups. The one panelist talked about how the most important part of getting your voice heard is persevering. That many people aren't trying to hold you down, they just don't know you're struggling to be heard. That you just need to persevere and make sure your voice is heard. On one hand, I agree that perseverance is the only way to get through. On the other hand, I wish there was more acknowledgement on the toll that constant perseverance takes on underrepresented groups. There is an added layer of effort in just being heard. That constant extra effort is exhausting. So while perseverance is necessary, it's also easier said than done.
The first workshop I went to was titled TAs For Inclusion: Creating a Supportive and Diverse Community Through an Effective Teaching Assistants Program. The event was hosted by TAs and professors from Berea College. It was also nice to see two familiar faces from Drexel also attending the event. One being a professor I've TAed for before, the other being the professor in charge of our TA program.
The set up of the workshop was a panel with the TAs hosting it, then breakout rooms for analyzing situations, then a group discussion afterwards. To start, the TAs introduced themselves. No one introduced their pronouns until I mentioned something. I did like how they described their physical appearance. I hadn't considered doing that before.
The panel was really good. I agreed with everything the TAs said. There was a lot about the importance of diversity and inclusion in how it makes students more comfortable to participate and ask questions and seek help. The most important thing that stood out to me was the first question actually. The question was "Why are you a TA?" It was really nice to see how happy the TAs were when explaining why they do what they do. It was a good reminder of the reason I enjoy this job. Especially online, you don't get many of the benefits of TAing you normally would in person.
We then did breakout rooms for situation analysis. Before getting into what was covered, I did wanna mention something unrelated. The one organizer who had responded to my pronouns comment in the Opening Remarks was in my breakout room. There were only three people there: myself, the organizer, and one of the TAs moderating. He asked if I was the same Charlie who had mentioned pronouns earlier and thanked me for bringing up the issue. He apologized about the fact pronouns were overlooked and assured me that the Slack channels for the conference management was addressing it. On one hand, I'm glad I've had this impact. On the other hand, I wish I could just participate in this conference and not have to remind the professionals to include me.
Back to the actual content of the breakout rooms. There were four rooms and situations we could choose from. I chose the "Addressing Social Issues" room. Our situation was about a student Maria who is an international student from Venezuela. She's a bright student interested in technology. However, she's very insecure about her abilities and struggles with asking for help. When she does ask for help, she's very bright. When she falls into her insecurity and holds back her questions, her grades suffer. How do we help her overcome this?
A lot of what we discussed was more observations and life lessons. We as TAs need to make ourselves more human. We need to normalize not knowing everything and making mistakes. We also need to recognize this "loud minority" of students who boast how much they already know. It's very easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to students who pretend they already know everything because they have prior experience. It's important to recognize that we attend college because we don't know everything. It would be a waste of time and money to take classes on material you already know. We also talked about how, as an international student, English may not be her first language. So while she may understand the technical material, she may just be struggling with the language barrier. This doesn't mean she's not smart or competent, it just means we have to take extra steps to make sure our explanations aren't using language she understands. In a more practical sense, we would suggest to her to attend office hour time slots that aren't as busy. For example, when an assignment is due Friday night, more students attend office hours on Friday than on Monday because students love to procrastinate. Attending low volume office hours alleviates the stress of asking questions in front of other students who may be judgemental.
We regrouped in the main session. We were a little rushed for time here, so we didn't get to talk about all the situations in depth. The other situations were about a student with time management issues, a student discriminating against female peers, and a student concerned about their learning disability. One attendee did state in the chat "Perfect is the enemy of done" and I think that's a good quote to remember.
I got to this panel late. I think the TA workshop ended late. When I got to the panel, all the panelists had their pronouns in their Zoom names.
The panel was titled Leveraging Relationships for Success in Graduate School: Identifying Barriers and Strategies to Navigate Faculty, Staff, and Peer Relationships in Computing Graduate Programs. I attended hoping to gain more insight as I apply for graduate programs. The panel seemed to be geared more towards people already in graduate programs looking to expand. The tips I did get were:
Then the final workshop I attended was titled What Are Your Papayas? Assimilating to Belong in Computing hosted by The Papaya Project.
This workshop was the perfect one to end my day with. The people hosting the event had incredible energy. They were playing music as people entered and were excited to host the event. It was still very professional, but a lot more personal than the other events I attended.
