Hey, I'm with you SSCrazy. I'll take a shot at summarizing.

I think WIT and other such sideline organizations are truly asking for a DIFFERENT 'yardstick', as you wisely point out. The simple yardsticks of skill, competency, and ability aren't enough, so they need to drum up additional criteria that they CAN meet that they feel makes them worthy of SPECIAL consideration. They don't want to swim with the same sharks as the rest of us. What everyone is overlooking here is that we are all 'cost centers' for the organizations we work for, and most of them only trying to get the best bang for the buck, whether male/female, black/white/hispanic/indian/chinese. I worked with them all, and I'll take skill over being P/C hands down.

Interesting sidelight here. I'm retired and on my own time. Whose time have the rest of you been on today while getting into this discussion? Unless you are on the opposite side of the globe, you should have been working to PROVE your value. And I'm NOT from Missouri.