Julia Wykes - December 6, 2020

Our presentation is on Wednesday!!!! Very exciting very exciting. Our dress rehearsal this Thursday showed that we definitely have all the right information and everything, but it was a bit rough as far as logistics go. For example, changing the slides and switching from presenter to presenter needs some work. Tomorrow, we plan on having another practice run and hopefully these hiccups will be better. I think we just have to run through it once more and it will be seamless!

I am so proud of how this presentation is coming together and everything we accomplished as a group. It is remarkable that none of us knew each other at the beginning of the year and we still came together to make a really good team. When you look at everything we have done in one semester, from IRB approval to learning how to operate Qualtrics, you would never guess that this group of people met only once a week! I am also looking forward to see what the other groups have been working on all semester. I really haven't heard much about their projects so it should be a great surprise to learn about their work. This whole process has been so rewarding. To be able to do something hands on and collaborative in addition to the academic work we do in class has really brought a new dimension to my understand of sexual assault.

Lauren - Vanderslice - December 6, 2020

This whole project has been crazy. Full of ups and downs, plans and new plans, goals met and goals that had to be adjusted. In the end though, by putting in the time and effort, and working together, we were able to create two separate surveys, get them approved by the administration and the IRB, publish them both on qualtrics, get an adequate number of responses, and then analyze and create a presentation in just 3 weeks. That is an incredible accomplishment that I think we should all be proud of. We couldn't have done it unless we worked together well as a team, and we definitely did.

This week we have our final presentation to the rest of the Where #BLM Meets #MeToo class, as well as to Professor Jean-Charles and Professor McGuffey, who will be grading our presentation. It is going to be all over Zoom, since about 50-60% of our class is no longer on campus, which will be difficult, but not impossible. We practiced once during lab last week, and after getting some critiques and suggestions, have edited our presentation to be both more informative and concise, while still being interesting. Jarvis and Jill created an interview video with members of our lab to show at the end of our presentation, that will really help our presentation stand out. We are going to practice again tomorrow night, just to make sure everything runs through smoothly and that we're all on the same page.

Our report is due at the end of the week, after our presentation. It will contain all of the information from our presentation, plus more, and will be written up into a full report to share with our class, the BC administration, the Women's Center, and the Title IX office, as well as anyone else that would like to see it. Because we have IRB approval, we can share it with anyone we want!

This lab has been an amazing experience, and I can't believe it is coming to an end. I have learned so much over the last semester, both from my classmates, and from Professor G, and I am so glad I got to be a part of this lab group! What we accomplished this semester will be a valuable piece of information for the BC community, and hopefully the administration will continue to organize campus climate surveys in future years.

Angie Antoine - December 6, 2020

This week was our final week of lab before the end of the semester. We are finishing our lab off with a report and a presentation to be done in front of the main class. This was out first in zoom class and it felt very odd to not be in a classroom anymore, but we digressed and got work done for the final stretch of lab.

We broke into groups once again:divided into the sections of the report that would coincide with the sections of the powerpoint. The groups consisted of: Introduction to Research, Methods and Process, Findings, and Conclusion. We split into these groups and wrote the section of our reports and did the powerpoint slides for out section as well. In class in Thursday we did a dry run of the presentation, working through technical difficulties, long scripts, and all in different locations. The dry run wasn't bad, but we left class with things to work on to make our presentation the best it could be.

As of now we are focusing more on the presentation, but the report is to come in the future weeks. I'm very excited for everyone else in our class to see what we have been doing these past couple of weeks!

Skylyn Senghor - December 5, 2020

Throughout the semester our lab group has compiled data regarding a cumulative climate survey for Boston College. By the enormous effort from the members of the lab interesting data was collected, however, it is pivotal to acknowledge the limitations the survey includes such as population and sample size. As the survey was pushed to get distributed the primary subscribers were white females which rendered the population for the survey not necessarily representative of Boston College’s student body. In addition, the sample size consisted of mainly freshmen rather than the entirety of Boston’s College grades. These limitations were taken into account which resulted in the lab group combating them by reaching out to faculty and student club/organizations. Nevertheless, with the ongoing pandemic these efforts did not preserve in getting larger, more diverse sample sizes.

Once the survey closed the lab section was advised by research experts who used the survey software—qualtrics— and thus forth taught the class how to analyze the data through graphs etc. After that the lab team was divided into groups to work on the subsequent lab report and presentation. Personally, this process demonstrated the hard strenuous work that goes behind creating a survey, and the hurdles the creators have to jump through in order to distribute it. Simultaneously, this process was super rewarding as it gives insight to Boston College while opening the door to analyze the interesting relationships that relate to campus sexual assault. Although the journey is not over it has taught me so much and also created a hunger to know more.

