What Can CS Departments do? Create More Student Organizations

Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones
8 min readJun 28, 2020

Couple of weeks ago I wrote about what CS departments could do to address racial inequities. I promised I would expand on the 10 suggestions provided. Here is the first: creating more student organizations.

Student organizations play a crucial role as co-curricular opportunities for students’ professional development. Student organizations come in different forms. Some are formed around professional identities, some around social activities (like games and sports), and some around social identity.

Student organizations provide students with opportunities for extending their network of connections, acquiring organizational skills, and increasing their sense of belonging. For students that are members of underrepresented or marginalized groups, these student organizations often play an even more important role. These students typically have fewer opportunities for networking outside of student organizations. They may have fewer role models and may be ignored by other groups due to unconscious bias.

Let me give you another reason.You want alumni to feel they belong to your Alumni Nation? Help them be part of your Nation while they are on campus. Real story: after looking at the roster of donors, a university realized “Oh, we don’t have many Hispanics donating money — let’s organize an event for Hispanic Alumni.” Needless to say, there was very little interest from Hispanic Alumni to come back to campus. This did not surprise us (Hispanic faculty on campus) because the University did not provide a lot of support for Hispanic students while they were students. Students left campus without feeling a personal connection to the institution. They saw their relationship to the university as almost transactional: “we pay for education, you educate us, thank you and bye bye.” Participating in student organizations can help them increase their sense of belonging before they graduate, which might lead to a more active alumni group.

Professional groups, such as ACM offer ACM Student Chapters. Their website describes the value for students as:

Student Chapters provide unique opportunities for networking, mentoring and bonding over common interests. They provide support both within the student community and to local communities outside the institution.

NCWIT provides a list of ways to engage underrepresented students. #10 in their Top 10 Ways to Engage Underrepresented Students in Computing is Connect students to support networks.

Student groups, clubs, or other formal get-togethers can help underrepresented students feel less isolated than they otherwise might and increase their sense of belonging.

It is a good idea to create a student organization for students that are underrepresented or marginalized in your field (or society). Whether it is LGBTQ+, African-American/Black, Latinx or International students, you need to help create a student organization for those groups. In my previous post I explained why you can’t take a passive approach to the formation of these groups.

Think about an 18 year old who grew up seeing images on TV that say “you are no good,” “you are a step away from jail,” a person that grew up NOT seeing leaders that look like them. By the time they come to college, they have been taught to “do your job and don’t make too much noise.” Many marginalized students fear for their lives. Students who are undocumented or have undocumented family members fear deportation. Students with disabilities (I am aware of the debate of whether to use students with disabilities vs disabled students, to see one point of view read this) sometimes worry that they might not have a fair chance at success because of lack of access, literally. Others may know they have a chance for success but will get paid 70 cents to the dollar made by others. Starting a student chapter is often not something that is at the forefront of their minds. Marginalized communities have bigger worries in their lives than “let me create a student chapter, I can help write the bylaws.” Yippee. And if they are first-generation, they may have no clue what a student organization is or what the value of a student organization would be for them.

Thus, start a student chapter. I am sure that some of you are thinking “but …”. Let me answer some of those “but” questions.

But fill-in-name-here has leadership potential. Sure, some students from these marginalized groups come to college with the initiative to succeed. Saying things like “if only we had more like fill-in-name-here” is an excuse to expect all marginalized students to be exceptional. We shouldn’t expect all students from marginalized groups to be exceptional cases, just like we don’t expect all of the students from the majority group to be exceptional. Most students from underrepresented groups have been told countless times “stay in your lane.” The idea that we should let students self-organize assumes they have the inclination, trust in the system, and initiative to do so. Society has gone out of the way to say “oh, no you don’t.”

But, I don’t have enough students to form a chapter. If your department doesn’t have enough students of a particular group to form your own local student chapter, then partner up with other departments on campus. I really hope that most campuses have a Black, Latinx, or LGBTQ+ student group. Become a sponsor of those groups. As a CS department, we often have more money than most other academic departments on campus (my apologies to smaller schools where CS is struggling just as bad as other departments). Help sponsor those student groups, buy pizza for them, collaborate to bring computing speakers to campus, help them setup peer mentoring programs. Make that group an integral part of your organization, then encourage your students to join.

But, if I have the numbers, do I really need a chapter in my department? Yes. If you have enough students to create your own group, then support the creation of a group within Computer Science. I am always surprised how easily we accept the notion that we need safe spaces for women but the same logic doesn’t apply for students of color, LGBTQ+ students or even students with disabilities. The very same reasons why we need groups for women apply to other groups. Affinity groups help provide support, mentoring, and retention and success for members of these communities. There is power in understanding that the struggles I am facing are not mine alone and that others are experiencing similar situations.

