Throughout the week of Feb. 17, Elizabethtown College hosted multiple data walk sessions, where members of the campus community were invited to review the results of the 2024 campus climate survey. This survey ran during two weeks of February in 2024 and then the surveys were evaluated and de-identified in order to protect students’ identities.
The sessions and the spread of surveys were both run by Associate Provost for Institutional Effectiveness and Innovation Susan Mapp, Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students Nichole Gonzalez, and Director of the Center for Community and Civic Engagement Javita Thompson. In sending out the surveys last year, they intended to spread this data with the wider community.
“We wanted to do the survey to see what we know and what we can do with this information,” Mapp said.
When comparing the 2022 results to the 2024 results presented at the data walk, Etown wanted to improve culture, belonging, experiences of discrimination, support for diversity and knowledge of how to report discrimination. To enact these changes, in the past two years Etown made diversity training required for employees and tried to make information on reporting discrimination more accessible.
While they aimed to improve on all these efforts in the two years between data collected, they did not improve in perceived support for diversity and experiences of discrimination and harassment. This data may make people respond with a multitude of emotions, but the sessions aimed to make people sit with those feelings and delve into the data rather than immediately reacting.
“The goal is to interact with the data,” Gonzalez said.
Therefore, after they went over demographics and how they collected the data, they made the sessions more interactive. On the first look at the data members of the community had to view the data in silence and not speak about it with those around them. This was an effort to make sure that no one was influenced by the opinions of others.
The silent reviewing of the data took over 30 minutes and did not only include statistics of numerical reports but included direct quotes from students who took the survey. These quotes allow for faculty and students alike to understand the perspective of students who may feel the campus should improve in several areas.
Related to the perception of a lack of diversity and representation, one student anonymously responding had the suggestion to hire more staff that represents the community that is known as the minority.
For fostering inclusivity in belonging, despite there being an improvement in overall perceptions, another anonymous student still felt that the campus should “do more things to make people of marginalized identities feel more included/welcomed.”
Then, once everyone had sat back down, groups of four to six engaged in small circle discussions where each participant got a chance to respond to each of the questions asked. These questions included trying to find the most important area to focus on changing or improving and how to make that specific change as well as immediate actions that could be taken in the current social and political climate. This section aimed to take around an hour, though some groups took longer or shorter depending on the extent of their answers. The responses to the questions were also recorded on a Microsoft form, so that those overseeing the data could use the responses in future considerations.
Afterwards, those attending suggested specific changes they wanted to see in the classrooms, residence halls and workspaces around campus. These suggestions included changes to certain language and words currently used in classrooms, more information on how to report discrimination and bias since there were still students who were unaware, increased communication to the general student body following bias incidents around campus and increased accountability for those who committed bias acts among many solutions.
Those who attended the sessions found benefits in learning more about the perceived issues on campus and thinking through what more the community can do to resolve them.
“I honestly thought the presentation and the data collected was really informative. With being a RA I unfortunately got to see the discrimination and harassment firsthand, especially while living in the first-year dorms. It’s really unfortunate that many students do not feel welcomed, comfortable, or safe on campus,” senior sociology major Hannah Smith said. “Though, through the presentation we had time to discuss ways the student body would suggest to spark change on campus which was a great way for administrators to understand the steps students are wanting and willing to take to create a better environment on campus.”
