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E-PrinceIncumbent 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 ...
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Great. so... what were the results of the referendum? surely that wasn't so hard to calculate, was it?
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
Mixing my messages, the numbers i was talking about weren't the approval per se but the "improve-decline" q.
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!
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.