Your student didn't want to be involved in programming competitions because they are unglamorous, not because the environment was hostile to her, as your story demonstrates.
My student didn't want to be involved with a programming competition because she didn't know:
1) She was an amazingly good programmer relative to the field.
2) Programming competitions can be fun.
It's MY job as her senior to impart that knowledge.
The fact that no other professor imparted that knowledge is a problem--she should have had several professors imparting this knowledge. The fact this was not true shows that such things as "competition teams" are NOT meritocracies.
