Why I'm not applying for postgrad programmes at Bristol

[kaberett]

• Demographic information is obligatory.
  
• The "Gender" field requires choosing between the responses "male", "female", and "transgender".
  
• A title is obligatory, and no gender-neutral titles are provided as options.
  
• There is the strong suggestion that if you do not disclose disabilities in full at point of application, it will be impossible to put appropriate support in place at a later date.
  
• "Full disclosure" involves downloading a form from the "disability support service", filling it out, and returning it to... the disability support service.
  
• The application deadline for university (as opposed to NERC) studentships is January the 8th - three weeks earlier than most other studentship deadlines.
  
• None of the offered projects were sufficiently interesting to me for me to be willing to put up with that degree of bullshit.

I mean - it's a great department with brilliant people doing awesome stuff, but wow. Wow I am unimpressed by their application system.

(-- and no, I'm not going to phone them or write to them to complain. My project (40% of the year) is due in 10 days' time; I have a research proposal to write for Imperial; and every time I call someone out on this shit it takes me 90 minutes to calm down after composing the letter, and two days (minimum) of panic before I'm able to handle reading responses.)

Comments

[mfb]

... I kinda like that you factor panic time into 'time spent' and may start doing this myself

[kaberett]

<3

[cxcvi]

That's... impressively bad. I'm half-tempted to say something on your behalf...

[kaberett]

Please do feel free!

[swaldman]

The "Gender" field requires choosing between the responses "male", "female", and "transgender".

This one makes me especially sad because somebody has clearly tried to make an effort, but has so widely missed the point....

[kaberett]

Yeah, and unfortunately it's the kind of "effort" that actively makes things worse :-(

[sidheag]

I went to look whether ours is better (which wasn't trivial as one has to register to see the form, sort of) but it's worse - we have gender m/f. I will see if I can find out who to complain to - but not this week.

[kaberett]

That's actually less bad than having "transgender" as an option - if it would help LMK and I can write you a couple of paragraphs on Best Practice incl links to the relevant bits of HESA guidance!

[sidheag]

I'm pretty sure there's such a couple of paras in our own trans* policy! But I'll ask if I need help, thanks. Knowing the computer system involved the answer will be that that field is implemented using a boolean and that couldn't possibly be changed...

Did I complain at the time about the student I had such trouble convincing that he couldn't under my tutelage design an interface that asked for m/f gender and then asked fs, only, for their husband or father's name?!

[askygoneonfire]

Point 1-3 I am totally on board with. They should be doing better than that.

I am a bit confused as to why point 4 and 5 are a problem? Would you mind elaborating?

[kaberett]

I'm really, really uncomfortable with being asked to disclose my disabilities in full prior to people making a decision on me - without explicit statement that the people making the decision won't get to see that demographic information before having, um, made the decision. In practice I did disclose in full to everywhere else I've applied, because it's relevant to lab work, but making disabled people do that degree of extra work (rather than setting up their in-house application system so that it did it as near-silently as possible), with the implicit threat of "you don't get to ask for accommodations later", really sets my back up. (Not least because, uh, clearly people do get to request accommodations later!)

[askygoneonfire]

Legally of course the disability information has to be handled separately but obviously I understand why you fear otherwise - where I used to work our HR department and occy health referral-sending person was the same person (me!) so I know it is rarely actually strictly observed. There is a lot to be said for asking for these monitoring forms only after appointment - indeed there is a strong case for that from a protection of both employer and applicant. So yes, you have a good point there.

I can understand why, from a HR point of view, as much notice as possible to arrange necessary accommodations is preferable and, as a rule, in HR you tell people you can only do it at the stage most convenient to you because the majority of people only provide you with info you need when they think they will get nothing if they don't so *right then*. Negotiating bureaucracy takes a long time and in HR you get your arse kicked from every side for not making the wheels turn faster....but yes. I can firmly see your point.