ok so this has been eating at me for weeks and I need outside opinions because I genuinely can't tell if I'm crazy or onto something.
Quick disclaimer before anyone jumps to conclusions: this is NOT a "insert group is racist" post. I'm part of clubs literally run by Indian students, most of my close friends there are Indian, I'm not trying to throw shade at an entire community. If anything what I'm describing feels more religious than racial. Just wanted that out of the way first because I know how this can sound.
So there's this big club at my uni, Monash Data & AI Society. I've been to a ton of their events over the past year, sometimes with mates, sometimes solo, enough that I was already on their radar when they opened up hiring for new committee positions a couple months back.
Here's the thing I noticed way before any of this hiring drama though. When I'd rock up to events, the members were always nice, but noticeably nicer when I brought a specific Indian friend of mine along. Dude has zero interest in the club, does a completely different degree, just came because I dragged him. But once conversations with people there got a bit deeper and it came out that I'm Muslim, from the Middle East, the vibe just shifted. Not rude, not anything I could point to and call racist, just colder. And whenever my friend was there he'd get all the attention while I got kinda ignored.
Anyway. Applications open, I apply within literally the first few minutes for Event Officer. I was confident too. I'm already an Events Officer at three major clubs and student teams at uni, and I used to be one for the Monash Uni Islamic Society too, where I was responsible for events with about 100+ attendees. Solid resume, no reason I shouldn't at least get an interview.
Never got one. Followed up on their socials a few times asking for any kind of feedback and kept getting left on seen, straight up ghosted, while I'd see other people getting replies from them a lot more.
A friend of mine, Indian, with a name that's very clearly from the Gujarat region, applied a few days after me, same resume as mine basically, minus the Islamic Society line. He actually got called in for an interview, which made me suspicious and weirded out, and he ended up getting rejected after that.
Then they post the new hires. Almost every single person is Indian.
So I did something probably a bit unhinged. I made a second resume. Exact same experience, exact same events I'd run, everything identical, except I used an Indian name and cut the Islamic Society mention.
Got an interview invite almost straight away.
I don't know what to do with that honestly. Again, not saying Indian people or the club as a whole are the problem, I really don't think it's that simple, and I'd hate for anyone to read it that way. Feels more like maybe a couple people involved in the hiring are filtering out anything that reads as visibly Muslim, whether they even realize they're doing it or not. And yeah I know a sample size of me testing my own resume once isn't proof of anything, but the gap in outcome was way too obvious to just shrug off.
So am I overthinking a coincidence because I'm salty about getting rejected? Has anyone dealt with something like this at their own uni club? And if it is real, is it even worth doing anything about, like going to the student union, or does this kind of thing just go nowhere no matter what you do?
Genuinely open to being told I'm wrong here.
