There will be no Ms. Engineer in 2012. After promoting the event at the beginning of the school year, the Engineering Student Council (ESC) decided to end the event a month ago. This would have been in its third year. The event, instead, will be replaced by a talent competition.
The council decided to cancel the event because some members considered it to be a pageant, ESC member Silvia Aguilar wrote in an email.
“The biggest controversy is the typical stereotype that a pageant has a negative connotation or a meaning that you have to be beautiful to enter it,” Aguilar wrote. “It’s a judgment on looks based on the word ‘pageant’ in the normal day-to-day use of what people think of when they hear it.”
But in the past, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) has not called Ms. Engineer a pageant. Instead, it referred to the event as a contest to promote women in engineering and other technical fields.
On a College of Engineering Web page, still online last week, the college referred to the Ms. Engineer event as one in which SWE members would be “battling it out” to prove who is the best and brightest.
SWE president Morgan Miller said she agreed with the description.
“Over the past three years of Ms. Engineer, the event has grown to be perceived as a beauty pageant — though it was neither scored as one, or viewed as one by the participants,” Miller wrote.
Few people in the College of Engineering were interested in talking about canceling Ms. Engineer. New engineering dean Debra Larson declined to comment.
“Since the dean is new to campus, she does not know about this event, so (she) doesn’t have an opinion,” assistant to the dean Laurie Hartwell wrote in an email.
But civil engineering senior Ashley Brooks said the decision took away a chance for women in the college to show their abilities.
“The talent show emphasizes that you should be proud of your talents,” Brooks said. “It also stinks because Ms. Engineer was an opportunity for the women to strut their stuff in a male-dominated field.”
Tatiana Prestininzi contributed to this article.
(sent this in as a Letter to the Editor, never published, so I thought I’d add it as a comment).
For the first time in years, I saw a cover page story on Engineers Week (eWeek). How unfortunate that it wasn’t a story about how students can become engaged in the week’s activities. But instead Mustang Daily chose to report about how an event, historically one of the week’s lowest attended (the Ms. Engineers Contest), was being replaced with another event hosted by the same club (Society of Women Engineers.) Meanwhile, depicting the dedicated group of student volunteers in the Engineering Student Council (ESC) as proponents of the status quo.
ESC spends a year planning to make each year’s eWeek bigger, and better than the year before. Events are known for having large quantities of free food and impressive prizes, all at no cost to students! (Previously, with the exception of the Ms. Engineer Contest, that SWE advertised cost to compete in.)
Cal Poly’s SWE does many impressive events that have rightfully gained their respect both on campus and nationally. But the Ms. Engineer Contest never held a candle to the successes of SWE’s other events. Last year’s event had only four contestants, one of which in her speech said she was doing it because she was “volun-told.”
Hopefully next year’s cover page eWeek article can be about how students can participate in the many engaging events, like SWE’s Talent Show they had this year, instead of trying to invent a scandal.
Sincerely,
Dylan Pavelko
2009-2011 Engineering Student Council President & Electrical Engineering Alumni ’11
Sounds good. Um, remind your desairlhep of the Moss-Magnussen Act. They CAN NOT void your warranty unless the modified part CAUSED the failure. Then it’s only the affected part aftermarket part that is not covered. I have been around the block with desairlheps. The easiest thing to do is to just find one who isn’t a mod Nazi. Still, tell them you know your rights that the statement that it will void the entire warranty is total BS! Look for a better desairlhep! Trust me.