[samd]

First two comments come right out the gate and cast doubt on the authors experiences. One goes on and says women and minorities, particularly blacks, are not smart enough to make it through difficult CS classes.

This is pathetic Hacker News, pathetic.

[apsec112]

I don't doubt her experiences - I have no trouble believing that people are more likely to ask black women if they're lost. IIRC, this kind of stereotyping is well-documented.

I do take issue with her blaming the CS107 professor for contributing to sexism. She seems to be saying that CS107 is discriminatory merely because it is difficult and many people drop out. She notes that women seem to drop out disproportionately often, but this might not be something the professor has the power to do anything about - she certainly doesn't say anything the professor does which might be part of the problem, other than just making the class hard. Watering down core classes in the name of increasing diversity doesn't help anyone.

[brohoolio]

The biggest barrier I've run into while mentoring lower income kids is time on a computer. They don't know how to type. They haven't had time to explore or play around.

It does take some privilege to have a computer. Maybe the kids who are dropping out haven't had the time. Maybe they just need a longer runway to get up to speed.

[lizdenys]

There are many informal ways study groups organize that leave various groups behind. They can form around extracurriculars, and freshmen in computer clubs tend to have significant previous exposure and some experience. Groups can form around independent living groups, which often are gendered and often have large libraries of past class notes. And, of course, social circles often bias themselves based on race.

Connecting students with upperclassmen in their majors, assigning study groups, creating additional projects or courses to help newcomers learn are all ways to counteract the negative effects of study group bias without watering down the material at all.

[quanpod]

Someone can still be a great engineer and struggle through an early class - there's plenty of reasons for this to happen and universities/colleges need to address these problems.

For example - someone who has never coded before in their life - there shouldn't be some expectation that you had a computer growing up, built a website for peers in middle school and are already an expert by the time you hit your first class. There's plenty of capable people who a) never had the advantages/wealth to support some of these things b) haven't discovered their interest and "weed out" core classes don't help with that. You may take longer to get up to the same place as someone with the advantages above, but that doesn't rule you out from being an effective engineer/computer scientist.

[DougMerritt]

Friends who majored in music theory (not performance, which is worse) tell me that you have to pass a competency test to be admitted into the school as a college freshman.

(At least, at the good schools; this may not be true at third rate schools, I wouldn't know.)

This requires that someone spent years playing an instrument, typically with lots of instruction, both of which are very hard to do with no money.

Some may get this free in high school, but the high school I went to had performance exams to get into those high school freshman classes.

There was no music at all at my junior high.

I got 6 months of instrument training in 6th grade, and that was all that public schools offered me, and I know that some people had even less than that from the schools in their area.

The point being that it's not just computers. If we want to give an equal opportunity to students, there's a tremendous amount that needs fixing that is not at all limited to computers.

[andrepd]

It definitely does need fixing, but not by simply admitting/hiring more minorities until the statistics are agreeable (easy) but by actually making those deep structural changes to enable true equality of opportunity for all (much harder).

[DougMerritt]

Yes; I really dislike adjusting statistics, because it's off-target, whether it's easy or not, but I definitely agree that opportunity is the desirable thing to equalize.

Each racial group has subsets that trend towards different desires; e.g. as a white guy I knew lots of other white guys in high school who were anti-intellectual, and thought that going to college inherently meant you were a snob.

I don't know how to change subgroup attitudes like that, but at any rate it sure would be nice to give opportunity to those who want it.

The primary way that that is hard is that it costs hard money. In my example, money for student instruments and money for music instructors (typically far more than for the instruments, although both are nontrivial).

(In my areas public libraries have been cutting hours (and days) for decades. This is part of the ridiculously negative trend that we, as a society, must stop being foolish about, like these other issues.)

Statistics, OTOH, averages together those who don't want, along with those who do want, which is clearly unfair to those who do want.

[quanpod]

Yes, there's definitely more that needs fixing. My stake in this fight is coming up with things that can happen so my industry (and really, the organizations I work for) can get great talent - and that involves training more & recruiting diverse engineers.

[DougMerritt]

I'm personally concerned about all students, but this sounds interesting:

> coming up with things that can happen...can get great talent

Do you mean things like the famous programs by Intel and Westinghouse or something else?

[shkkmo]

> The point being that it's not just computers. If we want to give an equal opportunity to students, there's a tremendous amount that needs fixing that is not at all limited to computers.

Very, very true.

[shkkmo]

> I do take issue with her blaming the CS107 professor for contributing to sexism.

If the professor doesn't have the responsibility to make the class accessible to a diverse group, who does?

> She seems to be saying that CS107 is discriminatory merely because it is difficult and many people drop out.

She does not say that. You implying that she says that or that that is the reason is BLATANTLY racist and sexist. The reason that there are not enough black women making it through that class is NOT because they are stupid or lazy.

I find your attitude offensive.

EDIT: I'll take your downvotes with pride. Care to actually indicate how I am wrong?

[jquery]

> One goes on and says women and minorities, particularly blacks, are not smart enough to make it through difficult CS classes.

