Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner and Bria Snell are 11th graders in high school. They go to Banneker High School in Washington, D.C., named after famed African American genius Benjamin Banneker. In the tradition of great thinkers and innovation and discovery, these three young women of color had developed a way to purify lead-contaminated water in school drinking fountains. That in and of itself is amazing. But to top it off, they were chosen as one of a few finalists in a NASA competition. The announcement came in the last week of April and most everybody was excited for them.
This led to the second part of the competition, opening up these ideas to the public for voting. The teams selected began campaigning for their projects on social media. The Washington Post explains what happened next.
But while the teens were gaining traction on social media and racking up votes, users on 4chan — an anonymous Internet forum where users are known to push hoaxes and spew racist and homophobic comments — were trying to ensure the students wouldn’t win.
The anonymous posters used racial epithets, argued that the students’ project did not deserve to be a finalist and said that the black community was voting for the teens only because of their race. They urged people to vote against the Banneker trio, and one user offered to put the topic on an Internet thread about President Trump to garner more attention. They recommended computer programs that would hack the voting system to give a team of teenage boys a boost.
NASA was forced to close the voting much earlier than planned because of this activity.
On Sunday, April 29, hackers attempted to change the vote totals in the NASA OPSPARC Challenge, so managers of the challenge decided to end public voting to protect the integrity of the results. The challenge team has an accurate record of the voting results prior to the attempted disruption. The top three Public Choice teams in each category will be notified and recognized on the challenge website. In accordance with the judging criteria and voting procedures stated on the OPSPARC website, a panel of NASA Goddard judges will make a final determination of the winners using the published rubrics.
Before the voting ended, members of the public were using social media to generate support for particular teams in the public voting. NASA supports this kind of community-based effort to encourage students to engage with science, technology, engineering and math and recognizes social media as an important tool for that support. Votes generated this way are legitimate and will be counted. Unfortunately, it was brought to NASA’s attention yesterday that some members of the public used social media, not to encourage students and support STEM, but to attack a particular student team based on their race and encouraged others to disrupt the contest and manipulate the vote, and the attempt to manipulate the vote occurred shortly after those posts. NASA continues to support outreach and education for all Americans, and encourages all of our children to reach for the stars.
4chan is what happens when the internet drains a swamp of super angry and bigoted people and they all collect in one septic tank. And like most things that are thought of when stuck inside of a metaphorical septic tank, the results are shitty.* But, NASA has a history of shooting shit into space, and isn’t letting that ruin these kids’ day!
The winners of the competition will be announced sometime in the next few weeks, a NASA Goddard spokesperson told Newsweek. A timeline on the competition website said the public voting opened April 23 and was scheduled to last until April 30. Winners were scheduled to be announced in early May and the winning trip to NASA was set for June 13 and 14.
“Public voting does not determine the winners of OPSPARC. The winners are chosen based on their scores from the rubric- which is scored by a panel of NASA judges. Public voting is a secondary factor that the judges may consider when choosing the winners,” the NASA spokesperson told Newsweek.
You can go and see the presentation that Sharrieff, Skinner, and Snell created to become finalists in the first place here.
*You’re welcome.