14 Comments
User's avatar
Reid's avatar

Lots of interesting graphs. Ultimately, the problem comes from the following scenario most of the time: a bad thing happens. An institution “must do something” to solve it/prevent future instances. It has no levers which will actually achieve that goal. It does something else instead, in a minimally-costly way while still having “done something”. Eventually the cruft builds up to the point where it actually causes its own problem, but the institution’s actions were designed to be public-facing, so undoing them is seen as reneging on doing something.

Incidentally, I’ve found the phrase “I prefer to have my pronouns inferred from my gender presentation” to be effective at opting out of the pronoun circle at meetings/events while not causing a stink.

zb's avatar

Also there’s the related scenario of 1. A bad thing might happen which will get us sued.

2. If we get sued, it will help our defense to show we at least did SOMETHING to try and prevent it from happening.

Imajication's avatar

Maybe a 20-min training, but no one reads emails.

Ari Shtein's avatar

how bout an email with a link to a [MANDATORY] three-question google form at the end?

Imajication's avatar

Ha, maybe. Though it would be tough to keep people from clicking through and answering the questions with as little comprehension as possible. I guess failing could result in the mandatory training, so people would be encouraged to actually pay attention.

Natalia Shtein's avatar

Some years ago i remember there were lots of scandals related to rapes on campuses, hence i guess the mandatory training.

Also i want to point that culture towards women in work place changed drastically in US since “me too” movement. Which i think is a good thing.

I went to a lot of trainings like this, not on campus, but as a manager in a workplace, and found it somewhat useful, there was always little something you were not aware of, but it never lasted more than 10-15 minutes and was an on line course which you can do anytime…

Ari Shtein's avatar

This is true, there were some really notable big-deal campus scandals at one point. I think the prototypical example was the UVA "Rape on Campus" which got the President to suspend all campus fraternities and turned into a huge Rolling Stone article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus)... which was subsequently retracted when it turned out the whole thing was basically made up.

Obviously there were also other less-made-up cases, but this one in particular was really a poster child, e.g. the very-feminist magazine Jezebel was super insistent that it proved everything anyone needed to know about rape culture (https://archive.is/DLepI), and so I find myself really skeptical that these lengthy mandatory trainings on campus have been anything other than a frantic, PR, covering-of-ass kind of move.

Workplace scandals and #MeToo I know less about, though my understanding is that they were generally truer, bigger deals, and 10-15 minute trainings in response seem pretty reasonable.

Natalia Shtein's avatar

Our CEO ( lam research) was terminated because of such scandal few years ago, after an article on “glass door” and after investigation.

lchristopher's avatar

oh Jezebel - the folks who brought us the word "dude" as the all-male qualifier for the ladies, so they too would have a tool to launch commentary such as "broad" and "skirt" and "dame" - because it's all about "equality", right?

anvlex's avatar

It’s been a while since I was in college, but there were definitely some ambiguous situations, especially when alcohol was involved, where even mostly well meaning people could cross a line.

I’m not sure sexual assault trainings were necessarily the way for people to learn about not crossing that line, but I don’t think it’s as simple as good and bad people

Anonymous's avatar

Your froco was either lying or somehow messed up because there’s only 1 required—the one you went to. It’s ridiculous to cite that as some sort of reality when it fully is not, at all.

Mario Pasquato's avatar

p=0.07 or less would show up with ~35% probability in at least one out of 6 tests, the number of tests in that figure. So it’s likely a fluctuation

Ari Shtein's avatar

what do you mean by "likely"? I agree it's plausibly a fluctuation, but also provide some reasons to think it's accurately tracking what's going on. I think more likely than not, it's pointing to a real effect!

Mario Pasquato's avatar

Ha! The word “likely” was likely an unfortunate choice if it seems to imply I am making a statement on the probability that the effect is “true” or not based on its p-value. That’s a no-no. Let me use a more precise language: from a purely methodological standpoint (so without me making any claim about what is really there, whatever that means) I would refrain from interpreting a p=0.07, especially under multiple testing. Even so, I am aware of the debate on whether we should be using significance for this kind of decision making at all…