UCLA should look to its own resources for diversity survey
THE ISSUE:
UCLA is conducting an online study through to survey the campus climate.
OUR STANCE:
UCLA should draw upon its own resources, including USAC, to conduct this study instead of outsourcing. Furthermore, an online survey will be ineffective and costly.
By Editorial Board
Feb. 14, 2011 2:50 a.m.
Correction: The original version of this editorial contained an error. The Diverse Learning Environments Survey was created by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute. Several paragraphs based on the previous inaccuracy were removed from this editorial, and the headline was changed to reflect the changes.
Free parking pass for your thoughts?
Now that we’ve got your attention, all you have to do is fill out an online survey concerning an important and sensitive topic, and several respondents will be randomly selected to win.
The Diverse Learning Environments Survey, meant to measure students’ experiences with campus discrimination, is UCLA’s newest attempt at understanding the ever-elusive campus climate. The university will invest a large sum of money, the exact cost depending on the number of responses, in funding a UCLA-developed online survey.
This begs the question: If the university wants to understand the situation of students and this campus, why not draw on our own resources to find the answer? Why implement a survey at a great financial expense?
Why can’t the Undergraduate Students Association Council find the answer?
Every year, USAC candidates make it their solemn duty to improve the campus climate. A study like this is a missed opportunity for administration and student government to collaborate and produce real results.
Issues such as campus climate are exactly what USAC is meant to report back to the university. The university should charge USAC with understanding campus climate and proposing solutions, not the other way around.
USAC is in the perfect position to learn about campus climate at the ground level.
Campus climate can’t be measured in an online survey; it must be experienced firsthand and it must be gauged through interaction with students.
The administration’s intentions for this survey are noble, but the idea falls flat when not undertaken through the proper channel.
Instead, we will be locked into spending an undetermined amount of money on results that we can find ourselves.
Furthermore, with an online survey comes an inherent selection bias.
Most of the students who will take the time to fill out this survey are those who have been personally affected. Students who have not experienced any issues will be less inclined to fill out the survey, thus skewing the results. This provides a disservice to those individuals, who deserve a personal, solution-oriented platform to report what they have seen.
Some students may not take the survey seriously, seeing it only as a chance to win sporting event tickets or a much-coveted campus parking pass.
Like last year’s Report Bias website, an online survey guarantees neither validity nor accuracy.
Without that, all you will end up with is the few disingenuous responses of students trying to win a free parking pass.