Katie Yun - December 4, 2020

This week's lab was the first we had completely over zoom, as it was our first class after Thanksgiving break. It was very interesting to see everyone through zoom, especially because we had our "dress rehearsal" for our final presentation. Throughout break and earlier this week, each group worked hard on our drafts for the final report, as we all divided into sections. I, along with Angie, Abby, and Jill, took on the Methods section, where we each wrote explanations on how our survey was made. For me specifically, I wrote about the consultations and collaborations we had with other faculty/administrative members, and the revisions to our survey that took place.

It felt so surreal during our meeting, because it truly seemed like the finish line to everyone's hard work was so close. We went through a very rough dress rehearsal of our presentation, and each contributed any comments/ concerns on how to make our presentation more concise, professional, and easier to understand. For now, our presentation was very much over time (50+ minutes), so our goal for the next rehearsal we set up (Monday night) is to shorten each of our speaking parts. Also, we want to have a final draft of our written report by Sunday night, so the next few days for everyone will be full of revisions. I think we're very fortunate that Professor G signed us up to present on the last day, which gives our section as much time as we need!

Overall, I'm very excited for our end results and I'm so proud of everyone's hard work all throughout the semester!

Jarvis Goosby - December 4, 2020

Yet another productive week for the Campus Climate Survey group. After having a week off due to the Thanksgiving break and moving to 100% virtual classes, our group now has new challenges to endure. Due to the perseverance and efforts of each member of the group, we are now inching closer to completion and preparedness for our presentation.

With the class presentation being next week, it was imperative that we work on our analysis, methods of presentation, and presentation skills. Therefore, we devoted the entire zoom class this week to do a mock presentation. During the presentation, we as a group looked to improve in totality. During the mock presentation, we looked to provide our peers with constructive criticism. Along with the constructive criticism, I think it was good that we did a mock presentation because as we are all very informed on the topic we are presenting, some may find it difficult to convey this information to people who are not familiar with it. It is also not abnormal for presenters to be filled with nerves, thus making them more prone to mistakes and disrupt the flow of the presentation. So getting the nerves out early is key.

I am extremely excited, to show the class all the hard work everyone in our group has done. I am also excited to share with the class the importance of the work we have done, to not only make BC students are more cognizant of the BC climate but to show that Sexual Misconduct is real and can happen to anyone. With that being said, destroying myths, reinforcing resources/support systems, and pointing out actions that perpetuate rape culture; is the only way to create an environment that doesn’t condone such behavior.

Overall, as this is my last discussion post, I would like to say that this group was very interesting and informative. Not only did we learn about the campus climate, but we also learned about the challenges associated with producing a project of this magnitude.

Jackson Treister - December 1, 2020

We did not have a lab meeting this week due to Thanksgiving break, but this week has been filled with work. We began to draft our final report and create our final presentation which is exciting but time-consuming. I am apart of the "findings" group which consists of analyzing the data we received and drawing conclusions. I have been tasked with analyzing the data from the "Personal Experiences" and "Bystander" sections for the final report. I have mostly been using Qualtrics' crosstable function and Google Sheets for my analysis which has helped me notice trends in the data.

I had been looking forward to the data analysis component of this lab since we started our process, and I am glad I got to be apart of it. Our data has proven to be difficult to draw conclusions due to our relatively small sample size and the lack of diversity within our data, but I believe our final report and presentation will still prove to be insightful.

There is a lot of independent work happening right now which seems rare for the lab component of this course, but it has allowed me to work at my own pace and spend as much time with data as I want. I am excited to finish my analysis and see the final product of our lab group.

Riz Saldanha - November 27, 2020

Although we didn't have our Lab this week, it was still a very busy and important one. We have begun drafting our final report and PowerPoint presentation to showcase to the rest of our class (and the public)! We divided up the sections of the report and will stick to that one for the presentation as well. I volunteered to tackle the findings section of the report and my specific task was to summarize the demographic information of both the students and faculty. In order to do this, I used the raw data in the Google Sheet and applied several "IF" functions. These allow me to filter out the specific responses which state that they are, for example, freshman, female, Christian, African American, etc. After I got the exact numbers, I made a simple table and then either created charts or more complex and visually appealing tables. Effectively getting information to the audience is done by making it easy to read and analyze.

The rest of the findings group is working on their respective sections and we will all be posting our charts, tables, and findings to a Google Doc and then share that with the conclusion group so that they can put that information onto the PowerPoint slides and also begin working on the summary of our final report.

There are a lot of moving pieces right now that rely heavily on independent work, especially since most of us are working remotely. While this may seem like a barrier, I am extremely confident in our entire lab group to provide good, solid work. This entire semester has been a team effort and has definitely been successful one due to each person's contribution.

