Stories from a Latinx Berkeley CS Student

There are many reasons I do not interact with CS majors. From being told I’m a diversity admit to CS majors picking their noses in front of me without a care in the world, I have too many to enumerate. These following stories are just some of the many I’ve collected.

Here’s one example of a member of course staff talking down to me.

Just so it’s abundantly clear what’s going on here: I asked a question ‘anonymously’ (quotations put because I’m not anonymous to course staff), and a member of course staff told me to go back to a prerequisite class that I took two years ago. They did not take the time to fully understand my question and gave me information that turned out to be completely wrong.

The member of course staff ended up responding with an explanation of their statement (not an apology!), and correcting their response to indicate that yes, my question was valid and that yes, my answer to my own question was correct.

This isn’t an isolated incident. In fact, I rarely ever post on class discussion boards now specifically to avoid this. This just happened to be the one time I had posted in the class. Beyond the classroom, I also do not really hang around many CS majors: nor do they hang around me.

I am a part of only one CS club on campus, whose admissions criteria is intensely strict. With this club’s criteria being so strict due to it being an “honor’s society,” I have observed and gotten confirmed that I am the only underrepresented minority student in the club. This has resulted in so much racial trauma. I will share only one anecdote that I believe best exemplifies it.

To become a full member of this CS honors society, you must fulfill a few different requirements. Attending socials is one of those. So I attended a social night, and I forgot to code switch. So I was talking how I would with any of my friends. Apparently, other members thought it was funny and would turn to each other and snicker every time I said something considered “not normal.” Experiencing people laughing about the way you talk is not something I would ever wish on anyone. It fucking sucks. The only reason I’m still in it is because their resources are unparalleled, which is probably a result of taking only the most “elite” of the CS majors.

Many, if not all, of my friends have stories similar to this, which I would consider violent. Another common one I hear is being constructing in the ‘angry’ person of color. It’s an incredibly difficult position to be put into, and it’s also one of the bigger reasons I do not associate with many CS majors. Because whenever I voice my concerns, I end up being just ‘that one guy who thinks everything is racist,’ or just being ‘over-emotional and not logical.’

Berkeley CS is already pretty elitist to begin with. When I joined, you had to take three notoriously difficult courses and maintain a 3.3 GPA over them in order to continue in CS. It’s part of the fact that the number of underrepresented minority (URM) students makes up only 4% of my program.

There is no organization or space on campus specifically for URM CS students. While there are engineering clubs for Black and Latinx (I even serve on the board of one), there is still a gap in the efforts. The burden of creating that space almost always falls on those students themselves, but I mostly use this fact as a segue into my next vignette.

From my own experience, and through hearing the observations of others, it’s clear that most white and Asian students in CS tend to avoid URM students. It never happens explicitly, but it always happens in the creation of social structures: think study groups, clubs, and other outside activities. Whenever these structures are created, it just so happens that URM students aren’t included for whatever reason. I would be interested in hearing the answer to the questions: when is the last time you have interacted with a URM student in CS? When is the last time you’ve included them in something or shared any sort of resource with them (excluding times in which it’s required, such as tutoring programs)?

I know what my answer is. (Shortly before writing this.) I wonder what it is for the majority of the CS population. Because it’s not like we don’t exist. It’s not like we’re not here. We are. But there’s a reason that it’s “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”

Anyways, in writing this I accepted the fact that I will be shut out of certain opportunities and that I will receive some amount of hate and social repercussions, but it doesn’t really matter to me now. I’ve been just sitting on these experiences too long for me to care about other’s opinions on what it means about them.