On September 18-20, UW hosted Hack the North for the second time, a hackathon which brought together students from across North America to create a unique software or hardware products from scratch.
Hack the North is an annual event sponsored by the Faculty of Engineering and one that is meant to be a place to show the best of UW. However, not everything went according to plan this year. Two hackathon attendees were removed from the hackathon due to inappropriate online comments around bombs, referencing Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year old from Texas who was arrested for bringing a clock to school because his teacher assumed it was a bomb.
The news of Hack the North (HtN) events went viral, with a large contingent of those online vociferously speaking out against the decision. This included one prominent Hack the North co-founder and UW student. Users of Reddit and 4chan decided to partake in their own brand of internet vigilante justice which included sending threats to the person they believed primarily responsible for the decision.
I would like to start with a qualifier. Whatever your opinion is regarding the decision to remove two students from Hack the North due to inappropriate Facebook comments around bombs, this was in no way parallel to the situation in Texas, where a fourteen year-old Muslim boy was arrested for bringing a clock he had developed to school. One was two people being removed from a fun, voluntary event, because they specifically referenced the creation of a bomb. The organizers who removed them made it clear they were aware the comments were an attempt at humour but deemed them inappropriate enough for removal. Ahmed’s arrest, on the other hand, was the humiliation of a young boy by his own educators (people whom he trusted and who were in a position of power over him). Unlike at HtN, no attempts were made to discuss the situation with Ahmed or to investigate if there was a legitimate concern for safety. The decision to arrest him was rooted in Islamophobia.
These events are not the first controversies HtN has faced this year. Earlier in the summer, a Reddit post which questioned what role gender played in the decision in accepting applicants went viral. The post was filled with comments suggesting that HtN and tech companies in general were prone to hiring women over more qualified male counterparts in an effort to meet diversity quotas. [Pause. This isn’t true. There is a great deal of data and research available which proves over and over again that the tech world is biased against women and minorities, not towards them. I am not going to share this evidence again for those unconvinced]. Once again, the same prominent HtN co-founder repeatedly commented that gender played no role in the selection process and that “there was literally no bias.” Because those screening the HtN applicants have found a magical ability to rid themselves of inherent human bias.
What do these two controversies have in common with each other? Well they both serve to make minority students (women, Muslim students, etc.) feel uncomfortable at HtN. It sends the message that these students are not welcome at this prominent UW event. Although the students who made the inappropriate jokes were removed, the dominant narrative around the situation continues to be the idea that this was the wrong decision and was the result of someone acting too quickly. The idea that students who were upset by the news of Ahmed Mohammed may not be able to digest these comments as humour is completely lost in the discussion. It should be noted that while the HtN team published an official statement which stood by the decision to remove these students, they did not speak out against the content of these comments and the impact they may have had on students. Meanwhile, the discussion around gender bias at the event was full of sexist and demeaning comments from people including HtN attendees as well as UW students. The comments implied, among other things, that female HtN attendees were only accepted to the event because of gender. Although the discussion was clearly a significant one and revealed a lot of persistent issues present in the tech world, there was no official response from HtN.
Hackathons do not exist in a bubble. UW does not exist in a bubble. As much as we would like to believe STEM is a meritocracy, just like the rest of the world, it isn’t. And as much as Hack the North organizers would like to believe that their event is perfectly open to everyone, this is simply not true.
Here’s the problem: Hack the North is a really prominent event for UW. It’s an event sponsored by the entire faculty. All the messaging around Hack the North makes it clear that this an important event to be at if you are a UW student, particularly if you happen to enjoy coding. Yet, we continue to allow these events to remain uncomfortable for at least a portion of students. If events such as HtN are so important to the UW community and students, why can we not take the few extra steps required to make these events inclusive to all UW students?
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