Laila Herrera - November 27, 2020

This was the first week that the class did not meet in person, but we have all been hard at work working on our portion of the final report and presentation along with our groups. My group is the Findings Group which will take up a significant portion of the presentation, since this is the section where we gather the data provided by the survey and deeply analyze it. Each person in the group has their own section and are making connections between questions in the survey. We have all been analyzing the data in our sections and making charts and graphs that visually show the numbers that have been provided in the most effective way possible.

My section is about the myths and beliefs about sexual misconduct which was addressed in the survey. This section has been very interesting to work with, because there are several factors that contribute to what a person’s beliefs are about sexual misconduct, including gender, class year, race, etc. There are several connections to be made in this section, particularly in the specific myths and beliefs that were options in the survey. The class’ work as a whole is really coming together and I am excited for us to show the rest of the BLM to MeToo class what we have learned from the survey we created. I am confident that our final presentation for the class will be extremely dynamic and informative.

Julia Wykes - November 25, 2020

We had our last in person lab class almost a week ago. I will miss the vibes in the classroom and also the ability to communicate so easily with my classmates. I am a bit worried for how it will be now that we will be on zoom. Especially since writing the report and preparing the presentation will take a lot of communication and teamwork. However, I know that all of us have become very flexible and used to unconventional ways of communicating and working with others. So I am confident there will be little problems with pulling the report together. I am responsible for the introduction section of the report and me and the other group members have figured out how to best divide the work. I am sure it will come together nicely. I am also looking forward to seeing the video that is being produced! I think it is such a great idea and a nice way to make the presentation more engaging, as there is a lot of technical things and numbers we will have to go over. I am also looking forward to seeing what the other groups have been working on all year. It will surely be very interesting to listen to everyone else presentation.

Jillian Falvey - November 20, 2020

This week we had been planning out the groups and tasks for the final report. It seems like everyone is feeling good about their sections and working hard to complete their final analysis and writing. In class on Thursday, Jarvis and I filmed our reimagined interviews with members of the class. We asked a few members of our class, as well as Professor Gross, some questions regarding the process of curating the survey as well as the importance of the survey. We will be compiling and editing the clips in the next couple of days to create a video to compliment the conclusions section. We're really excited about the video and can't wait to see how it turned out. We were also very grateful to have been able to create this video since we had put a lot of time and effort into planning the interviews and focus groups, but were not allowed to continue with conducting the interviews since we do not have training in conducting interviews about sensitive topics. I'm glad we were able to create something to add a little fun as well as perspective to our final report.

Gabriel Moran - November 20, 2020

We have now split into our groups working on our final report and presentation. As a part of the conclusion group I have to wait a little until other groups progress in their data collection in order to have a conclusion. Therefore, we are working on creating a wonderful presentation format that Reyshell was able to find. While creating the slides, I took a moment to reflect at how fast the semester went. I remember just sitting down in the back discussing the idea of creating this survey and now we are just weeks away from presenting our data. This has been an incredible journey for me because personally, I was a person who stayed home on weekends to play video games or just played sports and I never really watched the news or caught up with current events. I was in my own little bubble but in the past 2 months, I was able to learn more about the MeToo movement and watch documentaries such as The Hunting Ground that really opened my eyes to the real world. I am grateful for the opportunity to have a part in this lab and I could not be more excited to continue this work outside of this class and continue to learn and get out of my comfort zone.

Reyshell Encarnacion - November 20, 2020

Now that the data collection process has passed, things are moving in the right direction. We are all back at a productive pace instead of waiting for the results. The groups met up during class to discuss what we each have to do to get past this last stretch and end with a bang, with a project that we are all proud of. The only thing that is surprising me is how fast this semester is going just because it feels like yesterday was when this whole process started and we had all of these wild ideas that we didn't know how they would be executed. Our last goals are to write our paper and prepare for the whole class presentation. When we complete these goals, we will be able to articulate our findings adequately with our audience and hopefully inform them of what the climate is like on our campus. Seeing the numbers is one thing, but analyzing them and sharing them with others who have not been through the process is exciting. I know it will be very informative and will put everything we have been learning in lecture into perspective for myself and my peers. Hopefully, seeing the data will motivate us to continue this work outside of the classroom and to create the change that we want to see both on-campus and society as a whole.

Abby Thompson - November 19, 2020

We are now working on our final report and final presentation. We have split into groups (introduction, methods, findings, and conclusions) and are typing up our respective information. It is important for us to put all of our strategies, data, goals, and findings into one report so that the study can easily be viewed in a holistic manner. In terms of our presentation for the class, we are essentially taking the important information from the report and structuring it into a slideshow. We will also be creating a script that we can follow when we actually present to the class. Overall, we are working hard to finalize this project and are enjoying seeing it all come together.

