A survey conducted by Evan Thierry, ASCC Assistant Commissioner of Student Services, showed how involved students are on campus.
Some of the results included 11 percent of students went to the Cerritos College football Homecoming game on Sept. 22, 79 percent knew that there is a student government, and 13 percent attended the Job Fair on Nov. 9.
One hundred and seventy-eight students participated in the survey. Yes, only 178 students out of 24,355 students, from enrollment of Spring 2011 according to Public Affair’s “Facts at a Glance” page on Cerritos.edu, on campus were surveyed.
This is not even one-hundredth of a percent of the college, so how could this possibly be a fair representation of students being on campus?
Although Commissioner of Student Services David Aguirre and Thierry are planning on re-doing the survey to get a better representation, will that be enough?
Thierry said that it was his first time doing a survey and was not given direction of how to do the survey, so he is not to blame for not getting the other 99.9 percent of the school.
Now whether or not the numbers could be different if more students were surveyed is the question.
How about surveying the person talking to their friend, he could be part of a club.
How about the person waiting in line for their food? He might know where to get a haircut on campus and the person lying on the grass might know where to buy discounted movie tickets.
A fair representation of the campus would be at least 5,000 students, which would be 20 percent of the student body, to 10,000 students, which would be 41 percent.
In order for this to work, Aguirre and Thierry must plan days ahead of time.
Plan out a group discussion as to how to survey students, and it can’t be a last minute assignment.
Assign several people to do the survey. Don’t leave one member all alone for an assignment like this.
And also realize that this will take more than one day to do properly.
It is difficult to talk to 24,355 students, but not impossible. So instead, plan four or five groups of six or seven people.
It is up to those who do surveys to get a representation of more than 178 students as to how much students are involved on campus.
