The Cal Poly Hate Index
THE CAL POLY HATE INDEX
Trigger Warning: This website looks at past incidents at Cal Poly that discuss sexual assault, racism and hate crimes, among other related intolerant activites.
Within the last year, there have been two major cases of sexual assault at Cal Poly including a campus employee. Both employees worked for University Housing. One as a residential advisor, and the other as a custodian. These crimes are just a snapshot of directed attacks at Cal Poly. The university has a history of racism, sexual assault and related hate crimes.
We compiled past Mustang News coverage to look at intolerant acts at Cal Poly and their subsequent responses. (2008-2021)
Where we got our data
There is a history of intolerance and subsequent social activism at Cal Poly. Since 1960, Cal Poly SLO has reported insensitive acts stemming from hate crimes to harassment. Each year, at Week of Welcome, students are asked to visit the 'Awareness Gallery,' a one-week pop-up designed to explain Cal Poly's history of racism. Using photos of the gallery and past Mustang News coverage, we compiled reported crimes into data visualizations. However, these are only few of the many cases that have gone unreported. The influx in these experiences prompted the launch of Shades of Cal Poly.
Shades of Cal Poly, an Instagram page of which in its heyday was a platform for students to voice their stories of discrimination and harassment at the university, has been inactive for more than a year.
The page ran by anonymous creators still has a following of over five thousand users, while having over a thousand posts dedicated to personal experiences.
Outlined in their mission, the account aimed to “maintain anonymity of all students.” Although student names were protected, the names of faculty and staff were permitted.
“These stories demonstrate how our university has continuously failed to educate our students and make meaningful changes on campus,” included their mission statement. “The time for silence and neutrality is over.”
Today, the Instagram page still has a functioning Linktree with their submission form and campus resources. Along with these links is a database that holds 621 recorded responses from students. Some of these responses share the person’s graduation year, and others provide content warnings for readers. The Google Sheet holding this data has restricted access, limiting our data sample.​
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For the purpose of this project, our team was able to copy 100 responses into our own sheet.
Of these responses, we created definitions that determined the type of discrimination and harassment, along with the perceived locations and reactions of each incident.
What words did people use?
This word cloud shows the most common nouns, adjectives and adverbs that students included in their submissions, giving us a window into overarching themes
Hover over a word to see how many times it came up:
Students
Class
POC
Professor
Friend
These are clues to the people and places either perpetuating or being targeted by hate at Cal Poly.
What the data tells us
Here, we'll go through the results of our sample's analysis
The first chart we made was through tagging each response with one or multiple keyword for types of discrimination mentioned or demonstrated in the story.
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We created the tags as we went in order to avoid restricting the pool of options or generalizing a specific experience. Every tag applied at least twice.
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Here it is:
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To best understand our methodology,
here are the definitions we used to
encompass each:
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Ableism discrimination based on the ability or disability of a person
Anti-LGBTQ based on sexual orientation or gender identity
Harassment repeated unwanted comments or actions toward an individual
Mental health negative experiences related to individuals on the basis of their mental health condition
Racism discrimination, prejudice or threats on the basis of the belonging or lack of belonging to a certain racial group
Sexism discrimination on the basis of sex, directed toward women
Sexual Assault sexual contact or behavior that occurs without explicit consent of the victim
Slurs use of a disparaging and often historically charged word for a certain group
Linguistic racialization the assumption that someone of a certain race speaks the language often associated with that group
Religious discrimination directed against a person based on their religious or spiritual beliefs
Where did the incidents happen?
Next, we categorized the locations where each story took place. We found that some of the most common locations were in classrooms and the freshman dorms, among other unspecified on-campus spots.
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Here it is:
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Yakʔitʸutʸu Living Community | Cal Poly University Housing
School culture starts with the people who teach us. When professors — who are at fault in the majority of the classroom incidents — create an unsafe learning environment, students don't learn.
Cal Poly Classroom | Cal Poly SLO
WHEN CLASSROOMS AREN'T A SAFE SPACE
"HE TOLD ME I HAD TO BE LESS SENSITIVE IF I WANTED TO MAKE IT IN THE INDUSTRY"
"I FELT CHILLS. I FELT LIKE I DIDN'T BELONG BECAUSE OF MY SKIN COLOR."
"SHE SAID THAT SEXUAL ASSAULT WAS NO EXCUSE TO NOT TURN IN MY WORK AND SHE MIGHT EXCUSE AN ASSIGNMENT IF I WAS RAPED."
"AS THE ONLY POC I WAS SINGLED OUT FOR EVERY DISCUSSION FOR MY POINT OF VIEW"
"HE DIDN'T SAY IT DIRECTED AT SOMEONE BUT IT'S A WORD THAT SHOULDN'T BE USED PERIOD, ESPECIALLY IN AN ACADEMIC SETTING."
"THIS INTERACTION MADE ME BELIEVE THAT MY PAIN AND TRAUMA DID NOT MATTER"
How did the incidents impact students?
These accounts call into question the impact that hate has on students.
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So we tagged the told or implied emotional reaction from the storyteller and saw what feelings came up the most.
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Here it is:
Cal Poly Welcome Sign | Cal Poly SLO
While some of these may seem like similar emotions, we defined them each differently. This included differentiating the impacts on a students lasting view of an individual, system and institution as separate feelings.
Angry Signifies a response of anger or frustration at a person or system following the incident reported
Devalued Expressing disappointment about systems and officials in power, as if other things are prioritized over that person
Excluded Denotes when people are singled out or excluded from a group, often resulting in the person feeling as if they don’t belong
Mistrustful Signifies that a person has lost trust in institutions or people meant to support them
Uncomfortable Indicates a feeling of discomfort in a situation, whether or not the actions were directed at the person who reported it
Unheard Used to show when someone felt like an interpersonal relationship (friend, professor, etc.) failed them and they were discounted
Unsafe Denotes the feeling of fearing for one’s personal safety based on the incident
Where can we go from here?
The Shades of Cal Poly account became inactive in October 2023.
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Tracking data about hate on campus is an important step to stopping it. Knowing it's there and around you, especially when you are in a position of privilege, is critical to creating a campus environment that rejects hateful speech and actions.
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For now, feel free to explore the stories and data we used on your own.
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