When the Townsend Harris robotics team entered the Hudson Valley Regional robotics competition at Rockland Community College on March 6, they entered with a robot named Hawk Tuah. The name, as well as the slogan printed on the robot’s bumper (“SCORE ON THAT THANG”), referred to lines from a 2024 viral video of a woman discussing oral sex. 

By the second day of the competition, after the name generated controversy from members of the online FIRST robotics community, the name was changed to “Chimera.” And by late March, the incident was part of an “ongoing investigation,” according to Principal Brian Condon. Though Mr. Condon said that he could not comment on the details of that investigation, he said, “there are many aspects of the culture in robotics that need to be examined more closely.” Given how the viral video quickly gained notoriety as a sexist insult last year, the decision to name the robot “Hawk Tuah” raises questions about how that “culture in robotics” treats female students, who have historically faced sexism and stereotyping when participating in STEM fields. 

According to the schedule for the robotics competition, which primarily featured teams from around New York state, practice matches began on March 6 at 12:19PM. By 12:47PM, forum user “Robo-fan” had posted a question about the Steel Hawks’ robot on ChiefDelphi.com, “a prominent online forum dedicated to discussions about FIRST [For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology] Robotics.”

“I see a robot on the Hudson Valley Stream,” user Robo-fan wrote, “The practice day bumpers say ‘SCORE ON THAT THANG.’ Can someone explain?” 

The post garnered over 3000 views and featured multiple users debating the choice of the name and bumper slogan. Some posters suggested the name was nothing more than a teenage joke. Others condemned the decision. User “Taylor” wrote, “The narrative of ‘we’re building the problem solvers of tomorrow with healthy doses of coopertition and gracious professionalism’ is undermined by the slogan on these bumpers [and] the name of the robot.” 

The Steel Hawks did not win any awards at the Hudson Valley Regional. But at the next major competition, in Albany on March 29, the team went on to win the FIRST Impact award — when competing entirely with their new robot name. According to FIRST, the Impact award “is the most prestigious award at FIRST” and “it honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate.” 

In an interview with The Classic, Mr. Condon criticized the initial choice for this year’s robot name, describing the video referenced as “vulgar in its expression and in its meaning.” He said that the team has always conducted itself in a “wholesome” manner but with a decision like this “the perception of that team has probably been tarnished and to some degree, the perception of the school was tarnished.” 

STEM Assistant Principal Abid Choudhury agreed. He told The Classic that the name was “inappropriate given [it’s for] a school setting and a school competition.”

“[This is] not the message we are trying to portray as a serious team with a serious goal,” Mr. Choudhury said. 

In addition, he described the name as “inherently” sexist and said that, intentionally or not, it played into broader conversations about how women are treated in STEM settings. 

It’s difficult to know for sure who came up with the name in the first place; team members who spoke to The Classic provided conflicting reports. The Classic reached out to twelve Steel Hawks student team members. Three agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. Three did not return requests for comment. Three declined to comment. Three said they were “not allowed to speak.” Of the three main coaches from the THHS faculty — chemistry teacher and Head Coach Joel Heitman, and physics teachers and coaches Joshua Raghunath and Michael Quach — all of them did not return requests for comment.

One of the students who requested to be anonymous said it was one of the coaches who suggested the name. But two other team members, who also requested anonymity, said students suggested the name as a joke and the coaches approved it. All three of the team members who spoke to The Classic agreed that the coaches had the final say in approving the name. 

Mr. Choudhury declined to say whether students or coaches had come up with the name. “That’s not something that I could comment on because that’s something that’s being looked into,” he said. Mr. Condon also said he could not confirm if an adult suggested the name due to the “ongoing investigation into this” matter.  

While Mr. Condon said he could not confirm who proposed the name, he said “if students wanted to name it that, then it was the adults’ job to say no… If it was a kid and the adults let it happen, it’s bad enough. If it was an adult, it’s really bad.”

Multiple posts on ChiefDelphi.com scrutinized the role of the THHS coaches (called mentors in FIRST Robotics). User mrnoble wrote, “This is on the mentors, and should not have gotten past them to this point.”

One of the robotics team members who spoke to The Classic agreed. “[I] don’t know why we named our robot after a sex joke for a high school competition,” said the student. “[I] don’t know how that idea even got past the mentors and [how] it represented us during [the] competition.” 

A second student said that team members who had nothing to do with the name were “definitely” let down by the decision and the online criticism. 

“I know me and my other friends and the team were taken aback when we saw the backlash from other people and teams, especially when it could have been avoided,” the student said. “It wrongfully characterizes our team as a whole.”

The Classic reached out to user mrnoble, whose name is Joel Noble, a Denver, Colorado engineering public school teacher who described himself as a participant and volunteer at FIRST competitions for over twenty years.

In an email to The Classic, Mr. Noble said, “the mentors on Team 2601 were and are remiss on this matter. FIRST Robotics is a mentor-led and mentorship-based activity. It is always the responsibility of the adults in charge of the individual team to supervise and ensure that in every way possible the team is meeting the highest standards. To allow something like this to pass unnoticed may be an oversight or an act of naivete, but to not take responsibility for it once it is clear that there is a problem is disturbing.” 

