Incumbent Class of 2009 president Grant Bermann defeated challenger Alec Williams ’09 by only 11 votes to retain his post, ending a day of uncertainty sparked by a technical snafu that delayed confirmation of the race’s outcome.
“I’m thrilled,” said ...(back to the article)
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To P '11: If the difference was only between seniors and everyone else, then you'd have a point. But if you look at the actual data, you see that this isn't the case. There is a drop off in support between Freshman and sophomores, between sophomores and juniors, and between juniors and seniors. In other words, in every single year there is a decline. I decided to compare frosh and seniors because the two groups represent the original situation and the final situation, or something close to it. It's not just that there's anger, which there is, it's that there is steadily growing anger that peaks senior year. the data is probably a little off in some cases, but I also think that selection bias works both ways. For one, who is most likely to vote in a USG referendum if not those who think that the USG matters and who believes that the school does listen?
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Barry: be careful in reading so much into the trend. First, the response rate among seniors was relatively low: presumably, comparatively more of those who really cared (i.e. were angry) saw fit to bother responding. Second, non-longitudinal data like this has a number of flaws for comparing across time-differing groups: http://weber.ucsd.edu/~tkousser/Beck%20Notes/longitude20041short.pdf. For example, perhaps seniors had a particularly bad experience not the fault of the administration that colored their views. Or their characteristics systematically differ from lowerclassmen. The point being, this poll, while suggestive (yes, I think we can all agree there's significant anger at the administration), is nowhere near robust enough to draw firm conclusions.
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just wait until you're applying to law school
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I, for one, think the administration has done a great job overall. I may have minor gripes now and then, but no other school in the world could entice me to leave Princeton. As I've noted overwhelmingly negative comments on this board, I felt compelled to dispel any illusion of the student body's unanimous condemnation of the administration.
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@barry: understand on the JP, and I think you're right on a number of points.I do think "no opinion" matters, since people who are not bothered by the administration are probably OK with their performance, but your other points are taken.
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True: Yea, the free responses were another thing that struck me. Reading through the list, there are rant after rant attacking the administration for a a variety of issues (see Josh's op-ed for a good list of them) with only an occasional defense of the U. thrown in. The vast majority of those who took the time to write anything out attacked the admin, and that's saying something.
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While I may think it's drastic to fire them off the bat, the results show that the student body strongly disagrees with the direction the university is heading. For being the number one school with great resources and facilities, it's surprising that the administration would have a sub 50% approval rating. Perhpas we should refer to President Tilghman as Madame 43% // Ms. 43% etc. Bad news for them b/c prefrosh yet to commit to a school may see these results and think twice.
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I've got to agree with Barry here. One would think that the numbers should be reversed- higher for seniors as they've come to understand what the administration had done. Rather shockingly, it's the opposite. The longer one stays at Princeton, apparently, the more one grows to hate the administration. Also, most of the people I know who put "no opinion" put it because they weren't sure how to address the question. I think more specific questions would lead to even worse results. Also, the free responses were pretty damning.
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Fire Nancy Malkiel! and might as well fire Tilghman who took a seat on Google's BOD for the CEO's daughter to be admitted!
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Mixing my messages, the numbers i was talking about weren't the approval per se but the "improve-decline" q.
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Sorry for the antagonism- I realize that it came off a little petulantly. I have no excuse but the stresses of my JP, which is a pretty bad excuse. As to why the numbers were lower than we expected, you're right, they were lower than I thought they'd be too. I think you might find that a lot of people put "no opinion" as a kind of protest at what they thought was the poll's poor design. I've spoken to several people who did so. To be honest, I think that you really need to ignore the no opinion stats (who at Princeton doesn't have an opinion? I mean come on), in which case the numbers look 70% opposed, 30% for. As to the idea that all approval ratings decline over time, I disagree. The approval ratings of bad Presidents (like Bush) will constantly decline, whereas i think the approval ratings of good Presidents will constantly rise. But you're right that the difference is that the seniors have seen more mistakes.
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@Barry: Not sure where the antagonism is coming from, I wasn't really responding to you specifically, just noting my impressions. On your point, I would guess it's also true at most institutions that seniors have a lower approval rating than freshmen, because all administrations mess up, and seniors have seen more of it. You're right that we can't know other school's numbers, and that a lot of people here are angry. My point was simply that based on a lot of the conversations I hear, I expected the disapproval numbers to be higher.
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To Gotta Say: I gotta say that you need to read more carefully. What I said wasn't that the approval rating itself was damning; what I said was damning was the 51% swing in net approval rating over our four years here. And as I said, the numbers gradually and constantly get worse each year, which suggests strongly that the more people interact with and see the administration in action, the worse their opinion is of it. As to what the numbers would be at other institutions, I can't pretend to know and neither can you. But my friends at other schools seem to generally not have the same anger to their administrations. It's more a sense of "ehh, whatever." To be sure, that may just be a function of who my friends are and one should not extrapolate wildly from small sample sizes. But all the same, I think that the fact that, by a margin of 5-2, seniors think Nassau Hall is making things worse is a big deal.
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I don't see how 52% of seniors disapproving is THAT damning. I wonder if you would really get lower numbers at peer institutions: students seem to always hate administrations, the most common reason being that administrations are by nature opposed to binge drinking. Sure, a lot of people are angry about grade deflation and the conduct of the four year college plan, but I frankly expected much higher disapproval numbers.
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The Prince did another terrible job of reporting. Here are some salient figures from the referendum results. I focused on statistics from the Class of 2008 because, obviously, they have had the most exposure to the current administrative regime: 1.)52.47% of the senior class disapproves or strongly disapproves of the job top-level administrators are doing in running the University. 2.) 51.86% of the seniors say that top-level administrators have incurred a decline in quality of life. 3.) 71.48% of seniors feel that top-level administrators do not listen to student input while policy-making, in addition to 57.83% of the entire undergraduate student body 4.) 82.42% of the seniors and 73.01% of the undergraduate student body viewed this referendum as non-frivolous. 5.) ~20% of the senior class participated in this questionnaire, compared to ~%40 for the other classes.
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Look at the internals of that approval rating. 20% of seniors strongly disapprove versus 5% of freshman. 14% of freshman disapprove: 32% of seniors do. On the approval side, it goes from 5 strong approve/49 approve for frosh to seniors at 5 strong/31 approve. So the net approval goes from +35% when we get here to -16% when we leave, a 51% swing in net approval rating. That, not the overall numbers is whats damning. PS- it's not small sample size. The numbers change at a fairly gradual and constant rate in each grade.
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Great. so... what were the results of the referendum? surely that wasn't so hard to calculate, was it?
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