Oregon State University students drew backlash from university researchers after posting mocking responses on a survey regarding LGBTQ students, according to Friday reporting by Fox News.
The university’s research team claims 50 of 349 responses to the survey were “slurs, hate speech, or direct targeting of the research team.” The researchers have used the responses to exmaine “engineering culture,” and have linked them to the purported, “rise of online fascism.” (RELATED: Rapid Uptick In LGBT Identification Driven Is Driven By People Who Are Actually Straight, Report Finds)
Researchers detailed the responses in a paper titled, “Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy: Interpreting Malicious Responses to an Online Questionnaire about Transgender Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science Student Experiences.”
Students reportedly mocked the survey’s request for demographic data. Roughly 24% of students identified their gender as a type of helicopter. The students filled out responses including “Apache Attack Helicopter” and “V22 osprey,” according to Fox News.
When asked about disabilities, some respondents claimed to be illiterate. Others argued that transgenderism should be considered a disability due to its “inability to come to terms with biological reality.”
Researchers at Oregon State sent out a survey re: LGBTQ, but students in STEM didn’t take it seriously. Fortunately, the researchers were able to suss out the cause: fascism. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Read the whole article. It just keeps getting better and better. https://t.co/X6znPtuRV0
— Michael Isenberg (@TheMikeIsenberg) July 21, 2023
For ethnicity, one respondent reportedly identified as a gift card.
“I’m an ethnic gift card,” the respondent said.
Questions about ethnicity were reportedly dismissed altogether. Responses to this question reportedly include, “My skin color is not important,” and “Come on man, these questions are stupid. Everyone is a grab bag of genetics from all over the world.”
Researchers claim that the “malicious” responses had a negative impact on the mental health of some members of their cohort. The research team pointed out that one transgender researcher felt particularly hurt by the responses, as they had already been in therapy over “online anti-trans rhetoric.”
The research team concluded that fascism had become popular among engineering and computer science students. In response, the researchers suggested a “social justice STEM education” to educate students on online radicalization and “anti-colonial, intersectional solidarity.”
“The university at its most ideal can be envisioned as ‘a central site for revolutionary struggle, a site where we can work to educate for critical consciousness’ using ‘a pedagogy of liberation,” the team reportedly wrote.
The team reportedly used, “antifascist and trans/queer methodologies to transform the raw data.” They claim their goal is to use this research to change the way institutions operate.
The team’s research reportedly faced rejection from many scientific journals, leading them to conclude that anti-fascist research in academia is considered “irrelevant to engineering education, if not alarmist.”