An Unfounded Claim

By trumpeting the results of its recent poll as proof that students support a reversal in Harvard’s ROTC policy, the Harvard Republican Club has misrepresented the significance of a highly unscientific exercise. Last week, the HRC concluded its poll of Harvard undergraduates with an impressive 1,700 responses, 62% of which favored official recognition of ROTC at the College. Yet the HRC’s claim that the poll shows “strong support for official recognition of ROTC among Harvard students” is dubious at best. A substantial self-selection bias and a low response rate show that this poll can tell us very little about opinions towards ROTC on campus. The discussion it has provoked, however, is a sign of the issue’s importance on campus, and the conversation on this policy should continue with more representative polling by the HRC and other interested organizations.

This poll’s various flaws make it a highly inaccurate barometer of the opinions of the student body. The nature of the poll, in which students were emailed a link and given the option to respond, lends itself to a self-selection bias. Only the students interested in answering the email, and if so, the specific questions presented in the poll, would participate in the exercise. Therefore, since there is a clear and significant difference between the population that selected into the survey and that which did not, any claim that the views of the 26 percent of Harvard students who responded to the poll are representative of the opinions of the 74 percent who did not is groundless.

In addition, any student possessing an opinion more nuanced than a simple “yes” or “no” would have difficulty express his or her opinion on such a complex issue, given the phrasing of the question. The HRC has acknowledged the existence of a self-selection bias, but still claims that its poll demonstrates that “student opinion” is “at odds with Faculty opinion” on the ROTC question. This is certainly not the case when the poll in question is sent out online, offers a narrow range of survey choices, and gathers responses from only a quarter of the student body.

It is true that various groups, including The Crimson, send polls out online every year using similar methodologies to gather results. These are no more accurate than the ROTC poll, but they are also not used to advocate major policy changes on highly charged issues.

The responses to the HRC poll and the discussion it has created does show that there is a great deal of campus interest in this contentious issue, however, and groups from across the spectrum should continue a vibrant conversation on the policy.

Specifically, the HRC and other interested groups should engage in a more scientific poll if they wish to gauge true student opinion on this policy. The polling should include random sampling to gain a more accurate representation of the student body, as well as more survey choices to properly reflect the nuanced positions that many students hold. This exercise could continue to forward discussion on an important topic and allow more students a route to voice their opinion.

Though while we are interested to see what better polling would uncover, our position on the fundamental question of ROTC recognition will not change no matter what the results are, because this is an issue of discrimination that should not be decided by majority opinion. Harvard should welcome ROTC back when ROTC welcomes all students to join, not in response to any poll—especially a poll as flawed as this one.