After three years of work, the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate launched Tufts Polls, an online resource for gauging student opinion, on Tuesday. The initiative's first survey - which asks about student diversity - was loaded on Tuesday and will be available today at ase.tufts.edu/senate/diversity.
Organizers of Tufts Polls hope the first survey will determine any problems with the system, but they are already aware of one major issue - the lack of a wrapper, a filter that allows the system to determine who has taken the survey. Because the wrapper would count students who are kicked off in the middle of filling out the survey as having completed it, it will not be used for the time being.
The pilot poll, then, allows the same student to take the survey multiple times.
The diversity survey - designed by the TCU Senate Culture, Ethnicity, and Community Affairs (CECA) Committee - and its results will be used to help determine ways in which the committee can involve the student body. While the absence of a wrapper makes the survey's results non-scientific, committee members say that the response they get will still be of some use.
The survey was developed using software that allows for web-based scientific surveys. Freshman Senator Jill Bier, who worked on the Tufts Polls project, attended training sessions to learn about the software, and has worked with Dawn Terkla, the director of the Department of Institutional Research, to develop surveys that ensure valid results. Along with Terkla, Bier is working on the wrapper problem and hopes that a solution will come soon.
Senate members say the survey program is a new, more efficient way of determining student opinion. Last year, the Senate established a committee to focus on community outreach. Its efforts have taken the form of tabling in the dining halls and campus center, and question/comment boxes in prominent campus locations.
"This system works relatively well, but is still pretty inefficient," said Nikhil Abraham, a senator who also has help lead the Tufts Polls project in recent months. "Not everyone goes to the dining halls, and a lot of times, people just don't have time to fill out our surveys."
Abraham and others think that Tufts Polls will help the Senate better determine student sentiment because students will be able to fill out surveys whenever they have time. As added incentive, several participants will be chosen to receive $50 gift certificates to the bookstore for visiting the site.
If all goes well with the pilot survey, many campus organizations will be able to conduct online polls next year. Clubs who wish to release a survey will have to follow an as-of-yet undetermined set of rules and procedures in order to use the system. This will help better serve the Tufts community, senators say, by providing organizations with better access to student opinion.
The advent of Tufts Polls is also being looked at as a possible venue for TCU elections. This has been a vocal goal of the Senate - online polls would save money while increasing voter turnout, many senators say. But the Elections Board (ELBO), a sovereign nonpolitical group, is responsible for organizing and running all student government elections.