In his email, Mr. Noble said that he believed the name choice violates the agreement teams enter into when joining FIRST competitions and referenced other examples he’s seen of teams apologizing or facing repercussions for sharing inappropriate or offensive content.

On the steelhawks2601 YouTube channel, one video continues to show a brief image of the robot with the bumper slogan on display. The same image later appeared on the @steelhawks2601 Instagram page with the slogan edited out of the image. According to user bobbysq on the online forum, the Steel Hawks YouTube page also took down their robot reveal video on March 9. The team has removed the reveal video, changed the robot name, and edited out the slogan from this photo but has not addressed the scrutiny directly. 

“Changing the name is the minimum standard for returning your team to the agreement they are under,” Mr. Noble said in his email. “To be clear, had [the Steel Hawks] not taken that action it would have in all likelihood been taken for them by event organizers; I volunteered at an FTC event recently where a team’s inappropriate name had slipped in, and the event organizers acted unilaterally to change the public-facing team name, and the responsible mentor was sanctioned as a result.” 

Mr. Noble then described a scenario where a mentor publicly apologized for their team having published a video using music by Kanye West, which some took as potentially endorsing Mr. West’s controversial views.

“[That mentor’s] action included taking responsibility for and apologizing for something that he had not actually done, but had been done under his authority by the team,” he said. “Something similar to this would be appropriate on the part of [the Steel Hawks’] mentors.”

Mr. Choudhury said that there should be “a public apology [from the mentors] to show accountability… whether it was oversight or active involvement.”

In the meantime, Mr. Choudhury said that he was looking into whether or not this decision was an isolated issue or indicative of a “cultural issue” with the team that relates to inclusivity. He said that no student he has spoken to while looking into this issue has said explicitly that there is a sexist environment on the team, but he has received feedback from female students feeling “looked over.” 

Mr. Condon said that he was not “satisfied” with the environment of the team and plans to examine “the entire culture” of the Steel Hawks’ activities. While he said that there were likely boys on the team who took issue with the name, he shared concerns about what might prevent girls from feeling comfortable in objecting to the name:  “If [even one girl on the team] didn’t like [the name], I would imagine that there were conditions such that she was reluctant to speak up. And then that’s on us. That’s on the adults.”

According to the NYC Public Schools Demographic Snapshot, the THHS population has been around 60-65% girls for the past five years. Although The Classic could not attain the official ratio of girls to boys of the Steel Hawks, a recent whole staff photo on the team’s Instagram page shows boys in the majority. A recent team picture features those who represented the team at the competition where they won the FIRST Impact Award. The image features approximately 60-65 students and approximately 20-25 of them are girls. Since 2020, in the four times the Steel Hawks Instagram page has announced the team president (one year does not identify a president), the president has been male.

And yet, according to Instagram posts from the past five years, female students feature prominently in leadership positions and have been in the majority of the team’s past two leadership boards. The video that the team submitted for the FIRST Impact Award showcases the achievements of various girls on the team. A March 28 Instagram post promotes their service-oriented work at the New York Regional competition and one image focuses on their work to support girls in STEM at the competition. The post shows a tray full of female products such as pads, tampons, and hair ties in the bathrooms at the competition. The caption accompanying the pictures said there will be “post-its of uplifting and inspirational messages for women in STEM” in the bathrooms.

Nonetheless, there have been documented efforts by the THHS administration to push the robotics team to be more welcoming to girls prior to this season. According to a Classic article from 2022, THHS offered a program that summer created due to “accounts from female students who had expressed a desire to see more opportunities for them in the robotics field.” Senior Advisor Blayne Gelbman, who once co-led a robotics team at Martin Van Buren High School, taught the program. He said that the program was not affiliated with the Steel Hawks but came about specifically because girls on the Steel Hawks at the time felt that they weren’t receiving enough help learning certain basic skills necessary to advance.

A few girls “had gone to the principal and felt that there wasn’t enough opportunity specifically for girls to learn the skills in order to move up in leadership [in the Steel Hawks],” Mr. Gelbman said. “They just felt like they weren’t getting the support that they needed from the members of the team.”

Mr. Condon said the program originated because a student approached him with “a concern around girls being fully included in the [robotics] team” and that a number of girls joined the program that summer.

Mr. Choudhury said that robotics is an important part of THHS extracurricular life “and given that it’s so important, it warrants attention.” This incident has caught his attention. “I’m taking feedback from students and adults alike to make sure that it’s a more inclusive environment,” he said. 

Mr. Condon said that there are changes he would like to make based on this incident. He said, “that could be looking at the composition of the leadership team, who’s part of it and who’s not.” 

However, Mr. Condon said that those plans are on hold until the season is over at the end of April. “The season is still ongoing. When it’s over, we do a post-mortem. I know they’re back on the 20th, so when we come back on the 21st, the season is over. We’ll begin the autopsy then.”