In the past week, nearly one hundred students have reported finding strange emails in their personal inboxes sent from addresses within the University of Washington domain. Senders include faculty members from the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, the Michael G. Foster School of Business, the Phineas Flynn College of Engineering, and other STEM-related departments.

Notably, every student who has reported receiving one of these emails has identified as a woman majoring in something within the realm of arts, humanities, or social sciences. However, each student also claimed that they had either previously been in a STEM major or had applied to one.

Melissa King, a junior who changed her major from mechanical engineering to early care and education last spring, says she was confused when she found an email from her former academic advisor.

“It was just a screenshot of my application for the early education major with the subject line, ‘Nice job crushing stereotypes about women,’” she said.

Next we talked to Lacy Bingram, a fourth year communication major who recently accepted a job as a temporary secretary.

“When I first applied to UW, one of the questions they asked was, ‘Where do you see yourself in ten years?’ At the time, I was really interested in neuroscience, so that’s what I put down. But then I thought about all the chemistry losers I’d have to talk to in order to do that, so I chose another major and eventually I ended up landing this temp job,” says Bingram, “I know it’s not the most glamorous thing in the world, and most of what I’m doing is mundane stuff like making other people coffee, but it’s one step up for me, so I’ll take it.”

Bingram recently made a public social media post complaining about her job on Instagram and, within a few hours, received an email from Jesse Heisenberg, the Department Chair of Chemistry.

The full transcript of this email, which included no subject line, reads, “What would Barbie think? [Monkey covering eyes emoji].”

To try and understand what these emails are all about, we talked to Fichael Moster, the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs for Foster School of Business. 

“Women only earn 37% of all STEM degrees in the U.S., and despite the amount of pressu- I mean encouragement that we give to young women to pursue STEM related careers, many of them end up dropping out. And that makes us look really bad. Er, I mean, it’s really sad that more women don’t feel empowered enough to go after these kinds of opportunities,” says Moster.

“We thought, ‘Well, if aggressive, positive messaging didn’t reel ‘em in, let’s try passive-aggressive shaming next.’”

So far it is uncertain how effective this communication strategy will be in convincing students to go back to pursuing STEM. However, Moster says, faculty already has another strategy lined up in case this one fails: sending them audio recordings of their parents comparing them to their siblings.