Angie Antoine - November 18, 2020

We closed the lab officially and have moved on to the next step in the process. We closed the lab with about 300 student responses and about 87 faculty responses as well. All in all a very good turn out and we feel very proud about it. It was all quite exciting seeing the numbers rise as more and more people shared our survey and we were able to get responses from most people who started the survey.

We met with the head of the Boston College Qualtrics team and she was able to get the rest of the Campus Climate Survey team onto Qualtrics so we could all have access to the data. We then started looking for trends in the data to base our report on. Many trends were mentioned and the class was bale to gain a pretty good understanding of what needed to be added into the report. Many people had very good idea for the possible connections we could make. It was very interesting to see what everyone was thinking.

We next started looking to the future, to the analysis portion of the work. We decided to officially cut the interviews unfortunately, just because there was not enough interest. We went over in class this Thursday the best way we felt the data could be split up. We reviewed last years class' data analysis and we took ideas from how they did their report. Prof. Gross outlined what she felt was a good order for the final report and we all broke into groups for which section we wanted to write about. Now everyone is working with their groups to begin the final stretch of our lab. So excited to share out work!!!!

It was honestly so exciting to be able to be apart of this survey, being able to make it ourselves and send it out around our college campus was truly an experience.

Sierra Sinclair - November 13, 2020

We have officially closed the survey and have collected all that data that was possible for that time! We were able to contract 378 responses for the student survey (270 of which were fully completed) and 87 responses for the faculty survey. We have come to the conclusion that this sample size is too small for us to make any conclusions about Boston college as a whole. while discussing what we can do with the survey, more specifically what we can conclude from the response, we toyed with the idea of making conclusions about the freshman class. Seeing that the freshman class consists of over 2,000 students. Being that we had approximately just over 100 students respond to the survey. from the freshman class, we came to the conclusion that this was not possible either, The best option was to analyze the data that we do have present to the class. Professor gross also brought up the idea that if more students were interested in continuing the analysis of the data that we have collected during the spring semester that would also be an option too. It was hard to get as large of a sample size as we wanted due to our limitations as freshmen and also the time constraint. I still found it extremely impressive that we were able to get over 300 responses for the student survey, and shocked that we got nearly 100 responses for the faculty. There is so much more to do with the report and presentation, but I'm excited for it to happen!

Gabriel Moran - November 13, 2020

This week we closed the survey and I personally am very proud of our work as a whole. We finished with around 271 student survey responses and although this is not enough for an accurate representation of Boston College as a whole, I am very happy with our work. Boston College does not have a campus climate survey, therefore although we may not have a large percentage of students, it is definitely a step in the right direction. Even though the highest percentage of students who responded to the survey were freshmen, it still was not large enough of a sample size but this does not mean we give up.

I was a member of the Qualtrics team and inputting all the questions and skip logic was a great experience for me and it felt amazing to know that people took the time to complete our survey and with their responses we will be able to conduct an analysis and make relationships between questions and create next steps to ensure students feel safe on campus. I have decided to go to the conclusion group where we will discuss future next steps as well as review the limitations of the study, and bring up points found to be very surprising or alarming. I am excited to discuss our work at the end of the semester and this whole experience was very exciting for me because after watching The Hunting Ground documentary, I found the information very alarming but even more alarming was the fact that I had no information of the college I attended and even though this is a small percentage of the campus it makes me feel better.

Laila Herrera - November 13, 2020

During this last week, the campus climate survey has closed. It was amazing to see all of our combined efforts to distribute the survey and urge people to take it. The survey got a respectable amount of responses. It was powerful and moving to see how people shared their experiences. As expected, most of the responses to the survey were from freshmen. Although it would have been nice to see a more evenly distributed response among students, the information that the responses have provided us is still incredibly valuable.

On Thursday, the class discussed some of the data collected. It was interesting to see some of the results. Some of the data that we discussed, in particular, was the question regarding if the students have experienced sexual assault, because a little more than a quarter of the responses disclosed that they did experience sexual assault. This is especially telling about sexual assault on college campuses and specifically Boston College, because most respondents have only been at college for a little over two months. This data does align with what we learned in lecture, but it is still extremely disquieting to see how prevalent it is on college campuses. It shows why Boston College should conduct a campus climate survey and not continue to perpetuate the silence around sexual assault on campus.

