Reports of gender discrimination within Hillsborough High School’s Robotics Team have emerged, particularly with the creation of Team 428, according to several members and organizational leadership.

HHS Robotics is split into three divisions: Business, Outreach, and Tech. Tech is further split into Team 75, the upperclassmen team, and Team 428, the underclassmen team. 428, as it is commonly known, was formed two years ago in hopes of engaging more underclassmen in tech departments. However, according to student interviews, younger female members have faced disrespect and sexism from their male peers.  “The younger girls on the team would…be pushed away and sometimes even told that they are not good at what they are doing and that a guy should do those things instead,” Anvitha Banda, a junior, stated.

This issue, particularly as it appears in 428, primarily stems from immaturity, lack of experience, and a pretty severe lack of respect for others, according to Business VP and future President Vikhya Kota. 

“Many females are given ‘easier/less complex’ tasks to do, such as shadowing and fetching tools and materials for others, and are not involved in more nuanced, ‘advanced’ processes,” Team 75 tech member Daniel Lee said. He elaborated on the reasons for this, saying “male [student] leadership has excluded females from many aspects of robot-building due to presumed incompetence.”

An unnamed female in 428 elaborated on her experience with this issue. “Although not to my face, I was repeatedly called ‘incompetent’ and ‘inexperienced.’ I was also explicitly told by a male member of my team that none of the boys on the team respect me or take me seriously because I’m a girl,” she said.

Another female member stated, “I heard there were other instances on Tech from 428 especially, where the girls would offer ideas about strategy and they [the guys] would just disregard them without even listening.”

“Male leaders don’t assign work to female students,” another member of team 428 stated. “Instead, they split up all the work among their own friends and meanwhile, all the girls end up sitting on the sidelines.” She recounted an instance when a leader told a group of girls to cut up a cylinder of metal. “These girls, excited that they were finally able to contribute to the robot, just kept doing it. When they asked ‘What’s this for, anyway?’ The leader had no reply. As it turns out, this served no purpose for the robot whatsoever. It was just a decoy, so that these girls could get out of the way and ‘not screw things up’ for the robot.”

The faculty advisers, Mr. John Askew and Mrs. Jennifer Tuller, are also aware of this issue. Askew stated, “There were certain students [on 428], and it was mostly girls, but it wasn’t exclusively girls, that were given a level of busywork rather than something a little more meaningful.” Tuller and the team’s mentors, board-approved, unpaid volunteers who are parents or former students,  declined to be interviewed. 

Such frustrations are not limited to Team 428, however. “I believe that I had to work much harder than many male members on the team to be on a similar playing field,” a female member of Team 75 said, “but a lot of the time it still feels like I am not seen for my efforts.”

This issue also affects female managers and leaders. An anonymous student said, “I know that a lot of girls on tech get left out or not taken seriously. I have also heard [from] a lot of girls who have leadership positions that many boys on the team never take them seriously and do not listen to them when they try to say something.”

“My friend was the only girl manager in tech, and she definitely went through a lot,” an anonymous female alumna said. “Members were not listening to her. They were kind of just talking among themselves and doing things. So instead of going to the manager and reporting to her,  they would just be doing stuff among themselves.”

Additionally, after an all-girls meeting was held a few months prior to discuss gender discrimination among the female members of Robotics, Coordination VP Alexa Gibson recounted how male members of the team were dismissive of the event. “I remember one of the girls at the girls-only meeting was so upset because…she came into class and some of the boys who were on the team and even some of the ones who weren’t were joking about, oh, ‘Where’s the boys only meeting? This is so stupid. Are they gonna be talking about periods?’ And they’re saying all this disrespectful stuff,” she said.

Not all members share this view, however. “I personally haven’t seen much gender discrimination on the tech side of robotics,” a male member on Tech said. 

Another male member stated about Tech, “I don’t think there’s any exclusion going on.” Yet another unnamed male on Tech elaborated, “On 75, I think there was a pretty strong culture of inclusion. I don’t necessarily think that there was any unconscious bias, at least on this year’s tech side.”

One way that students are able to discuss their concerns with the team anonymously is through monthly climate surveys, which leadership and mentors use to identify major concerns in HHS Robotics. “After the climate surveys, I think Askew and Tuller started noticing more and more of these problems,” one member stated.

Kota elaborated on these questionnaires as well, speaking from her experiences with them as a member of executive leadership. “We’ve been able to see the honest feelings of a lot of people and really bring a lot of the issues into light,” she said “ Strictly based off of the climate survey, I’ve seen some change. There haven’t been any more incidents where girls were getting bullied or anything like that. I know we’re not at a place where things are perfect, and I don’t think we’ll ever be, but this has been a good start. I can see that people are at least more aware of the issues going on and therefore are more ready to confront them if need be,” she said.

The all-girls meetings also attempted to create a sense of community among the female members of Robotics, and it allowed girls from different departments to share their own experiences with gender discrimination and offer each other support. “I feel like a lot of them [girls] were able to be more comfortable discussing their issues and they realized that they weren’t the only one,” one female member said. “And after that, more of them talked to Tuller, and more of them would go to our other female mentors.”

Student leaders within the club have proposed a variety of measures to combat potential bias or discrimination for next year, including providing more training for leadership on 428. “They’re just incoming freshmen and sophomores,” Jay Taneja, the current Outreach VP and future CEO, said. “They’re not really equipped with the lessons to approach these situations.  So next year, we have plans to give a lot more training and support to that team…on how to be more inclusive and be more organized.”

“We are looking into developing a more rigorous leadership training program,” Askew said. “We’re hoping that through that training we can better equip our leadership to encourage, not just their friends, but everyone on the team or in the department to get involved.”

Increasing and improving oversight of the technical department has also been mentioned by leaders and alumni mentors. Taneja and Shilvi Shah, a former Robotics member and current Business mentor, have both suggested having more executive leadership and mentors on the Tech side supervising the members.

“Mentors are really there to keep us on the right track and ensure things are going okay,” Kota said. “In general, they know the most about the team and are the authorities to go to if anything is needed. Mentors keep the team afloat, and they do a lot of stuff behind the scenes.” 

According to several members of executive leadership, gender discrimination within Robotics ultimately stems from an excess of members on the team. “With the team being 150 members, it’s hard to oversee every single person,” Taneja said. 

Shah elaborated on this concept, explaining that because there are so many students, the mentors are unable to pay proper attention to all of the kids. “I think there’s just so many students that you can only really interact with the people who are the loudest,” she said.

Another female alumna agreed with Shah.“The mentors could be a little bit more attentive to what is happening in the warehouse, like doing rounds, seeing what’s happening,” she said.

One alumna also explained why the large size of the team has contributed to girls feeling left out. “We are a big team, and sometimes it’s physically hard to give 20 people something to do with the robot,” she said.

A male member of executive leadership has proposed tryouts and more cuts to the list of prospective Robotics members as a way to alleviate gender discrimination. Kota further elaborated on this approach. “That problem is going to be easier to approach when there’s not 150 kids, but maybe like 110 kids or 100 kids,” she said.

Principal Jeffrey DiLollo encourages students to reach out to him confidentially to share their experiences. “I’m really interested in hearing more, and I’d like to hear some first-hand experiences. That’s how we get to the bottom of this, if there are institutional barriers that are pushing individuals or precluding them from wanting to participate. I’d like to dig more deeply,” he said.

As HHS Robotics looks forward to another exciting season, the team hopes to improve interpersonal communication among team members. Kota said, “I hope that in the future, we build up a culture of kindness and respect towards everybody, and that we can all be more aware of everything that goes on and all of the subconscious habits that we have towards people.”