In September 2022, two months before completing her PhD, student Megan Carr was due to board a military plane bound for the Antarctic ice sheet. As she sits in a conference room on the Oregon State University campus, waiting to ask the question that has plagued her for weeks, she eagerly watches a presentation from her office at the National Science Foundation’s Polar Program. was Then she raised her hand. A room full of graduate students overturned chairs.
“This NSF report on all the sexual harassment happening on the ground,” she said. , I’ll be on the field in about two months.”
These students and about 100 other researchers from about a dozen institutions gathered at Oregon State University to launch COLDEX. COLDEX is a five-year, $25-million paleoclimatology project commissioned by the federal science agency NSF to explore the Earth’s oldest ice core in Antarctica.
The report Carr refers to is a 273-page elephant-in-a-room document released by the NSF in late August that provides an extensive decades-long history of sexual harassment and assault at an Antarctic research station. Almost three-quarters of the women surveyed agree that harassment is a problem and say it is ‘real’ on the African continent. Also, 95% of the women interviewed in the focus group knew someone who had experienced assault or harassment on the Antarctic program.For outsiders, graphic details and factual descriptions are shockingHowever, the reaction of the polar science community was different.
When the report came out, “except for the graduate students, no one was surprised,” Carr said. She spoke with the lead investigator and supervisor. Eh, why are you asking this for the first time? “
Carr had wanted to go to Antarctica since middle school. In this recent field her season, which normally takes place in the Australian summer from mid-October until she’s mid-February, she’s finally been selected as part of her COLDEX team of eight, heading to Antarctica. explored the remote Antarctic ice sheet. She was one of her two graduate students and the only female on her team.
“I was so excited that it sucked,” Carr said. “This is something I’ve wanted for years and years. And finally I got to do it, I’m going to do it, and if you’re a woman , actually, I hear it’s a terrible place to work.
COLDEX leadership believes their initiative, with its unprecedented funding, unusually long timescales, and built-in commitment to diversifying polar science, could make a difference. But Carr and her fellow graduate students worry that the NSF’s response to systemic and deeply ingrained cultural issues is only superficial. I’m wondering if it looks like
Erin Pettit is a seasoned polar researcher and COLDEX Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Initially, her role was to lead the Center in its mission to recruit a more diverse team of researchers. But now she’s also responsible for her COLDEX response to her NSF’s shocking report. For her, those goals go hand in hand.
“Our biggest challenge really stems from the fact that polar science began with the expeditions of white men in northern Europe,” said Pettit. “And it’s still very white, mostly male.”
