by Cento Staff
A few months ago, the Cento dispensed a survey to gather student opinions on various campus concerns, such as housing, wages, Greek Life, campus safety, disability accommodations, and more. The survey gathered 77 respondents, representing approximately 5.5% of the student body. While these numbers are modest, we at the Cento nonetheless believe there are some important trends in the data worth reporting. Our survey team consisted of Elke Coenders, Jenna Nicodemus and Hallie Gleeson.
The survey consisted of 3 sections. The first was simply demographics-gathering. The second was the bulk of the survey, consisting of Likert-scale questions about various aspects of campus. The third section was an optional free-response section for students to elaborate on their responses.
Firstly, demographics:
- The seniority of students was pretty evenly distributed; 24.7% were freshmen, 24.7% were sophomores, 28.6% were juniors, and 22.1% were seniors.
- 44.2% of respondents were women; 37.7% were men; 15.6% were nonbinary.
- 83.1% of respondents identified as White; 5.2% identified as Black or African American; 5.2% identified as Multiracial; 3.9% identified as Asian; 1.3% identified as Hispanic or Latino.
- 36.4% of respondents were involved with Greek Life.
- 20.8% of respondents were involved with athletics.
- 2.6% of respondents identified as international students.
- 13% of respondents identified as disabled.
Secondly, the Likert-scale questions produced an interesting pattern of responses. Respondents were asked to rate various aspects of campus on a scale of 5 points: 0 indicated complete dissatisfaction, 3 indicated neutrality, and 5 indicated complete satisfaction.
For analysis’ sake, we will assign these findings into three categories: student dissatisfaction, student ambivalence, and student satisfaction.
Students indicated strong satisfaction for the following:
- Quality of professors at Centre – 87% of respondents rated this a 4 or higher.
- Campus safety – 79% of respondents rated this a 4 or higher.
Students indicated ambivalence for the following:
- Centre administration’s treatment of professors – 78% of respondents rated this a 3 or lower, with 50.6% of respondents rating it a 3 specifically.
- The quality of administration at Centre – responses were slanted negatively, with 82% of respondents rating this a 3 or lower.
- Department of Public Safety – responses were generally split across the board, as 29% gave this a 4, 31% gave this a 3, 23% gave this a 2.
- Centre Global – leaning on the positive side, 48.1% gave this a 3, and 39% gave this a 4 or higher.
- Center for Career and Professional Development – leaning on the positive side, 46% gave this a 3, and 42% gave this a 4 or higher.
- Title IX – generally being split across the board, 46% gave this a 3.
- Greek Life – also being split across the board albeit slightly slanted toward the positive, 34% of respondents gave this a 3, and 31% respondents gave this a 4. Greek life members tended to rate this higher, with 78.5% of those identifying being part of Greek Life rating it a 4 or 5.
- Meal plans – split almost completely evenly across the board, 27% gave this a 2, 23% gave this a 3, and 22% gave this a 4. We found similar results for food diversity, though it was slanted more negative, with 23% giving it a 1.
- Academic accommodations – leaning slightly more on the positive side, 43% of students gave this a 3. 60% of disabled students rated this a 4 or higher.
- Campus accessibility – split across the board albeit slanted negatively, 18% gave this a 1, 33% gave this a 2, and 26% gave a 3. 90% of disabled students rated this a 2 or below.
- CentreNet – leaning on the negative side but generally split, 34% gave this a 2, 27% gave this a 3, and 25% gave this a 4.
Students indicated strong dissatisfaction with the following:
- Residence Life Office – 74% of respondents rated this a 2 or below.
- Housing Assignment System – 58% of respondents rated this a 2 or below.
- Quality of on-campus housing – 61% of respondents rated this a 2 or below.
- Treatment and management of RAs – 53% of respondents rated this a 2 or below.
- Communication surrounding financial aid changes – 66% of students rated this a 2 or below.
- Student worker wages – by far the most decisively negatively rated aspect on the survey, a whopping 68% of respondents gave this exactly a 1.
In addition to these questions, we asked students which singular aspect at Centre they would like to see improvement on:
- Housing – 28.9% of respondents selected this as their single most important issue.
- Wages – 28.6%
- Dining – 16.9%
- Disability services – 15.6%
We also asked two optional questions about whether students had, at their time at Centre, ever received discrimination from Centre administration or professors. 15.4% of nonwhite students reported yes on one of these questions. 40% of disabled students answered yes to one of these questions.
In the third section of the survey, we accepted free-format responses from respondents. A total of 34 different students spoke about specific aspects of their student experience, both good and bad. We would like to platform some of the diverse experiences and thoughts relayed in these responses.
On dining:
- “As someone who cannot eat red meats, there are days where I simply cannot get any protein intake … I do not have the financial means to support my physical health … and I am at the whims of whatever the dining hall throws at me.”
- “I was able to get out of the meal plan due to a medical exemption, but I wish this process was easier to access.”
- “I feel Centre is getting better about dining options, but only having 2.1 places to eat when hungry on campus is very demoralizing.”
- “It would be really awesome and cool if Centre Dining would stop adding wheat/flour to things that are naturally gluten free (potatoes). … Additionally, I would appreciate any amount of diversity regarding gluten- free desserts.”
- “The GET dining app would be so awesome if it ever worked.”
