Syracuse University officials have extended the deadline for students to take the campus climate survey until March 28.

The deadline has been extended amid a lack of student response to the survey, but officials remain hopeful that they will be able to garner increased responses with students returning from spring break, said Libby Barlow, co-chair of the Climate Assessment Planning Committee, in an email.

The survey is designed to measure how happy, comfortable and generally satisfied students, faculty and staff are with life at SU. The 14 administrators on the planning committee built the survey along with help from Rankin & Associates Consulting, a firm that specializes in climate surveys.

Barlow, who is also the assistant vice president of institutional research and assessment at SU, said that 14 percent of undergraduate students and 15.5 percent of graduate students had responded to the survey as of March 17. She said SU could use the results from the survey with that rate of response, but added that officials would have to interpret the results with caution because they don’t know whether they have a representative sample of the campus population.

“If we’re interested in the general population, this is an acceptable response rate,” she said. “… We know how many men, women, graduates, undergraduates, et cetera are in our population.  But we don’t know how many LGBT or members of other marginalized groups we have, so we have no way to know when we have reached a representative sample.”

Barlow said she has no way to know for sure why there has been a low response rate among students but added that she and others were told several potential reasons that could contribute to it. Those reasons include that students think the survey is about weather, that students don’t know about the survey because they don’t read emails and that advertising for the survey “is so relentless that people are making fun of that,” Barlow added.

The survey will aim to identify issues that need to be addressed at SU. In addition, the survey will provide information about what groups on campus are experiencing those issues and how they’re experiencing them, which will in turn provide guidance on how SU can address the issues, Barlow said.

“There is no question that this is important, and we know that at least some students don’t feel included,” she said. Barlow added that it is equally important to hear from people who don’t experience those issues in order to have a representative sample.

Student Association Vice President Jane Hong said in an email that SU students “have so many different experiences” and that the survey is important because it will bring different issues to light.

“Some issues are widespread and acknowledged, while others may not be as well-known,” Hong said. “Regardless, it’s important that every single student knows that their voice is valued and heard.”

New York state’s “Enough is Enough” law — which was enacted last year — requires all colleges and universities in the state to conduct climate surveys measuring the sexual and relationship violence experiences of students, faculty and staff.

SU’s climate survey is broader, though, as it focuses on the campus climate as a whole and will attempt to garner feedback on instances of bias, stereotyping and harassment pertaining to issues such as race and sexual orientation.

The survey was created in response to a suggestion from Chancellor Kent Syverud’s Task Force on Sexual and Relationship Violence.

After the survey closes next week, Rankin & Associates will analyze the data and write a report on the findings, which it will then present to the planning committee for review.

Responses to the survey and findings will be made public, but individual participants will be kept anonymous.

—News editor Alexa Torrens contributed reporting to this article

Published on March 20, 2016 at 11:15 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu