A report conducted by the accreditors of Stevens, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, found that only 27 percent of undergraduate students are formal members of Registered Student Organizations. Released in May 2018, the report by Middle States indicated that fewer students are involved on campus than once believed by student leaders and Stevens administrators. However, most student leaders and administrators question the accuracy of this finding.
Middle States attributed the lack of student involvement to the Student Government Association and the Office of Undergraduate Student Life, suggesting that the SGA and OSL should do more to “attract a larger portion of its undergraduate student body to engage in campus life, specifically with clubs,” Middle States said in the report.
Middle States measured participation only in RSOs, not in Greek life or athletics. For their calculations, they analyzed the rosters found on DuckLink, which is a relatively new service implemented last year that organizations at Stevens use to maintain membership rosters, events, and organizational information.
When asked about the low level of involvement reported by Middle States, Lucas Gallo, President of the SGA, expressed skepticism about the legitimacy of the 27% involvement figure.
“This number was calculated by utilizing the rosters on DuckLink which [the SGA Cabinet and I] believe are not as accurate as they should be,” Gallo told The Stute in an email.
Both Gallo and the SGA Vice President of Student Interests, Dakota Van Deursen, admit that updating rosters isn’t as easy for RSOs as it should be and that during the first half of their terms, they neglected to remind clubs to update their rosters as much as they could have.
Gallo hopes to correct bad recordkeeping by RSOs in the upcoming semester, first by having Van Deursen emphasize to clubs at the next Leadership Reconnect that they must maintain accurate rosters, and then by punishing clubs that fail to do so.
“Documenting attendance is one of the criteria of the Good Standing Policy, and we hope that we will be able to more accurately depict the number of students involved by enforcing that policy next semester,” Gallo said.
When asked if they had examples of RSOs that consistently maintained bad records, Gallo and Van Deursen declined to provide any. However, Van Deursen assured that “it is not a small pool of organizations.”
Sara Klein, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, agreed with SGA officials that the percentage of involved students found by Middle States is low only because RSOs aren’t updating their membership records as often as they should.
“We think the [percentage of students involved] is more like 70 percent — 60 or 70 percent. We just need to do better at making people formally list themselves in organizations and for organizations to formally submit rosters,” Klein said.
The Office of Undergraduate Student Life and the Student Government Association both expect to see the number of involved students rise as more RSOs formally list people as members.
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