With the elections passed and the political climate as polarized as it is, it is important for students to reevaluate their ideas about gender and race and challenge the laws and leaders they believe to be wrong. Racial and gender bias still exist, and it is important to look out for both harmful legislation and everyday discrimination.
Students at NC State are surrounded by so many different types of people from various origins far and wide. New ideas and perspectives are being introduced, and students are able to learn about ideals different from those in their community, forming a fuller understanding about the world around them.
It is important for students to vocalize their beliefs by voting in order to prevent discriminatory legislation, and an essential component of this is understanding how laws or amendments can be prejudiced or unfair. For example, those that voted at the midterm elections recently had to vote for or against the voter ID amendment, which would require citizens to have a government-issued ID to vote.
In the recent election, 55 percent of voters were for the voter ID amendment proposed to the North Carolina constitution, and as a result it passed. This law, once implemented, will discriminate against minorities who typically vote Democrat. This amendment would supposedly make it harder for people to commit fraud, but in reality this amendment will have serious detrimental repercussions.
It will especially prevent the poor and working class — who cannot take off work to wait in long lines at government agencies and who do not have the resources to get proper documentation — from voting. As NC State’s Graduate Student Association said in a recent Op-Ed, this legislation would specifically burden the university’s graduate student population.
What kind of country are we if we allow such discriminatory legislation to occur? The laws and ideals passed by a country are representative of its beliefs. Unfortunately, this is not the only legislation that is discriminatory in America and not the only group that is being discriminated against. Historically women have had less rights than men, and this is still true today.
Many people consider gender inequality to be a thing of the past, but unfortunately this is not the case. In North Carolina, for instance, a woman cannot withdraw sexual consent, according to a 1979 North Carolina Supreme Court case. If a woman does not want to have sex after her initial consent and is forced to do so, it is not considered rape, even if she explicitly says “no.”
Other discriminatory practices exist today in the gender wage gap and workplace harassment. Women make on average eighty cents for the dollar that a man makes for the same job. At least one in four women experience harassment at the workplace.
Students need to realize that discrimination still exists, and they need to challenge their perspective on gender and racial norms. They need to vote for candidates that do not promote inequality and make an effort to be mindful of their actions towards others.
Understanding gender inequality specifically is especially relevant today at NC State. For the first time in our school’s history, the ratio of incoming men and women attending state is almost 50-50. Providing equal opportunities for education for both genders is a huge step towards gender equality, but there are still discrepancies in the amount of women going into STEM-related majors.
Programs at NC State such as WISE, or Women in Science and Engineering, and WMEP, or Women and Minority Engineering Programs attempt to increase the percentage of women going into engineering and science majors. According to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, only 14 percent of engineers are women.
Men and women of NC State need to become the best people and students they can be by understanding the intricacies of racial and gender bias in their lives. They need to try their best to be understanding of others and promote equality to make a better campus community that will not stand for discrimination of any kind.
