Open sagesharp opened 6 years ago
If coordinators could say whether their project is participating in GSoC, then Outreachy organizers could help encourage students to talk to the coordinators. We already know which applicants are university students from the initial application. However, we no longer display that information to mentors or coordinators.
(We don't want mentors or coordinator to know which applicants are students because some projects have expressed bias towards selecting people with computer science degrees. The Outreachy organizers are aware of systemic discrimination that prevents people of color in the U.S. from attending college. For example, many schools in historically Black neighborhoods don't have funding for a career counselor or AP classes that can encourage Black high school students to apply to college. Requiring a college degree to obtain an internship perpetuates that bias. We want applicants to be accepted on the strength of their contributions alone.)
That said, we could send an email to applicants who are students who have applied to a community participating in GSoC. The email could encourage them to apply to GSoC. Then the mentors and coordinators could decide whether they want to accept the applicant under Outreachy or GSoC.
There was some advice on the old Outreachy wiki, but that didn't get transferred over to the new website:
https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreachy/Admin/ApplicationReview
There was also this small text on the Getting Started page:
"If your organization is participating in the Outreachy May to August round, and your organization is also participating in Google Summer of Code, your Outreachy organization coordinator should join the GSoC administrators team. Then they can coordinate which program will accept the strongest applicants who applied for both programs."
But none of that really describes how coordinators should deal with GSoC and Outreachy applicants. It's something we should probably add to the mentor FAQ:
https://www.outreachy.org/mentor/mentor-faq/
We might also need a way for mentors to flag their project as being available in both Outreachy and GSoC.