Additionally, the class spoke about the potential analysis that can be conducted about certain questions’ responses to the survey in connection with each other. We discussed different connections and all of the data that we can analyze further. The interview group has also changed its plans once again since we did not get any volunteers for the interview. Instead, the group will use the open-ended responses given in the survey as the qualitative data we wanted the interviews to provide. We will also make a video that will make our presentation to the entire class a more interactive and dynamic experience, as opposed to solely presenting data and statistics. Going into next week, the interview group will record the video and the class as a whole will delve deeply into analyzing the data, finding patterns, and making connections.

Canice Screene - November 10, 2020

During last week, we were focusing on the whole class getting approved through the CITI Human subjects training program which would allow us to all be able to access and analyze all the data we collected thus far from the survey. Through the CITI program, we all gained a lot of valuable skills that wont just be useful for this lab but also in the future if we want to take part in any other research projects so this exercise was definitely invaluable for all of us. It was also very important that we all took this very seriously as we do have access to all the volunteers who took the surveys experiences which is not something any of us took lightly, especially due to the nature of the survey itself. We also met with a Roni over zoom who helped us with how to use Qualtrics to analyze the data more efficiently for example how to cross reference data and make some interesting and informative conclusions about how different demographics overlap on the campus. Now that we have confirmation that we can definitely publish our data to the campus it puts an extra layer of importance for us to ensure that we make the most effective and informative connections to allow the members of our community to get an accurate representation of what is actually occurring on their campus- which is definitely a lot of responsibility!

We also made the decision to keep the survey open for a longer period of time in order to try and get some more responses, especially if we can get some more upperclassman responses as this will really help to ensure our data and what we publish is a true representation of the climate on campus and not just a representation of the freshman population. Hopefully we have got some more responses and some more offers to take part in our interviews. We gave an announcement during our class in order to try and get some more responses and offers to take part in the interview section so we all hope that we get a last surge of entries.

Canice Screene - November 9, 2020

This week we decided to close the survey, we definitely didn't get as many complete entries as we were hoping which meant we needed to discuss how best to go about the analysis of our data. As we decided to share our findings with the BC community, we needed to ensure the conclusions we made on the sample size we have are actually accurate representations of the whole campus climate. This looked like it could be quite difficult as the majorities of the entries we had were all from freshman with few from the upperclassmen.

We all had to make so preliminary conclusions using the qualtrics data which we also used the previous learned skills of how to cross tab and make some really interesting links between different factors. It was really interesting to compare the different aspects of our survey and some of the trends we found did align with what we have learned in class. Looking at the data, it really became obvious how important it should be for BC to undertake campus climate surveys as sexual assault really does exist on the BC campus. I found the fact that we had so much data when the majority of our sample was freshman even scarier as it highlighted how early these assaults can take place.

We also split into our groups for our final report with everyone spreading out over the findings, introductions, method, IRB etc which puts us in a good place to really start finalizing all our ideas and putting together our final report and presentation as its coming up soon enough. I definitely think there are lots of really informative avenues that we can go down to present our findings that will be really beneficial to the BC community.

Reyshell Encarnacion - November 5, 2020

The week leading up to November 2nd was an interesting and exciting one. My peers and I were texting back and forth in excitement about the number of responses we received from both the students and faculty on campus. We all had put in a lot of work in our respective groups to make the survey come to life, and it was fulfilling to see the thing we were working so hard to come to life and succeed. Being in the Qualtrics team myself, it was even more meaningful because I, along with the rest of my group, were the ones inputting the survey into the Qualtrics program and making sure that everything was perfect for when it was time for distribution. By November 2nd at 7:46 AM, we had already received 163 responses from students and 53 from faculty. By November 3rd at 11:35 AM, we had received 182 student responses and 62 faculty responses. It was exciting to see the numbers go up and to see how many people were willing to be vulnerable and share their experiences with people they do not even know, even though it was anonymous.

Being that I am only a freshman at BC, I cannot speak on what goes on at BC because I have not experienced anything to speak on it, so it was hard to contextualize the things I learn in lecture to the things we were doing in lab. However, even from the few 100 people's responses, I started to see what really happens on college campuses and how the “1 in 4” is an actual thing. That was the most challenging part of seeing the responses, even though it is not the full number of responses we will receive.

Katie Yun - November 6, 2020

It has been about a week since the survey has been disseminated and open, bringing our lab class a lot of excitement.

Personally, I was very excited to share to professors and friends something that our class worked on for several weeks, especially because it is about a topic that truly isn't talked more about on campus. It was very heartwarming to see so many people interested in the survey and take it very seriously, which is of course what we were aiming for. But it was also disheartening to see people who wouldn't respond to my messages encouraging them to take the survey and disseminate it, as well as people who just didn't want to talk about sexual misconduct at BC openly, which I partially understand and am not surprised about. Although this may seem like a small class project, I feel like what we are doing with this survey is so much more impactful than what people realize; not only is this survey IRB approved, it is also spreading the candidness of talking about sexual misconduct on our campus, which is desperately needed on all college campuses.

