Tilghman not surprised by income, happiness findings in COMBO

“I think there is little new news in this survey,” Tilghman said. “That’s very different from saying I am happy about the results of the survey,” she added.

Though the USG conducted the COMBO survey in May 2007, survey results were not publicly released until last week. The administration was not involved in the delay of the release of the results, Tilghman said.

“To my knowledge, no one in the administration was telling the USG they couldn’t publish the results in the survey,” Tilghman said. “Certainly we didn’t have any sense that this was information that should be suppressed.”

USG members discussed the COMBO survey results for about 30 minutes at their Senate meeting on Sunday night, brainstorming how they could respond to concerns about the social stratification brought to light by the findings.

“Given that January was finals and [JP-writing] … there wasn’t a meeting until February to discuss the results with the administration,” USG president Josh Weinstein ’09 said of the delay in releasing results. “In February we had this discussion, we came up with a few ideas, a few solutions, [and] it was clear that a lot more thought needed to go into it.”

At the meeting, members suggested changing financial aid policies, providing better information on social options and holding public forums to discuss the survey’s results.

The Nassau Hall response

A majority of student respondents to COMBO described themselves as “usually happy,” though the percentage of students who described themselves as “always happy” decreased with income from 16 percent in the self-reported upper class to 7 percent in the self-reported lower class.

Tilghman said that students being generally happy at Princeton was “good news.”

She noted, however, that other specifics findings were more troubling.

“If you look at the reaction of the students to various dining options I see two things: You see that low-income students are overrepresented in the residential colleges and in the independent dining, and you see that students that are in the highest-income brackets, as self reported, are most likely to be in bicker clubs,” she said.

“That is one [problem] that I think concerns me the most,” she said. “That’s a social stratification that has existed at Princeton for many years.”

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

The segregation created by the eating system is one thing that Tilghman has worked to eliminate under her administration.

“It’s not as though we haven’t been trying to do things to improve the situation,” she said.

The creation of the four-year residential college system and the opening of Campus Club should have a positive impact on students’ social options, Tilghman said.

Changes in financial aid and improvements to the Carl A. Fields Center have the potential to improve the social situation on campus, she added.

“We’re working hard at it. I think there’s more we can do,” she noted.

Tilghman stressed, however, that it is the students who have to take the initiative in changing social life on campus.

“Without the students actively engaged in this discussion, there is literally nothing this administration can do that would be effective,” she said.

Tilghman explained that the Interclub Council, the USG and residential college council leaders could be sources for such dialogue.

“I mean, if you brought those three groups together, all of whom are taking leadership responsibility in some part of student life, I think you’d have a pretty interesting conversation,” she said.

“Social engineering is a bottom-up activity, not a top-down activity,” she noted, adding, “Nothing [would] be worse than for me to start making edicts. It would be the kiss of death.”

USG’s answers

The survey results also concerned USG members, who indicated that they wanted to work with the administration to reduce social and class disparities.

“The most important thing to take away from the survey results would be to find actionable steps, things we can concretely do to improve whatever weaknesses were elicited by the survey,” Weinstein said.

U-Councilor Jacob Candelaria ’09 said students need different sources of information about campus life.

“Right now, what students learn about their social options … is really dictated by who their friends are and the rumor mill,” he noted.

The survey showed that 60 percent of lower-income students said they knew “nothing at all” about the social scene on campus before coming to Princeton, while only 12 percent of upper-class students responded the same way.

U-Councilor Liz Rosen ’10 suggested creating a USG guide to social options on campus similar to a guide on academics or disciplinary procedures. She noted, however, that this would be a “huge undertaking.”

Rosen added that students on financial aid needed more information about available assistance concerning social and dining options on campus.

“I feel like people who are on significant amounts of financial aid are entitled to a personal financial adviser letting them know what their options are,” she said.

The USG also discussed getting wider input from the student body on COMBO’s results.

Class of 2009 senator Bruce Halperin suggested holding open meetings akin to Alcohol Coalition Committee functions. USG members worried, however, that participants at these meetings might only represent students in the lower- and lower-middle income levels or those already involved in correcting socioeconomic disparities on campus.

“We want someone from every corner of campus,” U-Councilor Davion Chism ’09 said.

Creating a happiness campaign could alleviate student dissatisfaction with campus life, said U-Councilor Maria Salciccioli ’09, who is also a blogger for The Daily Princetonian.

“I think that would be a worthwhile thing to embark upon,” she said. “We want people to remember their four years fondly.”

She also stressed that financial aid should be extended to sophomore spring club costs and that Career Services and the USG should partner to address the survey finding that lower-income students are more likely to consider financial prospects when choosing a major.