But, if I have a group for Black students, don’t I need one for white students too? I had written an answer to this but someone close and dear to my heart pointed me to some wonderful resources that address this much better than I can. Here is a quote from Affinity/Alliance Groups Frequently Asked Questions by Rosetta Eun Ryong Lee, Seattle Girls’ School, Seattle, WA, accessed on June 27th.

Those of us who have privileged identities are affirmed on a daily basis in many ways — we are reflected in government leadership, in media, in school curriculum, and more. For example, those of us who are white do not have to look very far to see a role model, protagonist, or leader who looks like us. Those of us who are able bodied rarely enter a building where we have to worry about whether we can get into it or get upstairs, whether there are braille signs for us to navigate, or if announcements will be posted as well as verbally announced on the paging system. Those of us who are of comfortable income aren’t consumed by thoughts of where our next meal is coming from or whether we will have a roof over our heads by week’s end. We don’t consider these special privileges because we are granted them almost all the time; we are like fish thinking that the water is nothing special. However, there are those of us with identities that are rarely given that affirmation — in fact, we are told disparaging things about our groups. We are like the land dwelling animals struggling to breathe and function in the water. Affinity groups offer a space where marginalized groups can experience welcome and affirmation.

Sadly, for many, this is a unique space, so it is especially helpful to have affinity groups for marginalized identities. There are privileged-identity affinity groups that come together to discuss privilege and using that privilege to help create a more just world (Anti-Racist White Allies, National Organization of Men Against Sexism, etc.). If you are interested in starting such a group, please speak up!

Yeah, that.

But, we don’t have a faculty to be a mentor for the group. This is no surprise given that in computing, the underrepresentation goes all the way up the faculty ranks. However, I am sure you have someone in your department that is supportive of the struggles these groups have experienced. If you are lucky, you might even have a strong ally. Contrary to what you think, we all have a friend, family member, neighbor, or classmate that has been able to help us understand the dynamics of their marginalized groups. I worked with LGBTQ+ faculty that have helped me understand their challenges. I have known professors that grew up in New York and knew a lot about the Puerto Rican culture & community there. I have known Jewish professors that are strong allies to other marginalized communities. These are all allies in the struggle for equality. Maybe they want to help?

So, make a mental note, if you need a mentor for those groups, shouldn’t you prioritize in your next faculty hiring that you hire someone with experience working with marginalized communities? If your answer is “no” then you really don’t care to address the problem, and I don’t know why you are still reading this document.

But, we will wait until we hire a faculty to be a mentor for the group. I hope you realize that you will not have enough underrepresented faculty to serve as mentors anytime soon. So that can’t be your excuse. You are aware of the CRA’s Taulbee Survey, right? Just look at this past year. Table F8. Current Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty by Gender and Ethnicity, from 162 Departments. There are a total of 107 Hispanics faculty and 85 African-American faculty in this category. Yes, that’s right. That is less than 2 African-American Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty in CS per US State (mind you, the Taulbee survey includes Canada) and just over 2 Hispanic per state. Let that sink in, about 2 per state. And if you look at Full Professors (who should be the ones taking a heavier burden of service), there are 47 Hispanics and 23 African-American. Oh, and if you really want to hear something scary, filter those numbers by gender. Female African-American Full Professors in CS: 5. Female Hispanic Full Professors: 24 according to the 2019 Taulbee.

But, WE DO have ONE Black faculty, it is their job to be a mentor for them, right? Oh no, tell me you didn’t just think that. Please beware of the minority tax and the overburden that these marginalized communities face. I won’t say much about it here/now, but read this article in Inside Higher Ed to understand this phenomenon.

In closing, there is no better way for you to learn about the climate in your department than to listen to what your student organizations have to say. Help create those groups, help them mentor each other, and provide a direct communication channel from those groups to your departmental administrators. The result will be a more inclusive community.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for another installment in a few days. It took me longer than I expected to get this one posted because lots of people want to do the right thing. And those people, in academia at least, are seeking out those of us that have lived experiences in these topics. It is an undue burden, but at this moment, it feels a bit different. It feels like more change is possible and maybe, just maybe, coming soon.

Be safe, be well, and continue raising the voices of those that historically have been marginalized. Peace.

PS Thanks to Rita Pérez-Padilla for the wonderful additional resources linked on this writeup and her superb editorial skills. And as they say, any typo or stupid idea left in the writeup is mine.

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Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones

Puerto Rican PhD in Computer Science, love salsa, sports, diversity, scifi, and comics. Opinions are mine & don’t reflect my employer.