Also, another disheartening fact for me was the lack of participation in interview applications from our own '#BLM meets #MeToo' classmates. As part of the interview subgroup, the four of us revised our original interview plan into interviewing people exclusively from our class, including students, the professors, and junior teaching fellows, in order to get their reactions to our Campus Climate Survey. However, as of now, we have gotten 0 applications. I understand that an interview is a lot more intimate and would force people to be more vulnerable, compared to the anonymous survey. But the interview group and I would like to hear some qualitative accounts about our survey, especially because everyone in our class is passionate about the social justice movements and the change we as students must pursue on our college campuses.

I have learned to be assertive, especially when talking about heavy topics such as these. I have also learned to adapt, as the interview plans have been changed several times, so if needed, we may need to alter our plans once again. But I am very hopeful that we can still obtain all the information we are striving to get!

Also, we sort of learned how to analyze and visually see the data we collected from Qualtrics, so I'm excited to see what people answered on the survey and if we can see any patterns in their answers!

Sena Deressa - November 2, 2020

As I have progressed through our survey lab, I have learned a lot about interacting with other humans and how to properly word questions to make sure the survey takers feel comfortable. I recall when I met over zoom with Claire from the Women’s Center and Professor Gross where we worked on finalizing the survey before the dissemination process. There was one big change we made to the survey where we transitioned from using “sexual violence” or “sexual assault” to “sexual misconduct” which is a more fit term for the survey. We decided to use this word as it is more of the umbrella term and it also easier to take in for the survey takers. I also learned during my time on the zoom call that being consistent is key so we made sure we used sexual misconduct throughout the whole survey.

The next step was disseminating and getting the survey widely distributed which we have been working on since last week. In my own work of distribution, I got the word out to various sources around campus including: my RA, African Student Organization, First Generation Club, Christian Life Community, and the Biology Department. I have gained knowledge on how to properly create emails and flyers for distribution in order to maximize the amount of people knowledgeable of the campus sexual assault survey. One thing that surprised me is the turnout of how many people we got to do the survey so far. It has been open since the end of last week and we still need a lot more to reach our target. The fact that we contacted so many different sources and still need a lot more responses does not sit right with me. People have to realize the importance and significance of their answers to our survey, especially for a school like Boston College.

Jackson Treister - October 26, 2020

I am apart of the Qualtrics "October team." The past two weeks, we spent our time meeting with Rani Dalgin to learn the ins and outs of Qualtrics and creating the campus climate surveys from the draft we created on a Google document. I really enjoyed creating being apart of the Qualtrics team because I got to watch the survey draft become an actual survey while learning the technical aspect of creating a survey. I feel like I have taken a back seat position in-class discussion, but being apart of the Qualtrics team forced/allowed me to contribute to our lab in a meaningful way.

We now have begun the dissemination and data collection process. This week every member of the lab group has been sending the links to both surveys to their friends and professors in order to get as much data as possible. So far the majority of the data we have received is from freshmen which could be a problem in the data analysis stage. We want to capture as diverse of a dataset as possible so we can be able to analyze a true representation of the BC campus (or close to it). In the coming weeks, we will hopefully receive data from upperclassmen and then start the data analysis phase. I am excited to see the responses come in so we can begin to make connections between our data and the #BLM to #MeToo course.

Riz Saldanha - November 1, 2020

From the very beginning of this lab, I have gained fruitful knowledge about the complexity of doing public research. The processes, the clearance, and the chain of power are things that I have never imagined being this extensive. As we put the finishing touches on our survey, I was involved in several Zoom meetings with Claire from the Women’s Center working on the wording of our questions. We went through each question and added, deleted, or changed some words so they were more politically correct. I realized how important this is to avoid being insensitive, regardless of the intention. Knowing the potential effects that these questions could have on people, we must do our part to ensure that there are no additional hardships.

Our biggest goal thus far was finally releasing the survey! This dissemination process consisted of each person sending the link to both surveys to different students and faculty, respectively. We tried to capture as diverse of a sample as possible, but so far have an overwhelming majority of underclassmen. This is problematic because the juniors and seniors are the ones who have a better understanding of the climate of BC’s campus.

In the coming week, we will hopefully have a more diverse survey in order to begin meaningful analysis. Seeing different ideologies, correlations, and general ideas of how sexual misconduct has impacted the members of Boston College is our ultimate goal. I am especially intrigued to notice how the results relate to the discussions of the many myths we were taught in class.