When introducing themselves and their peers who couldn't attend, every person
included their name, pronouns, background, a physical description, and
acknowledged the land they were on. After their introductions they talked about
the importance of land and labor acknowledgements. This is the process of not
only stating where you live by its current name, but what indigenous groups this
land was stolen from. I live in the city of Philadelphia. This land originally
was inhabited by the Lenni Lenape people. The Lenni Lenape tribe was peaceful
and lived not just on, but with the land. For thousands of years, they kept the
land healthy as it did for them. During colonization, this land was stolen from
them and they had their cultures stripped from them. There have yet to be
reparations made to these indigenous tribes. In addition to the efforts of the
indigenous people to protect the land we're on today, we also acknowledged the
labor of slaves that went into tending to the land we're on. During the period
of slavery, people were stolen from their homes in other countries, had their
cultures and identities stripped from them, and were held hostage and forced to
work in America. We acknowledged that we would not be able to exist in the
capacity we do today without their stolen labor. By having these formal land and
labor acknowledgements, we start the process of providing reparations to these
groups that were harmed. While I personally am not responsible for colonization
and slavery, I still benefit from the stolen labor of enslaved people and the
quality of the land the indigenous people had stolen from them. We would not be
able to exist the way we do now without their exploitation. Land and labor
acknowledgements remind us that history has been sanitized for our comfort and
that we need to provide reparations to these groups that we exploited. To find
what traditional land you're inhabiting, you can visit
They didn't stop there. Before starting the content of the event, they discussed the rules for our space. These rules are put in place to make sure people are heard and respected.
They covered that this is not a teaching session, but a discussion to grow as a group. We then recognized our personal responsibility over the power we hold. We all hold power in many ways. We need to be mindful of this power and acknowledge what we can do with it. We should be using our power to build and empower other people. The person presenting this slide even said "I am cisgender which means I hold more power than someone who is transgender". It was really nice to have trans people mentioned without me having to bring it up first.
Now that we had established the rules for the space, we were able to start having deep and effective conversations. They first talked about the symbol of the papaya. Through colonization, the Filipino identity was whitened, both literally and figuratively. Papaya products were used for skin lightening. This caused issues of colorism, where Filipinos with lighter skin were more accepted than Filipinos with darker skin. This promotes not only white beauty standards, but that the only way to be accepted was to assimilate with these white colonist ideals. We started with the following questions:
The hosts started sharing their experiences while I typed mine in chat. When I was done sharing in chat, I spoke out loud about my experiences being LGBTQ+ in STEM. I started mostly that this question was difficult due to the phrasing "your space". While I would like to talk about how I'm treated and how I want to be treated in "my space", I have to have space to begin with. As a transgender man, there is not normally space already made for me in computing. I have to utilize diversity initiatives to get that space. Then, the issue, as seen at the conference already, I have to frequently make space in the diversity initiatives to be able to make space for me in computing. People were incredibly supportive, thanked me for the work I do, thanked me for sharing my story, and also acknowledged the effort that I have to expend to have space. Other people then shared their stories. We then entered breakout rooms to have more in depth discussions. I am not comfortable sharing other peoples stories, but I learned so much from the other participants. This event by far was the one I was most impressed with and gained the most from. These were the other questions we discussed though.
We ended with an anonymous post board of commitments we can make for ourselves. The presenter also read out Nope: A Manifesto. This event has been the highlight of the conference so far. I'm glad I attended.
Today has been a roller coaster. We started off on a disappointing foot with the first events, but The Papaya Project really turned it all around.
I'm disappointed about the organizers overlooking LGBTQ+ inclusion. I am happy that they were able to listen and quickly improve. I'm cautiously optimistic about the rest of the conference. I am glad people are willing to listen and learn. I hope I don't have to be the one to educate people.
I'm incredibly impressed with The Papaya Project and the space they created. It's because of the space they created and the conversations they were able to facilitate that have reminded me that there is space here for everyone.
The one thing I noticed is that workshop blocks overlap. There are workshops that run from 4:45pm-6:00pm, but the next workshop block starts at 5:45pm. I thought it was my own time management issues that I kept being late to events. It doesn't make sense to me why they'd schedule things like that.
Then I also joined the Discord server for the conference. It's mainly being used for networking. I saw in the "dei-general" channel someone asked for LGBTQ+ in STEM resources for trainings. I responded I'd be interested in the same things. These are the resources I have so far. I don't have time to look into them tonight.
I'm tired, but looking forward to tomorrow.