The next evening, I follow David and the other Sthackers to a meeting of NU Hacks, the college’s official hacking club, whose website describes it as “a community of artists, programmers, makers, breakers, and rump shakers,” and tonight, in a midsize lecture hall, they are voting for next semester’s leadership positions.

“Whoa, the population of women just went up in here by a hundred percent,” says Niousha, the club’s president, as she enters the room. To be precise, it’s 14 men to two women in the room tonight, and aside from a few Asian faces, the room is dominated by reedy white guys, which is a more or less accurate reflection of what’s happening in computer science at most colleges right now. The club’s got an open door, and of the dozen or so members I speak to, all of them say they wish more types of people would walk through it. In the meantime:

“Yo, I have ducks! Does anyone want ducks?” Niousha asks. She starts tossing out rubber ducks, a reference to “rubber-duck debugging,” where you work through a problem by talking to a rubber duck. Then the election begins.

By now I’ve learned that hackers will always look for exploitable loopholes; they follow rules but also test them. Sure enough, with every office open and so many candidates running unopposed, someone says: “Wait, what if we just did ‘No Confidence’ for everybody?”

Others join in. “Let’s elect Bernie.”

“I’m raising money for a recount.”

“Rigged!”

“Wi-Fi causes autism.”

The meme catches on as the speeches begin; each candidate is now running against No Confidence. Danielle, the lone presidential candidate, is a regular NU Hacks attendee. “I always feel guilty if I don’t go” to the meetings, she tells me later; she’s big on inclusion and worried that potential new members would see a room of dudes and assume they didn’t care about including women. “I feel like my presence there helps against people who might say those things.” She’s had to put up with some sexism in the CS world, like enduring flirting from a male classmate just so he’d teach her about C pointers. Rather than trying to blend in, she plays up her gender: “I wear pink all the time, skirts, everything. I’m here to be the beacon of: It’s OK to be feminine here, and it’s OK to be a woman.”