Jarvis Goosby - October 23, 2020

This week has been by far the most productive week our lab group has had! After splitting up into smaller groups, each group has worked extremely hard to meet the deadlines and disseminate the survey to the BC community.

On Thursday, October 23rd, we began class by going over tasks deemed completed as well as tasks that remain unfinished. Each group gave a quick report informing the class of the goals they accomplished over the past week and the tasks desired to compete today/before the survey was revealed. While we discovered that we were a little behind schedule, we collectively devised a way to get back on track; causing a minor adjustment to our timetable.

In my group, the interview group, we got a lot accomplished. Firstly, we completed our survey which will be attached to the end of the climate survey. The purpose of our survey was to inquire if students were interested in either participating in focus groups or interview sessions. Sharing about how the survey made them feel or provide additional information about the campus climate at Boston College. In addition to completing the survey, our group also formulated questions we would like to ask in the focus group/interview sessions. Since we really wanted the discussion to be participant lead formulating too many questions wasn't required. Questions we did create were mainly there to help create a safe space and nurture the potential perspectives/experiences our participants may provide. The last thing our group did was decide on how we wanted to advertise our sessions, we agreed that the best ways would be via flyer, social media post, and through the Women's Center.

All in all, I am extremely eager to see the completed survey, and analyze how the Boston College community responds to it!

Jillian Falvey - October 16, 2020

This week has been very productive for our lab group! All of the groups are working hard to get the survey out on time and to make sure everything behind the scenes goes smoothly.

On Thursday, the interview group made a lot of progress. We've been moving at our own pace and sort of independently of the other groups. We decided to have both interviews and focus groups in order to get qualitative data on the perspectives of both survivors and bystanders. Our interviews will be focused on survivors or bystanders and their stories and feelings, while we plan to have our focus group be more focused on the survey itself, and how BC handles sexual assault allegations. By the end of class on Thursday, we had almost completed the Google Form we plan to include at the end of the survey for those interested in talking more about sexual assault at BC. We've included bios of each group member, information about what an interview or focus group entails, and allowed for participants to give us their preference on a number of details concerning logistics of the interviews and focus groups. Next, we need to complete our draft of questions and finalize our recruitment technique. We're hoping to enlist the help of the junior teaching fellows to get the attention of upperclassmen in order to hopefully have more of them interested in participating.

I am really excited for the next steps of our survey, and to have the opportunity to speak with students outside of our class on this topic. I think the data we collect from the interviews will be really helpful in our presentation. I think including quotes from our interviews and focus groups will help make our data even more impactful, and hopefully get the attention of administration so that BC can have an official climate survey in the future.

Abby Thompson - October 15, 2020

This week, we have been working hard to get our survey ready to distribute by next week. We are finalizing word choice, learning how to use Qualtrics, and meeting with advisors to learn more. Though it is a lot of work, the groups are doing well and we are excited to keep moving forward.

Today, the IRB and Survey groups met with Claire form the Women's Center. She helped us work through any provocative questions and also gave us resources to provide. The Qualtrics group met with Rani Dalgin to learn more about the website and work to set up the final survey. The interview team has been finalizing their goals and establishing questions to ask. Both this group and the IRB group are determining consent language and resources to provide to any participants to ensure the health and safety of all participants.

Professor Gross also established the website in which we will track our progress and write about our findings. This will be helpful for our final presentation.

Overall, I am feeling positive about our survey. I think that if we all work really hard in this upcoming week, we will be able to meet our goals. I feel as though we may not be able to share our findings in the way we originally hoped, but the data will be important nonetheless.

Lauren Vanderslice - October 10, 2020

Our survey is finally coming together! After a month of discussion, listening to guest speakers, research, and learning how to create survey questions, we have created a survey draft! Now, we just need to work on pulling off the finishing touches. My group (Julia, Abby, and I), are in charge of meeting with several members of the administration, Katie from the BC Women's Center, and Erin from the IRB, as well as developing the consent language for our survey and ensuring that all of our data is collected ethically.

We need to meet with the administration to inform them about survey, so that they know what is going on in, in case something goes wrong, either with a student, a faculty member, or the media. This week, we drafted and sent emails to BC's Title IX Director, Patricia Lowe, as well as the Vice President of Student Affairs, Joy Moore, asking to meet with them soon to discuss our survey. We already have a meeting set up with Director Lowe next week, and are waiting to hear back from VP Moore.

Our meeting with Katie is more casual, as we met her earlier in the semester when she visited our class to talk about the Title IX changes, as well as resources offered by the Women's Center. Our goal in meeting with Katie is to show her the final draft of our survey, and get her on our side, so that if anything comes up, we have someone with influence on campus backing us up.

