Investigating Ethics of For-Profit Research Organizations
NGRD (National Graphene Research & Development Center) is a northern-Virginia based prides itself on being a research organization with numerous Siemens Competition Semifinalists, Regional Finalists, and National Finalists. The Siemens Competition is a highly prestigious research competition for high school students and NGRD specifically targets Asian-American communities by advertising at Chinese school. Last year, NGRD came under fire by countless students who dubbed the organization as unethical; in their view, NGRD was paid an enormous tuition per student ($10,000) to be handed “spoon-fed” projects to enter for the Siemens Competition. In essence, many people thought that NGRD’s purpose was to sell research projects and awards to hypercompetitive Asian families to add to their college resume.
Before all of this broke, one of the program directors, Dr. Qian, had visited me in my home. Ours was just one of many Chinese families he had talked to about enrolling in the NGRD program, as detailed in the investigative article; he described a small group of high school students spending weeks and hundreds of hours in his basement every summer who dominated the Siemens Competition awards list for Virginia. This was weeks after I looked at the Siemens Semi-Finalist list and was personally puzzled by how many sophomores were on the list; typically, Jefferson students, due to summer school, don’t conduct research until summer after sophomore year. The full-length opinion piece I wrote about my thoughts can be found here: https://www.tjtoday.org/20028/opinion/researching-for-the-reward/.
In both that opinion piece and a later investigative article I wrote (by then, I was completely neutral towards NGRD because I heard the human, tough stories of the people who were in it), I delved into one overarching question: are tuition-based research organizations like NGRD ethical? We interviewed our principal, Dr. Evan Glazer, the directors, Dr. Luo and Dr. Qian, two participants in the program, and two community members who were outspoken about opposing NGRD. We used a variety of sources to view this question from all angles. I also conducted an online interview with Angela Ma, a TJ alum at UChicago, who was insistent on not being tied to the organization itself. I discussed her blog post and her reaction to Dr. Qian’s letter on WeChat.
After interviewing the NGRD directors, they immediately declined for us to use their quotes after learning I was involved. It is my and probably their view that my opinion article, which preceded the controversies, sparked this discussion about the ethics of NGRD. However, many people had already been talking about NGRD at school because NGRD’s participants had earned bigger awards than a lot of other hardworking students; very few, though, knew more than a few details. The outcome, the publicity, was inevitable even though I may have been a catalyst. We were disappointed because they had provided a unique take on why the organization was tuition-based and we’d lost that perspective.
Upon review, our adviser’s fellow adviser commended us on our article and strongly suggested we enter it for NSPA Story of the Year. After the article was published, the NGRD directors responded on WeChat by congratulating us on our objectivity and thoroughness of research. This can be found in the TJ Parents WeChat group (which my mom left, thus, lack of pictures). This article also continued discussion of NGRD within the community.
NGRD continues to run the program, though attendance and prestige are down from last year. In the article, MiJin and I gave an objective look at the ethics of tuition-based research organizations and let the readers decide for themselves what to think.
Article: In Defense of NGRD’s Youth Scientist Program: Does the program give an unfair advantage?
Recourse for Sexual Harassment Victims
There is so much of what goes on behind the scenes that can’t be revealed due to confidentiality agreements. Much of this, according to former principal Dr. Glazer, is written into law by state and county lawyers. A few of our sources had voiced that a 3-5 day suspension was not nearly enough to protect them from repeated harassment; when asked about these complaints, my principal, FCPS Title IX Coordinator Kevin Sills, and Equity and Compliance Specialist II Karin Rodriguez told us that the law requires schools to follow an intervention checklist before suspending students. This is built to protect the rights of all students, whether they were the culprit or the victim. Confidentiality agreements also forbid schools from releasing the punishments of reported harassment. This can propagate the effect of repeated harassment and perception that the school isn’t doing enough. Angel and I dedicated hours over spring break to visit FCPS Gatehouse Administrative Building to interview Sills and Rodriguez.
“When we presented together, they almost got indignant that ‘Oh, you guys are sharing information with each other,’ ‘We need to make sure everything is right,’ ‘We trust you, but we need to make sure no one’s making this up, or no one’s just joining on the bandwagon because they’ve got an ax to grind against the perpetrator,’ ” Collins said. “There was very much this sense of ‘Oh, we can’t really help you do things the right way’ or ‘We can’t help you because yours doesn’t fall under the domain of sexual harassment,’ even though it was clear there was a pattern there were repeated attempts of sexual harassment.’”
Senior Hannah Collins
Because the sources (who were affected by the perpetrator’s harassment) felt the school’s intervention and intervention checklist was not enough to prevent repeated behavior, many students sought recourse through other means: reaching out to friends, introducing local harassment campaigns, and spreading the word anonymously through social media and tjTODAY. Posters are now being hung up around the school and bathrooms because of the attention this article and others created. Numerous people shared the article on Facebook. tjTV, our broadcast team, is doing a follow-up video featuring many of the same sources we used for this investigative piece.
The social pressure on the perpetrator may have been the force that prompted him to switch schools; almost everyone in the school knew his name even though it was never publicly stated in the article or anonymously (the girls all agreed not to share his name; we didn’t either because he is a minor). The actual reason for his transfer is still unknown, but he allegedly told one of the victims that it was of his own accord.
Article: Voice to the Victims
Legality of Public Records Requests
While working on other articles, I’ve been slowly making my way through the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) restrictions so I can better understand what information is publicly accessible through FOIA requests. For more details on what I intend to seek from FOIA requests, visit Ongoing Work. Truth be told, I never thought I’d be reading legal documents for fun. But from reading investigative processes, legal document comprehension is surprisingly a huge chunk of their research.
Christine Zhao's Journalism Portfolio 