Dear Smashing Sexism and WTS: It’s been an interesting week.

In any case, Smashing Sexism has made significant progress in the past week and a half. We have conducted multiple, brief interviews with students, asking them a single question: what is gender bias? We received a wide variety of answers, from detailed descriptions of the situation at hand to a couple confused sentences that clearly demonstrate a lack of knowledge. We have also conducted three full length interviews with two teachers and one student. All three participants were very knowledgeable and passionate about gender bias, describing in detail the way in which it presents itself in schools and affects students. Two of them connected the topic to the election, explaining the incredibly negative impact the whole process has had and will continue to have on women and genderqueer individuals. All in all, we received great information and opinions from these interviews and I’m very excited to see what we can do with the video footage.

We’re struggling a bit to collect sufficient B-roll, as school policy dictates that we cannot film in classes unless all students have given us permission, even if we don’t show their faces. Obtaining permission slips from every student in a class in a timely manner is nearly impossible and certainly not worth the effort for a minute or so of B-roll. We’re going to keep working at it and being creative.

We lost a group member this week as well, which is quite unfortunate. It’s a setback, but I believe we will be able to persevere and stay on track. I’m excited to see where we will take this.