The meeting with Erin is less of a meeting and more of a request. After deciding as a class that we did not have the time to get a full board review from the IRB, we decided to request a non-research determination. To get this letter of approval, we need to simply send Erin our consent language and the final draft of the survey, and a few of the IRB members will look at it and decide it does not need full-board approval, as it is not generalizable to a larger population, and is therefore not research.

Next week, we will have a final draft on the survey, and will be able to take it to all of our meetings, and send it to the IRB for our non-research determination. Then, the Qualtrics team will upload it into Qualtrics, and after administering some pilot tests of the survey, we will be ready to distribute!

Sena Deressa - October 9, 2020

To start off, I’ve been sitting back during our lab sessions and analyzing everyone’s takes and opinions on what we need to do to develop the perfect survey. I’m honestly a great listener so I’ve been using that skill to help contribute to the groups that I’ve been working with during our labs. I started off in the demographics group where Riz, Katie, and I used our researched surveys to develop the best and most proper fit questions. It was truly an easy task to complete the demographic questions because they are the most generic questions that are going to be on the survey. I learned a lot about developing questions based on wording because it may affect how the respondents view and complete the essay. Also, I learned that bias may be present in the way you word questions but might be implicit. You have to really pay attention and ask yourself how you would want someone to ask you questions. I also learned there are certain questions which shouldn’t be in the survey which aren’t beneficial to our data. One question we got rid of was the one asking about socioeconomic status. It surprised me that we decided to take it out because I had seen questions which asked about household income in other surveys. I then looked at UVA’s campus climate survey and they didn’t ask anything socioeconomic related at all so I came to a conclusion that it wasn’t needed. After completing the work with my group, we got into new groups to continue a proper development of a campus climate survey for BC. This was done on October 8th which was our last lab. My group is in charge of language testing, finalization, and sampling/survey dissemination which I find to be a good fit for me. My friends consider me a social butterfly since I know many people on campus; I’m also good at talking to people so the disseminating part should be a fairly easy job for me. The only part that’s hurting me is I don’t know many faculty and the fact that we are also surveying them will make it harder for me to network with them.

Skylyn Senghor - October 4, 2020

Throughout the development of the campus climate survey for Boston College there have been profound discoveries, revisions, and amicable debates about its format. In particular, our lab group—the prime creators—-first touched upon the primary goal of the survey and how to execute it efficiently. The subject flickered light banter between individuals who wanted to focus on rape culture as a whole, and individuals who wanted to hone in on sexual assault specifically. However, after careful reflection with the established goal of merging both topics enabling both sides were able to comprise and cohesively better the survey.

Once, the foundation of the survey was sorted another road block had been encountered; yet this time it was not between the internal environment of the team but rather an external obstacle called the Boston College’s institutional review board (IRB). Essentially, the IRB is an organization in which Boston College researchers or any data developing group has to pass through in order to publicly publish information—with certified permission—regarding the institution. Unfortunately, for the our survey team a representative from the IBS office had subtly not so subtly shut down the possibility of the class administrating sexual assault data centralized around Boston College. In other words, if the collected data is not generalized (not specific to only BC) the survey would not get approved through the organization. Ultimately, this left the class astonished but not surprised at the IRB’s reaction to the survey. Although they offered an alternate pathway which consisted of receiving a letter and receiving administrative opinions, their final verdict lies with unofficial authorization.

In all, my perspective is slowly becoming abundantly clear as to why Boston College does not have a climate sexual assault survey. The vivid picture of reputation, money, and ignorance is painted at the forefront above individual, human beings.

Sierra Sinclair - October 2, 2020

During Lab on Thursday (October 1st), I was sadly not surprised but rather confused by some of the statements. It became apparent to me how concerning the administrations actually is. Hearing that the administration was more concerned about the possibility that throughout the survey we could collect some data that indicated factually and staff have sexually harassed/assaulted students did not sit well with me. especially when she said that they had this concern due to the fact that they would then have to become "mandated reporters". I feel as if this was because it became apparent that they viewed sexual assault involving students and a member of faculty and staff as worse than a student on student harassment. Sexual Harrasemt is not okay no matter whether or not the student was harmed by faculty and staff or another student. It just goes to show that Boston College loves to remain in an ignorance is bliss state. One in which if they don't see or hear they cannot do. What frustrates me the most is that this is at the basis of their jobs. Students come to this school hoping that at the bare minimum Boston College will keep them safe, and hearing that showed me that Boston college cares more about the institution's reputation and the money coming in then the students themselves. In my eyes, it's even worse than BC is doing this because this is a jesuit institution. One of its catchphrases is Cura Personalisis which means caring for the whole person, and what are they not even doing, caring for the person. Boston College is failing to uphold the values that they impose on their students so how can they expect students to implement the values that they impose.