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https://www.cnet.com/news/brigham-young-university-women-in-math-poster-features-men/ Admin Note]: More info has come out about this event that changes almost everything about reacting to it. Curt posted the additional info in a comment below. Please read that additional info before writing a comment about the link.Hehehe :clap: :clap: :clap: They really should’ve changed the title. Here’s a few suggestions for the future:
“Women in Math: Myth or Fact?”
“Women in Math: We’ve heard they are great.”
“Women in Math: We’d sure like to get some.”
“Women in Math: Please. We’re so alone.”
It was really a faux-pas on their part, but the truth is… looking over the
BYU Math Department FacultyI don’t think the BYU Math Department is worth all the heat they are getting over this. They desperately want women. They are trying to cater to women, to get them interested in the Math programs. Rather than malicious, they are really just being the well-meaning, yet socially-inept, un-seductive math geeks that they are.
Going after the all-male Church Leadership is one thing, but targeting the Math Department feels like hitting below the belt.
^ “Women in Math: I love them.”
For the record, I don’t think this is an issue with the church or BYU in particular, I think it’s much more general than that. When I was at college there was always a big push in the engineering schools to attract more women and my college had absolutely nothing to do with the church.
There are no words. At least the math department is trying. The Sisters’ Meeting poster is embarrassing and utterly tone deaf. This additional info is important: The person who made the poster is a female student leader of the student group, Women in Math. She invited four professors who were not affiliated with the group, in order to connect the women in the group with more professionals in the field. She missed the problems with the way the poster was organized and the impressions it gave. She issued a heartfelt apology, in which she took full responsibility for the uproar.
1) This should serve as a great reminder how easy it is to misunderstand and misconstrue something – and then to spread misinformation and ridicule over an innocent mistake.
2) The student has had her teeth kicked in, metaphorically, by many thousands of people at this point – and her mistake has been ridiculed and used a single proof of the Church’s insensitivity to and oppression of women on lots of sites. We won’t do that here, since we now are aware of what actually happened.
Fwiw, I think this would be an excellent thread to discuss point number 1 above. I think it is a good opportunity for self-reflection, and those opportunities are important.
I feel so so sorry for the female math student who made the poster. She obviously was making significant efforts to involve more women in STEM based on her explanatory comments, and her blunder with the poster has undermined that. I only hope that more people end up attending the event as a result of all the extra publicity it has inadvertently received, and that the original purpose.is accomplished of getting more women interested in math! Quote:
2) The student has had her teeth kicked in, metaphorically, by thousands of peopleThread jacking just a bit – but this rage issue is everywhere. My barely twenty year old son talks about how favorite websites and groups he used to participate in are just full of angry filled people. If a video game isn’t just what someone thought it should be they spend days and hours calling for the creators to be fired. Pages of online verbal beatings take place. If anyone dares say, “Well I liked it.” Too bad. They are verbally run over and destroyed.
Snark is the light end, viciousness at the other end.
Today instagram and twitter are waring over the outcome of Olympic ladies figure skating.
Admin NoteI am guilty of being wound up. I knee jerk react all the time. My response includes me looking at my own self. I must have missed all of the teeth kicking in reactions (thankfully). Most of the reactions I see have had a, “lol, look at the irony in this
😆 ” tone.Roadrunner wrote:
There are no words. At least the math department is trying. The Sisters’ Meeting poster is embarrassing and utterly tone deaf.
Hey at least they used pink and pastel colors.
By the way, the best math teacher I had was female. Women are few and far between in this subject area. Much like a lot of laboring jobs.
I applaud the intentions of the “Women in Math” group. Information Technology is another field that needs more women representation.
I greatly lament that in our present day, our supposed enlightened times have led us simply to be quicker to judge and sharper in our judgments. It’s easy to point out the flaws and assumed moral shortcomings of strangers. This appears to be a an example of wanting to find something insidious in what was nothing more than an innocent and embarrassing mistake. Maybe we’d be better off in all aspects of our interactions with others if we first assumed innocence before assuming deficiency. On Own Now wrote:
I greatly lament that in our present day, our supposed enlightened times have led us simply to be quicker to judge and sharper in our judgments. It’s easy to point out the flaws and assumed moral shortcomings of strangers. This appears to be a an example of wanting to find something insidious in what was nothing more than an innocent and embarrassing mistake. Maybe we’d be better off in all aspects of our interactions with others if we first assumed innocence before assuming deficiency.
This was a bit gauche, let’s be frank. But in the LDS we do things like this all the tme without realising it.
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