Social Justice @ CUA A Social Concerns Initiative

social justice survey STATISTICS SHEET

June 16, 2002

            In the late spring of 2002, the Social Concerns Initiative of CUA sponsored a student social justice survey on campus.  Yielding 270 completed surveys, the group managed to collect information and data of 11.76% of the CUA undergraduate student body.  The survey asked questions about several student activities on campus and the impact of social justice on each aspect.  These included the involvement of social justice issues in the classroom, in student offices, and other extracurricular activities.

            The study surveyed students from each class at the university with relatively equal distributions.  Of the surveys that were completed by the students, 10.89% were seniors, 24.40% were juniors, 26.67% were sophomores and 30 were freshman.  An overwhelming majority of the students were in the School of Arts and Sciences, 71%, while the remainder of the students surveyed represented the other schools of the university: the School of Architecture, Engineering, Music, Philosophy, and Nursing.

            When students were asked if social justice issues were recognized, acknowledged and publicized on campus, 59% responded in saying that yes, while 37% of those surveyed did not believe that those issues were recognized on campus.  Students were also asked about what venues that saw help to facilitate the recognition and acknowledgement of such issues.  Of those that responded to the question, students recognized flyers (43%) as being the most common method of recognizing and acknowledging social justice issues.

            Students were also asked about the involvement of social justice issues in their classes.  Of those surveyed, 51% believed that social justice issues were not involved in the academics of this university.  Of those that thought social justice issues were involved in academics, they were further asked to list classes that they experienced such acknowledgement and recognition.  Students recognized social justice issues in classes offered by the School of Philosophy and Department of Religion, in the School of Arts and Sciences over 50% of the time.  Other prevalent department courses that were cited were politics, sociology, Spanish and social work.  Activities that were most often cited by students to address social justice issues were discussion, reading and lecture.  In fact, 45% of all the responses cited discussion about the issues as being the most prominent form of bringing those issues to bear.

            The traditional methods of teaching (i.e. discussion, lecture, reading, papers and library research) represented 83% of the activity in which social justice activities were addressed by the course.  Civic engagement activities (i.e. service-learning, community-based research, etc.) were involved in 6.67% of the activities in class that dealt with social justices activities.  Experiential learning methods of teaching (i.e. trips to sites, guest lectures, advocacy work, internships, etc.) represented 10% of the activities that helped to address issues of social justice in the classroom.

            When asked about student’s extracurricular activities, 50.56% of those polled said that social justice issues were the main focus.  Of those activities that the students listed, 42.10% were sponsored by the Office of Campus Ministry.  The rest of the activities, 57.90% were performed outside of that office.  The most common responses among those students polled were volunteering pulling in 9.66% of the total responses, follwed by Habitat for Humanity (7.59%), Prolife issues including Students for Life and the Prolife march (7.59%), food runs (6.20%) and general Campus Ministry volunteer activities (5.30%).