I hope you are joking. regardless, it's in rather poor taste.

A straight male cross-dressing to fake diversity is at best missing the point.

Not really. To me, it doesn't make a difference whether they have a female, a transgender, a cross dresser, or a male, but it seems to make a world of difference to some people.

It's all very well and good to throw the occasional bone to women folk and those coloured people but god damn it, not when it threatens the ability to extend my privilege unchecked.

The fact that you think we NEED to throw them a bone is ludicrous. What's wrong with letting Merit determine reward?

Surely someone in a wig and some black face would help students focus on the real problems facing people every day, like how to make more profitable leisure time pursuits.

The strange thing is, YOU seem to think that someone withOUT a wig and with A black face helps the students focus on the real problems facing people every day.

I don't think you realize what the problem even is. Diversity (or lack thereof) is a symptom, not a disease. It's the "I'm not racist, I have black friends" of social gatherings.

Pretty much exactly this. They university was going to have an educational meeting, but when their female speaker dropped, they said "Nah, it's gonna be a sausage party anyway" and cancelled it. So I guess gender matters more than merit according to them?

Promoting diversity in educational settings is one of the primary tools available to us in order to help improve representation of minorities in industry.

Sure, and one of the problems with this event was that apparently of the (as I've read) 9 people in attendance only one of them happened to be a woman. I mean, that alone raises a couple of questions...

HOWEVER given that she had to, for some unknown reason, had to drop out at the last minute, really shouldn't have meant cancelling the whole event (and lets not kid ourselves, 'postponed' at this point in the year is cancelled until next year.) as you stop EVERYONE getting what would still be good advice from 8 'Legends' of the industry - that is still worth while.

What you've got now is 8 people who had their time potentially wasted (how many where come from a different city? a different STATE?) and a class of students have lost out on some good education all because (and I'm basically quoting the 'point' of the point/counter point articles presented earlier, written by a woman at that) no one had a vagina.

As I opened with the fact there was only one woman on the panel to make it 'diverse' was insane to start with anyway (and I'm assuming this was ok'd by those who went on to cancel it?) - both in terms of the number and the requirement for 'diverse'. So we had 8 dude and one woman? OK, how many black people? Hispanic? how many trans? Were they all straight or did we have any gays in the panel? Was anyone disabled?

And no, I'm being serious - if the argument is being made that the panel was 'diverse' when it had one woman on it what the fuck does it say about the rest of the 'diversity types' I listed?

I mean, lets say I manage to organise a science event where I manage to get Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking and Carolyn Porco to talk - do I have to cancel the event if one of them pulled out?
If Neil goes; whoops... all white people.
If Stephen goes; whoops... all abled bodied.
If Carolyn goes; whoops... all men.

Yes, we should be encouraging people, all people, to get in to this industry (because I hate all people and want them all to suffer the low pay and long hours ;)), and yes panels and presentations should have a better mix than All White Dudes, but at the same time we shouldn't be throwing away educational sessions just because, for reasons outside of someone's control, we happen to end up with All White Dudes; that helps no one.

Oh.. and I'm calling Bullshit on anyone using the term 'Right Side Of History' - It's a bullshit term which does nothing other than attempt to shut down any and all conversation and basically is the same as saying "because I said so" but with more egotistical "I'm Right!" arseholeness about it.
Fuck people who use that term to predict things they are doing are going to be seen as 'right'.

You know, I see a lot of bitching and moaning about diversity advocacy in here. Let me ask something: how many people in this thread are not white males?

I suspect I'm going to offend some idiots with that question. It strikes me as hollow if not downright laughable for a bunch of guys to sit on the internet and complain about diversity initiatives for game development IN a game dev space that is catastrophically bereft of women and probably of non-white people as well. One sided doesn't even begin to cover it.

I'm fairly certain these problems predate universities by a good decade.

I'm confident that these problems predate universities by millennia. I'm also fairly certain that one of the best places to enable fundamental systemic change is though centres of higher learning.

I think USC has had a lot of success with this single move, just by getting people talking about it. In fact, I think that may have been why they seized the opportunity to make a point. Meanwhile it's easy to keep reeling out the rope people want to use to hang themselves, metaphorically speaking. Keep up the comments.

I'm confident that these problems predate universities by millennia. I'm also fairly certain that one of the best places to enable fundamental systemic change is though centres of higher learning.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I was referring to age, not to history.

