Since 2002, more than 58,000 students participated in the UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, whose results were revealed last week to the UC Board of Regents. Created to give the administrators a sense of undergraduate life, the survey certainly held nothing back as it asked questions that ranged from how students liked their classes to the raciest issue— diversity.

With UC Berkeley’s campus history, it’s no wonder the concern for diversity and tolerance is at the top of administrators’ minds. One question asks if there is “too much” emphasis on diversity at Cal. Rate that on a scale from 1 to 10. Then list your ethnic and sexual background. Now answer—do you feel like you belong to this campus?

However the survey may have us define ourselves, the bottom line is that we undergraduates are a big family of love. According to the results, between 79 and 90 percent of students who took the survey believed their peers are respected regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, political beliefs, race and ethnicity, or economic and social class.

Now that the huge mystery has been solved, the survey goes on to reveal that students who are “easily distracted” and “unable to concentrate” have more difficulty achieving academically. Perhaps asking for the sources of these distractions may have been more enlightening for the administrators, who probably would have discovered Putnam Porn on DC++.

The Daily Cal interviewed Steve Chatman, the project director of the UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, and reported that

Although Chatman said none of the results were entirely unexpected, he said the survey is an important tool used to dispel misconceptions about undergraduate life.

“It is a remarkable resource and unique in the country. We have over seven hundred pieces of information that come in, and it shows us that a lot of things we assume to be true really aren’t,” he said.

In other words, this survey makes two important revelations:
1) Undergraduates’ behaviors and attitudes are not entirely unexpected
2) Undergraduates are not what you assume they are

With this “remarkable resource” that has been five years of intense research and, we’re guessing, money (because how else can we be suckered in to filling out those surveys in the first place without the chance to win a shiny Apple product?), we can spend our blissful 5.7 hours a week watching television knowing our administrators are taking great care of us by … knowing we’re doing just that.

The only question left on everyone’s minds is—where are our friggin iPods?

Image Source: UCUES mainpage
Undergraduate Survey Tracks Student Habits, Backgrounds [Daily Cal]