On faculty and education:
- “I have had mostly wonderful experiences with Centre faculty and staff. The professors who truly suck are few and far between in my experience. They have been extraordinarily accommodative for me in the Proctoring Center for the past four years … [though,] not a fan of the way tenure is decided — they basically won’t consider anything that’s not a publication as going towards their promotion. I think this feeds into the inaccessibility and self-destruction of academia. … Overall I have a lot of love for this place and will miss it, but I’m getting sick of all the bureaucracy.”
- “I think on the whole, Centre offers a remarkably good education with incredible opportunities for students. However, I would remind administrators that the student experience is far more impacted by the work of the faculty than by the administration. Therefore, the faculty should receive greater support than they do currently.”
- “I feel like the academic rigor of the college has declined, and that students are not being held to a high enough standard in most classes. Most students seem to struggle with creating quality arguments in their writing and seem to lack curiosity in the classroom, though I am not sure if this is a reflection of Centre’s quality of education or a cause of poor standards in the admissions department.”
- “Grade deflation and bias needs to stop. Professors should not be demonizing whole groups of people because they disagree with them.”
- “I think we could change perspective to be less entitled and more grateful that we get to live here, eat here, and be educated here.”
On studying abroad:
- “I leave for my study abroad program in a week, but I still don’t know where I will be living. I have had to navigate a complicated admissions process in a foreign language pretty much on my own. Centre Global has been absent throughout this process.”
- “I wish the Global Office had better communication and information to help students as they plan to go abroad. … Internship searches could really use some work. [The Rose Buford Trip was] amazing, but the process leading into it was discouraging, confusing, and frustrating to the point that one of three students going dropped the trip entirely. I would love it if they engaged with students who have gone to organize information and ensure accuracy so that the distasteful experiences I had with housing while abroad will not be repeated with other students.”
- “Centre Global is filled with some of the rudest people I have ever met and is the reason I don’t plan to give any money to this school after I graduate. During a bout with a mystery illness that forced me to drop a program … [they] immediately said, ‘You aren’t getting money back,’ and charged me an extra fee. They were incredibly rude … and kept pressuring me to submit forms while I was in the hospital … They talked to me like I was stupid.”
On housing:
- “Dorms are so completely filled with mold that I have permanent memory loss and hair loss due to it. They tried to put me in a dorm (disability dorms) this year that, upon moving in, was so completely filled with the most mold I’d ever seen that facilities had to come fix it immediately.”
- “The disparity of housing at Centre is terrible. You either live in a very nice apartment due to luck or seniority, or you live in cockroach-infested dorms with communal showers that barely work.”
- “The Res Life Office’s treatment of accommodation housing last year was angering at best and outrageous at worst. The sheet I was required to fill out (including extremely sensitive information about my disability) was lost and never found, and my needs were swept aside multiple times. During my many in-person meetings to resolve this matter and get any room to live in, I was belittled.”
- “Our Greek house had no hot water for 2 weeks during February, and that made me realize how much Centre Housing really cares about students.”
On disability and discrimination:
- “I do not identify as a disabled student, I do however deal with chronic pains. When the automatic doors don’t work, it’s a hassle for me and much more of a hassle for someone that needs it more than I. I think the JVAC building could be more accommodating as well.”
- “I once had a seizure during a lab and later got an email from the professor stating that I ‘was a disturbance to his class’ and he would appreciate it if could ‘refrain from causing any more scenes.’ When I reported to administration, my paperwork mysteriously disappeared into the abyss and was never followed up on.”
- “I feel as if Centre is a completely different for experience as a woman of color. I sometimes feel that if I were white I’d like it way more.”
On Title IX:
- “Treatment of survivors of sexual assault/harrassment/general misconduct by the Title IX Office is very dismissive and not conducive to a welcoming nor safe environment. General attitudes toward sexual misconduct and gender relations on campus amongst the student body are extremely negative and lead to a culture which not only discourages victims from speaking up, but at times directly encourages and celebrates predatory behaviours.”
- “The Title IX office gets more hate than it deserves in my opinion. While it would be great to have a woman in charge of it, Perrin is a great supporting presence who made me feel listened to, empowered, and respected when I went to him after a sexual harassment episode with a professor. And to be completely honest, a male figure in that office is useful for standing up to those who obviously do not respect women’s autonomy or authority to begin with.”
- “Fraternities need to be abolished completely. The group behavior mindset encourages men to do completely terrible things and refuse to believe allegations against their brothers and it’s utterly disgusting.”
On student wages:
- “Student wages are abhorrent. I work in the scene shop and it’s unbelievable how much we put into keeping campus running especially when we are who helps all of these offices give their events. Manual skilled labor being paid minimum wage is absolutely absurd. I learned to weld for that job!”
- “The wages are unfair. I work in the sports information staff and I actually do work unlike some of the desk jobs I’ve seen where students can work a fixed amount of hours a week and also do homework while they are on shift. For me however, I have to do work and there are sometimes weeks where there are no home games and I won’t be able to work. And thus I make much less compared to other students who don’t work as much as me. This frustrates me a lot and Centre needs to fix this.”
That concludes the summary of data we collected. Of course, we would like to kindly thank all respondents for taking the time to respond to the Cento’s survey, especially those who went the extra mile to provide us with elaborate feedback about their experience here at Centre. Your voice has been heard.
Here at the Cento, we hope the data can speak for itself. The student body, even from just this sample, is loud and clear about the current inadequacy of housing and wages at Centre College. Though we acknowledge no institution is perfect, we nonetheless hope this collection of student opinions can encourage administration into funneling more effort and resources into these points of dissatisfaction. We all care about Centre College, after all, and want to see it grow and thrive.