‘Recreation
Center’ survey flawed, rigged
Jeb Sprague
and Elisa Herrera
Either by mistake or by design, the “Student Recreation Needs Assessment,” which
was supposed to be sent to the e-mail accounts of all of Cal State Long Beach’s
students, was embedded with HTML programming that has prevented many students
from submitting a survey that opposed the rec center and increased student tuition.
Some students did not receive the e-mail notification and were unable to take
the survey. Students who indicated that they did not want corporate solicitation
at my.csulb.edu, did not receive the survey. At the Oct. 5th ASI Senate meeting,
two of 20 senators revealed they never received an e-mail about the survey. Other
students have since come forward about not receiving e-mail notification.
If students found out about it through other means, they were still prevented
from participating. Students who went directly to the survey URL and tried to
log in were told that their information was invalid. If 10 percent of the senate
was excluded, there is no telling how much of the general student population
was similarly silenced.
Over halfway through the survey, students were provided two proposals for a recreation
center: Option A, which would increase student tuition by $170-$190 a year and
Option B, which would increase student tuition by $110-$130 a year. In relation
to this, Question 17 of the survey asked, “If you had to select one option,
which option would you choose?”
Three options were provided, “Option
A, Option B, and Neither.” When clicking on “Neither,” the
survey immediately erased all the questions below, including the submit button
which would allow the vote to be entered. This was tested on multiple Macintosh
machines using the Safari Internet browser, all with the same result. Safari
is the Internet browser that comes with Macs and is recommended by Mac.com.
In addition to barring students from logging in to the survey and preventing
students from submitting opinions against the rec center, the survey is plagued
with language that is structured to collect student data in support of a recreation
center.
The survey failed to mention the total cost of a recreation center and
neglected to offer other options that additional funding could be used for on
campus. Also, the survey failed to mention that many departments are practically
dying from budget cuts.
Brailsford & Dunlavey, the firm ASI paid to conduct the survey, is not a
polling company. They are a facility planning company that profits from moving
the construction process to fruition. Ironically, Brailsford & Dunlavey has
acted as a public relations firm for building the rec center on CSULB.
Neither
Brailsford & Dunlavey nor the Pollock administration has shown interest in
providing an honest “feasibility analysis” or a “preliminary
assessment” like Brailsford & Dunlavey claims on its Web site.
In response to ASI’s long history of supporting the’rec center, the
CSULB Coalition to Stop the $48 million Recreation Center was founded by students
from various campus organizations. Since then, pro-rec center AS officers have
struggled tirelessly to silence students who oppose raising fees in the midst
of a budget crisis. New members of ASI who do not approve of the tuition increase
are accused of “not representing their constituents.”
It seems that pro-rec center AS officers believe the only constituents who matter
are those who agree with their own views. And now, the survey which was supposed
to gather untainted information about students’ opinions has been structured
to skew the results in favor of a recreation center.
Why are CSULB students being forced to pay thousands of dollars for a farcical
survey that excludes a large swathe of the student population?
Jeb Sprague is a member of the CSULB Campus Progressives.
Elisa Herrera is an AS Senator for the College of Education.
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