J-Term, Budget Cuts Concern Students

Harvard students are most concerned with University budget cuts and January Term programming, according to the results of a survey conducted last May by the Undergraduate Council released last week.

The survey questions focused on student opinions of the UC, its recent initiatives, and campus issues such as budget cuts and hot breakfast. The survey, which was emailed to all 6,650 undergraduates, had 607 respondents—less than 10 percent.

UC Vice President Eric N. Hysen ’11 said the council will use these results to determine how it approaches the administration this fall. For example, Hysen said the UC will place special emphasis on January Term planning, which 163 respondents indicated was one of the most important issues the UC tackles.

The survey also included questions about general student opinion of the UC, which UC Student Relations Committee Chair Ashley M. Fabrizio ’11 said will be useful in determining the UC’s plans this semester.

“We had more students thinking that we’re doing a good job than not,” Hysen said of the results. “That sort of reflects that last semester we did a lot of work that people actually saw.”

Hysen cited last April’s T-shirt giveaway at the men’s lacrosse game tailgate—an event that 61 percent of survey respondents deemed “effective”—as an example of the visible efforts the UC has made over the past semester.

Most of the survey results indicated that students are unfamiliar with many UC initiatives. Almost half of respondents said they “haven’t heard of” last spring’s Student Initiated Programming Pilot, which provided funding for house events in Quincy and Pforzheimer last April. Hysen said the UC plans to make better communication with students a priority this semester.

“I’m positive that pretty much every one of them has gone to a UC-funded event,” Hysen said. “One thing we’re going to do is to talk about things that people maybe have an idea of but don’t know the names or attach them to the UC.”

In addition to a survey on social life that the UC hopes to organize this October, the UC plans to use these results as a “baseline” for future annual surveys, according to Hysen.

“A lot of times UC reps, or anyone who’s talking about the UC, talk about it in terms of student opinions,” Fabrizio. “But there was really no way to know what students know about the UC. That was the idea behind the survey.”

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.