By
Cory Spiller
Polling the UA masses
Editor's Note: Each day this week, Wildcat Perspectives columnists will examine a different UA program or service that is sponsored by ASUA. Cory Spiller's column examines ASUA's Pulse Team. It is the third of this week's five installments.
The Pulse Team was Ben Graff's baby.
Now it's the defiant and stubborn stepchild of Sam Chang, ASUA executive vice president-elect. Chang and ASUA President-elect Ray Quintero based much of their campaign on improving the Pulse Team, which is a student-polling program that will help ASUA understand what programs and services the student body wants.
They face a tough challenge. The idea is not only to find out what students want and need, but to gather support for ASUA programs by billing them as student-supported.
The Pulse Team is a promising plan that, if implemented correctly, could help ASUA truly serve the student body.
However, it was largely unsuccessful this year and would require broad changes to be successful next year. Those broad changes are being discussed. This new administration will soon tackle the Pulse Team problem.
Graff borrowed the idea from Penn State University, whose Pulse Team equivalent claims a 65 percent response from its student body. And that's remarkable. The UA has approximately 36,000 students, and if 65 percent of our student population responded, the Pulse Team would have about 23,400 completed surveys.
This year the Pulse Team is done collecting data and they only received 230 responses. That is nothing. It's less than 1 percent of our student population. It's hardly of any value to ASUA, or our university.
Although surveying students is an incredible challenge, the new administration must somehow reach more students. This year's responsibility fell on the shoulders of Laval Malachi. He spent much of his time advertising for students to help him with his team. He got one good team member. The two collected handwritten surveys and notified several campus Listservs of an Internet Web site they opened at http://www.inetsurvey.com, hoping students would fill out surveys on their own time.
Malachi says they were able to notify nearly 1,500 students about the Web site. Unfortunately they only received 100 handwritten surveys, and 130 completed surveys from the Web page.
Malachi's position has already been eliminated by the recently elected administration. Pulse Team director was a paid position. The new administration has successfully slimmed the size of its bureaucracy and freed up some funds, but at what cost? The implementation of the Pulse Team is now the responsibility of the ASUA Senate. Chang hopes that with 10 senators and their aides working on the project, more students will participate.
But who will organize it? How will the senators be held accountable to circulate surveys? Who is in charge? Chang has some ideas.
Historically the position of alternate vice chair, which will not be filled until May 2, has had very few responsibilities besides assuming the responsibilities of the vice chair when that person is unavailable. Chang suggested the position may be given the extra responsibility of heading the Pulse Team. If not, the Pulse Team may lack the leadership and organization necessary to complete an accurate poll of the student body.
Even if we have the entire senate and its loyal aides surveying the campus daily, we wouldn't have the number of responses needed to form a collective opinion of the student body.
The success of the Pulse Team is dependent on making the online polling system work. And, again, Chang seems to have some good ideas to improve online responses.
He wants to create a link on the UA home page. Maybe, it could fit in the bar with Student Link, the index and the phonebook. It could work there. Students would definitely consider filling out a survey if it was accessible through a Web page they usually visit.
The Pulse Team could be the saving grace of ASUA. It could bring back accountability to an organization that is often perceived as elitist and greek- dominated. It will also be an important indication of the success of the Quintero- Chang administration. They campaigned on the promise of an effective Pulse Team.
Now they have their work cut out for them.
