Last night, SGA returned to campus after spring break to take a close look at the feedback and concerns voiced by Desserts After Dark (DAD). Bureau Chief Leena Chen reports on the event.

DAD, or Desserts After Dark, is SGA’s semesterly survey of Barnard student awareness and concerns. This semester, there were 355 student responses across all four class years. VP Campus Life Hannah Stanhill presented data visualizations and interpretations based on the survey data.

Many of the questions pertained to campus resources and accessibility. Among the new resource centers in Milstein, the Empirical Reasoning Center had by far the highest percentage of student engagement, with 34% of students having visited at least once. In contrast, the Movement Lab in Milstein experienced a very low rate of student engagement, with only 7% of students having visited at least once.

Another new campus resource is the Halal food station in Hewitt Dining Hall, which received mixed, but mostly positive feedback, with 75% of respondents saying that they were somewhat or very satisfied. Among the 17% of respondents who were somewhat or very dissatisfied, many expressed frustration by the lack of variety and options offered.

Computer science was another important topic in the DAD survey. A total of 67% of respondents felt that support resources accompanying Columbia CS courses were either very or somewhat accessible. In the formation of the new Barnard Computer Science Department, DAD also polled students on what type of courses they would like to see offered and 67% of respondents indicated interest in computer science courses for non-majors. However, Stanhill also observed that the majority of respondents are to DAD are likely to be non-majors, so if the question were posed specifically to computer science majors, it may yield different results.

At the end of her presentation, Stanhill explained that the next steps are to release a full report of the survey results and to send relevant data directly to the appropriate representatives, administrators, and departments in response to student feedback.

 

SGA Logo via Bwog Archive

Survey via Wikimedia Commons