Inclusivity at MHacks: Refactor
MHacks: Refactor is about bringing together a community of passionate and hardworking makers, creators, and builders, including those who you might not typically see around the average hackathon. To us, the ideal hacker could be the artist who has always wanted to create an app, but didn’t know how. It could be the veteran hacker who has another amazing hack idea she wants to work on. It could be the transgender high schooler from the other side of the world who thinks hacking is the greatest thing on the planet. At the end of the day, it’s about bringing together a community of people who share the the drive to make, create, and build.
Of course, an environment isn’t truly inclusive unless it’s comfortable for all minority groups. Our applicant pool comes from an amazing and diverse mix of genders, races, ethnicities, academic backgrounds, and life experiences. All of these perspectives should be represented, and we plan to do our best to make sure both our hackers and our mentors reflect that. Studies have shown that people work better and are more creative in more diverse environments. We want to make sure people who are normally not exposed to hacking and who might even be actively discouraged from it get a chance to see what they can do and how amazing our community can be.
By making public our decision to have a 50/50 male/female ratio we want to make it clear just how important inclusivity (in this case specifically, gender inclusivity) is to us. This isn’t going to be hidden under the hood or just snuck in because if we’re doing something, it will be with conviction. At MHacks 6, we held a Women@MHacks initiative which had phenomenal speakers and a collaborative environment. We want to cultivate that open environment throughout the entire hackathon for all people of all backgrounds.
MHacks: Refactor extends the inviting environment into the entire hackathon by applying the methods used to make Women@MHacks to the main event. For one, there will be a more diverse mentor and speaker base. There are many incredibly talented and highly successful individuals who also qualify as minorities and we want them to be more accessible to everyone. On top of the larger initiatives from Women@MHacks, there will also be subtler changes like personal pronoun name tag stickers and hygiene products in the bathrooms. By taking our experiences from Women@MHacks and building upon them for MHacks: Refactor, we’re making an inclusive open atmosphere.
One cannot establish a gender-neutral campaign to select a gender-neutral population from a gender-biased one. In order to reach a point where we can be gender-neutral, we need active rather than passive community action. Therefore, we’re implementing major initiatives like increasing the number of applications we receive from minority groups to maintain and achieve our metric standards. To do this, we’ve been reaching out to many organizations and communities that work towards correcting minority imbalances to make sure we can meet our standards. Our metric standards haven’t changed and won’t be lowered to meet our initiatives. Our standards always have been to find hackers who are motivated, excited, and willing to learn. Yes, our attendees are [insert background], but they are also hackers. Neither of those titles weakens the other — rather, they strengthen each other. In fact, we all strengthen each other when we commit to working together in order to better our community.
Written by MHacks Director Shayna Mehta and Mentorship Coordinator Preeti Mohan. Special thanks to Mayank Patke, Maggie Orton and Colin Szechy.