No, the commenter said many of them were weeded out because the classes were hard. If you have affirmative action helping people get into university with lower test scores, isn't that exactly what you'd expect to see?

When you don't have logic on your side, just call people names, right?

[irishcoffee]

> If you have affirmative action helping people get into university with lower test scores, isn't that exactly what you'd expect to see?

Ah, and here we have uncovered the elephant in the room.

Damn elephant.

I'm sure this woman has a legitimate complaint, I'm sure at least two people have asked her if she was lost before. I'm also guessing she may be bloviating a little bit. Nobody in college gives a damn if you're lost, lets be honest. If you're lost, you ask for directions. Happens all the time. Unless, of course, you actually look lost. Even then, people usually don't give a damn.

I went to UMD, College Park, and the weed-out classes were damn hard. UMDCP is only a top 15 program, I can't imagine how hard Stanford would be.

[owen_griffiths]

The incessantly being asked if you are lost is the most unrealistic part of this story. My wife and I were looking for a room in Stanford last year - we really were lost. No-one gave a s..t.

[irishcoffee]

Yep sounds about right.

At UMDCP people asked me for directions all the time, and I was happy to help. Not once did I ever ask anyone if they were lost. Nobody gives a shit. They really, truly just don't. Anyone who "does" care actually doesn't, they're just trying to break the ice or whatever.

[codygman]

You should take it as a compliment, in (probably large) part it means you and your wife looked good enough to be Stanford material.

[comrh]

Just assuming she got in on affirmative action and the ones weeded out were just "not smart enough" is plain ignorant.

[jquery]

I'm not assuming she got in on affirmative action. I'm stating that affirmative action, as a policy, has consequences. One consequence is that certain demographics who initially benefit will suffer from it later.

Please learn to separate demographic differences from individual differences before calling someone ignorant.

[comrh]

Can you comprehend how there are other factors that could effect minority achievement besides your assumption that they're letting in people not smart enough? Does your "consequence" have any backing or did you just make it up?

[ironfilings]

That's nice. The rest of us are saying that racism, as a problem that exists rampantly in this society and this very valley, has consequences. One consequence is that certain demographics don't benefit as others do.

And you wanted to assume "affirmative action" had some part in this without knowing a thing about this woman. Horrible.

Please learn to stop perpetuating racism by blaming the victims. It's ignorant, disgusting, and cowardly.

[cpncrunch]

The woman is still in the class, so obviously affirmative action hasn't affected her. However it is a fact that Stanford uses affirmative action (see https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?artic... for example). I think jquery was pointing out that this affirmative action might explain the reduction in diversity after the "weeding out", which the article author mentions. It's nothing to do with racism or assuming that black people are stupid.

[vacri]

This complaining about 'first [two] comments' is getting tiresome. The comment ordering swings around a lot, especially when the article is fresh, and doesn't necessarily reflect number of upvotes - for example, right now in my feed, the top comment is '0 minutes' old and your comment is 36 minutes old.

Clearly there's more to comment ordering than karma - I find it hard to believe that in less than 60 seconds, a comment is posted, then the page is refreshed enough times by enough viewers to find the fresh karmaless comment, who then upvote it in time for me to load it on my pageview.

In short, stop it with these "top comment(s) = HN hivemind" whines.

[plorkyeran]

I don't think I've ever seen a top-level comment complaining about the top comment actually be referring to the comment that's at the top when I read it. In fact, the complaint is usually either downvoted to negative or above the comment it's complaining about.

[userbinator]

The comment ordering swings around a lot, especially when the article is fresh

Also when it's a controversial subject like diversity/racism.

[aaron695]

> This is pathetic Hacker News, pathetic.

Hacker news is open to the public last time I checked.

What is pathetic is you base the community on 'First' not on how it progresses out.

They are getting down voted atm pretty fast, this style of karma harvesting by mis-representing comments not liked by the community is pretty Reddit.

[irishcoffee]

As an aside, it could be a small indication that this community is a.) growing a bit via reddit, and b.) reaching a critical mass where maybe StackOverflow rules should be considered.

Something like, not being able to reply to the "root" of a comment tree without some paltry number of karma, like 10.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care about karma scores, but as you point out, it isn't very hard to "farm" karma if one so chooses.

[quanpod]

Absolutely agree. Reactions like this make it that much harder for folks in the industry to recruit talent through the pipeline because we're discouraging and reducing the ability of potentially qualified people from getting through.

[brohoolio]

+1

[andrepd]

Just hit the arrow.

[cpncrunch]

I'm not sure exactly which comments you're referring to. However I think the comments are casting doubt on the author's interpretation of her experience, rather than her experience itself. Nobody doubts that people asked her if she was lost. There is just some doubt as to whether it happened because of her skin colour.

Initially when I read this story I was gobsmacked. How could there be so many racist idiots at Stanford? Then I thought of other possible explanations: perhaps she was just looking around at the architecture and just looked lost?

I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I don't think it's fair to automatically assume racism. Could she not just politely ask one of the people "no, I'm not lost, why do you ask?"

[edit] please a comment explaining what you disagree with, rather than just downvoting.

[LGBT_2000]

It's disgusting.