The problem is a cultural one, starting from the day someone is born. College's role is to facilitate that change by not getting in the way; don't make stereotypes based on gender, don't push people in directions they're not otherwise inclined. If the problem is that, e.g. women don't enter engineering in significant-enough numbers (and that is an actual problem), then the response is to figure out why they don't do it, and university is way too late at that point. Anything a University can do is just going to mask the problem by forcing it to look "even", which in programming parlance is just a shitty bugfix. I've already said this once: We can't solve this problem by treating its symptoms.

I think USC has had a lot of success with this single move, just by getting people talking about it. In fact, I think that may have been why they seized the opportunity to make a point. Meanwhile it's easy to keep reeling out the rope people want to use to hang themselves, metaphorically speaking. Keep up the comments.

Honestly, I don't think they have.

Oh, sure you'll get a group who will yell about this being a 'feminist attack on <whatever>', and sure you'll get a group which says 'no, not having the panel is better than a panel of all men' and frankly, in this situation, both are utterly wrong.

USC on the other hand looks dumb for having called this off at such short notice because one of the panellist pulled out - they impacted people's potential education because ONE person pulled out. There was still good information there, they could have started by pointing out they wanted to have a woman there but for <reasons> couldn't because Shit Happens and then got on with giving out the good information was which still going to be in the room.

Yes, in an ideal world the panel would have been diverse and the loss of one person wouldn't be an issue - but we don't live in an ideal world, and I maintain that in situations like this a bit of pragmatism would have been preferable to what amounts to harming the education of other women because there wasn't one woman on the stage.

I also don't think they seized anything to make any sort of point - while I'm certainly not siding with the anti-diversity parade (although I'm sure people are already thinking that) to some degree, coupled with the 'right side of history' comment this was someone putting there views in front of the education of the student body, both male and female, and feeling nothing short of righteous while doing so.

They have not done themselves any favours.

One of the articles say that the majority of graduate student are female so the school is doing something right to get females into the STEM fields. I understand why they cancel a event with a name 'Legends of the Games Industry' when there is no woman on the panel. They do not wish to give the large group of female students the impression that they think there are no legendary female developers in the games industry. The mistake was made by the school early on when they only signed up only one woman for the event. I'm sure they will think about that in the future.

So no, i do not think this is a evil plan by the politically correct society :).

Anything a University can do is just going to mask the problem by forcing it to look "even", which in programming parlance is just a shitty bugfix. I've already said this once: We can't solve this problem by treating its symptoms.

Not necessarily true. Expanding the number of <insert group here> in a particular field increases the number of potential role models for members that group. Without role models, people who might be interested in a field tend not to go into it. This doesn't just apply to programming or other technical fields; how many girls choose not to go into (eg.) carpentry as a career because they look at it and see that it consists mainly of men? How many boys choose not to go into nursing because most nurses are women?

In some sense, these choices are quite rational - why would you choose to go into a career when you don't think you'll fit into the culture? Looking at the demographics of a field and seeing yourself reflected or not reflected in those demographics can have a profound effect on your perception of that field. If part of the problem is that some fields are seen as the domain of certain demographics, then refuting those perceptions can be a part of the solution. Saying "we'd just be treating the symptoms!" therefore seems to me like an excuse not to do anything.

Not necessarily true. Expanding the number of <insert group here> in a particular field increases the number of potential role models for members that group. Without role models, people who might be interested in a field tend not to go into it. This doesn't just apply to programming or other technical fields; how many girls choose not to go into (eg.) carpentry as a career because they look at it and see that it consists mainly of men? How many boys choose not to go into nursing because most nurses are women?

While you bring up a good point, I'd say artificlally expanding the number of <insert group here> in a particular field is just going to lead to large numbers of people that hate <insert field here>. Of the programmers here (which nearly everyone in this topic, is from my memory), we've all seen the people that get into the field "for the money". The vast majority of them are miserable and hate what they do. And frankly, I'm not okay with that kind of collateral damage in the hopes that a few people magically discover themselves.

The best way to create role models is to cultivate the people in <insert group here> that do go into <insert field here>, and allow them to succeed.

Actually, on that note, I'm curious... does anyone know of any studies examining large-scale diversity initiatives (e.g. STEM scholarships) and workplace happiness? I'd imagine not, because there's a ton of confounding variables involved (like the "cultural fit" problem Oberon mentioned above), but it'd be interesting.

Many, myself included, have pointed out the event was called "Legends of the Games Industry" where students were going to be able to get advice and pick the minds of veterans in the industry. The event wasn't called "Diversity in the Games Industry" so them cancelling it over diversity was absolutely idiotic. Having diversity is obviously good, but not at the price of being forced into an event; though, is it really diverse if only one woman would have been on the panel to begin with?