Of the approximately 1,500 University students surveyed in spring 2001, 53 percent felt classrooms were not welcoming for underrepresented groups. The campus climate survey, designed by Susan Rankin, senior diversity planning analyst from Pennsylvania State University, asked students, faculty and staff about their personal experiences with harassment, cases in which they’d observed harassment and discriminatory practices on campus, and suggestions for improving the situation, if needed.
Rankin presented the results of the survey Wednesday to a group of about 20 students, staff and faculty.
The University was one of 22 campuses nationwide that participated in the survey. The University was “looking for an assessment to measure campus climate because nothing out there existed,” Chicora Martin, the director of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Educational and Support Service Program, said. Martin’s group and other campus departments organized the survey, which was funded by the ASUO and the administration.
Rankin said she specifically designed the survey to overrepresent minorities on campus because they experience the most harassment, yet their voices are usually stifled within the majority in surveys where participants are randomly sampled.
Measuring campus climate doesn’t refer to tolerance on campus, she added.
“There is a big difference between being tolerated and being welcomed,” she said.
And the results are already outdated — since Sept. 11, instances of bias and harassment have most likely gone up, she said.
The survey revealed that 60 percent of respondents had not experienced harassment in the past year. Of the 40 percent that had, harassment was primarily directed toward women and minorities.
According to 47 percent of the people surveyed, the University’s curriculum adequately represents contributions from people in underrepresented groups. But 57 percent said they felt the campus leadership does not foster diversity.
As far as improving campus climate, 79 percent said the University should hold more cultural events.
Sarah Blustein, Bridges coordinator for the LGBT Educational and Support Service Program, said training faculty about diversity issues is the first step toward improving campus climate.
The junior women’s studies
major added that certain departments don’t feel it is necessary to incorporate diversity issues into the curriculum.
“In certain departments, there is a feeling that there doesn’t need to be inclusiveness,” she said.
Blustein is a transfer student from Southern Illinois University — a school “bordering the bible belt,” she said.
She said her previous school was “outwardly heterocentric and homophobic. It’s a lot more subtle here. At first (the campus) seems open and liberal. But then you see the hate crimes.”
Rankin said she could not compare the results of the University of Oregon with the other universities surveyed, but the point is for each university to use the results as a tool.
She added that many universities across the nation were resistant to the survey.
“Administrators are afraid of the results,” she said.
The University is now looking at the results of the survey and working on a diversity plan, Martin said.
“When we get all our information together, we can say, ‘Where do we go from here?’” she said.