Bed, Breakfast, and Biases

Humanities/Math & Science/Performing Arts collaboration

Corey Clark, Kristen Voss, and Fernando Vega

Spring 2017

An Identity and Perspectives project

Essential Questions: How do our genetics define our identity? What are the components of culture? How does bias and perspective affect one’s place in society? How are perspectives and biases altered based on geographical region?

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Background- Airbnb is an online marketplace that allows residents to rent their property as a vacation rental. The organization hosts over 1.5 million listings in 191 countries world wide. They are one of the fastest growing ways for families, couples, and friends to plan a vacation, but many questions regarding the accountability and equity of the process have been raised in recent years. There is seemingly no way to regulate why a host accepts or rejects possible renters, and a growing number of users are reporting racism and inequities in who can and cannot book certain listings.

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Brief description- Our project will take our students on a journey into looking at their own identities in math/science by taking official DNA tests (23&Me/Ancestry.com/a cheaper option) to examine the complete background of who they are. After doing so, students will then study how their identity is perceived by the world around them, and how their perceived identity affects how they are treated and viewed. Lastly, students will then delve into how location and geography also changes our perceived identity. (Being African American in Southern California vs. South Carolina can be a very different experience.) In addition to race, our project will also delve into issues of perceived value based on sex, body image, and religion. The content will be taught through labs, articles, field experiences,  Socratic seminars, guest speakers, videos, music, novels, etc.

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Social experiment- the project seeks to test our possible theories on the content learned by running a social experiment focused on examining possible inequities within the Airbnb brand. Students will be managing fictional profiles complete with pictures and basic information. Each of the profiles will match the largest races listed in the US census, differing body images, gender, etc. Students will attempt to inquire about possible listings within the database as different users to compare whether or not the rumors of inequities in the organization may be true and whether their perceived identity is assigned a certain value or worth to those examining their fictional profiles. Student will be running 4 sets of tests as they will be doing the experiments based on regions: western, southern, central, and northeastern.

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VIEW THE PROJECT DESCRIPTION HERE!!!

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