AMHERST — Although the climate at the University of Massachusetts’ flagship campus is viewed as positive by some, findings from a recent survey also reveal negative perceptions among some populations of the overall and racial climate, diversity and unfair treatment.
UMass conducted its 2017 Campus Climate Survey — a questionnaire administered last November and December to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff — as part of efforts to improve inclusiveness and diversity on campus.
“Our main message to the campus community is, ‘We hear you, we’re listening,’” said Enobong Branch, an associate professor of sociology and Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy’s faculty adviser for diversity and excellence.
Branch said the survey is part of the university’s Diversity Strategic Plan, completed in 2015 after racist grafitti directed at black students on campus sparked outrage the previous year.
One of the goals of that plan is to improve the campus climate, and Branch said the survey’s data will guide the university’s ongoing diversity efforts.
That baseline includes some good signs, like high levels of workplace cooperation, inclusiveness for views across the political spectrum and a high survey response rate.
However, there were also significant gaps in perception based on respondants’ race or ethnicity, gender or sexual identity.
“We are not where we want to be, that’s clear,” Branch said of the initial findings of the survey, which saw a surprisingly high response rate of more than 41 percent. “We want to be a campus where everyone feels included and respected.”
While a majority of undergrads gave the campus climate high ratings, black students, transgender or genderqueer students and students of another gender identity tended to rate the campus climate less favorably.
“Our survey results suggest that enhancing campus climate for these groups, in particular, should be paramount,” the report said.
As for diversity and the racial climate on campus, perceptions differed greatly based upon students’ race and ethnicity.
White undergraduate students, for example, were most likely to be “very satisfied with the racial climate,” and more than half of white, Asian and multiracial undergrads found the university to be on the higher end of the diversity spectrum.
However, the majority of black undergrads, and a third of Latino/a undergrads, rated the UMass Amherst campus on the less diverse side of the survey’s 1-to-5 scale. Around the same respective proportions of black and Latino/a students indicated being very or somewhat dissatisfied with the racial climate on campus.
“In its starkness, this difference in perceptions presents a clear target for university change efforts,” the survey concludes.
Similar trends emerged when looking at graduate students. While 61 percent of grad students overall rated the campus climate as a 4 or a 5, large portions of the black, Latino/a and LGB graduate student body rated the campus climate on the negative side of the spectrum.
An overwhelming majority of noninternational black graduate students rated campus on the “not diverse” end of the rating scale, as did around half of domestic multiracial and Latina/o students. As for the campus racial climate, 80 percent of domestic black graduate students reported dissatisfaction.
University faculty and staff also took the survey, with 61 percent of faculty members rating the campus climate a 4 or a 5, with much less variability across social identity groups than for students.
There was, however, significant variation when faculty were asked about campus diversity and racial climate. Black, Latino/a and multiracial faculty were more likely to rate campus diversity and racial climate negatively.
Fifty-nine percent of staff rated the campus climate on the positive end of the scale, but because of concerns about confidentiality, staff members were not broken down under the same set of racial/ethnic categories that students and faculty were.
Staff who identified as another gender or sexual identity were more likely to rate the campus climate negatively than their cisgender, heterosexual and LGB coworkers.
The survey also polled staff, faculty, undergraduate and graduate students about their experiences with unfair treatment at the university on the basis of their social identity.
For students and faculty, being black meant higher incidence rates of unfair treatment based on race or ethnicity. Students and staff saw high rates of unfair treatment for those identifying as transgender, genderqueer or another gender, whereas for faculty, those rates were highest for women.
More than a third of staff members also reported experiencing mistreatment “sometimes” or “often” in their campus jobs.
Branch, faculty adviser for diversity and excellence, said the abridged report was released so soon because university officials want to show UMass community members the results, and that they are moving quickly to address these issues.
“Our promise to you is that the survey is only the beginning,” Chancellor Subbaswamy wrote at the end of the abridged report. “In the coming months and years, we will work together to regularly develop dialogues, resources, and methods of evaluation to create a campus climate where all members of our community can thrive.”
The full report, which will be released this fall, includes not only quantitative data, but also analysis of open-ended, qualitative questions on community members’ personal experiences.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.