Campus Climate Survey Reveals Student and Faculty Feelings on Exclusion

The findings of a campus climate survey conducted by Rankin Climate, an organizational climate assessment firm, were revealed at Feb. 5 town hall, explaining future actions planned by the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or the OIDEI, to translate community perspectives into campus improvements.

The town hall, which was hosted by the Office of the Provost in collaboration with the OIDEI and Rankin Climate, discussed aggregated opinions on the university’s general atmosphere, sense of belonging and inclusion, academic experiences, career opportunities and Jesuit mission, among many other indicators assessed by the survey. 

The survey data will be used by OIDEI’s student and faculty-led task force to generate recommendations for campus-wide changes, according to Chief Diversity Officer Dominique Jordan Turner.

The survey contained a mixture of 98 qualitative and quantitative questions sourced from Rankin Climate’s library of survey questions, according to Katrina Alford, a data scientist at Rankin.

Rankin researchers analyzed the quantitative data to identify statistically significant differences among demographic groups, including student, staff, faculty, gender identity, racial and ethnic identity, disability status, religious affiliation and sexual orientation. Qualitative responses, which are non-numeric and include open-ended questions, were reviewed for recurring themes and patterns, Alford said.

The survey had an overall response rate of 15%, with 2901 total respondents, including 1,655 students (an 11% student response rate), 519 faculty (a 28% faculty response rate) and 738 staff (a 33% staff response rate). Alford said these response rates are typical for universities in her experience, with a student response rate higher than 10% considered to be above average. 

Alford then overviewed response trends in each of the themes assessed by the survey’s questions. 

Survey responses pertaining to belonging, comfort, academics and Jesuit values were largely positive, with 74% of student respondents feeling valued by other students and 85% of student respondents feeling valued by classroom instructors, according to Alford.

Additionally, 74% of faculty respondents indicated feeling valued by other faculty, with 81% of staff respondents feeling valued by their supervisors. 

Perceptions of Loyola’s Jesuit mission were also predominantly positive, with 68% of employee respondents indicating such a mission gives their work value and 81% indicating their work directly supports Jesuit beliefs. Academics also received optimistic feedback, with 55% of student respondents citing academia as a reason for remaining at Loyola. 

Despite these results, Alford and her colleague, Rankin partner Victoria Cabal, noted concerning survey findings, particularly with respect to harassment and discrimination.

For instance, 21% of all respondents indicated having experienced ignorant, intimidating, offensive and/or hostile treatment in the previous year. 

One such respondent, third-year political science major Steven Pereira, who identifies as Hispanic and is diagnosed with autism, said he was discriminated against by one of his classmates while attending a Political Science class at Arrupe College on the Water Tower Campus in March 2024.

Pereira said the offender used various ethnic slurs and raised her middle finger at him. Several other students in his class noticed the harassment but did not react. 

“This person started to harass me by saying ‘you are a person with a disability,’ ‘you’re not able to be at this campus,’ and also criticized my nationality, that I am Hispanic,”  Pereira said. “It really hurt me a lot… I did not confront this person because I know that if I confronted them, the situation would be worse…the way she intimidated me in saying those things really shook my emotions. And so I had to report it because I couldn’t be safe in this place anymore.”

Pereira said he left the classroom immediately after the harassment and reported the incident to the Office of Equity and Compliance. His experience is a common one, with 22% of undergraduate survey respondents and 25% of graduate survey respondents who indicated exclusionary treatment attributing it to racial or ethnic identity.

Pereira said he’s still psychologically affected by the incident. He said he mostly feels safe on campus but feels uncertain whether he’ll experience similar incidents again. He said he’s seen the offender again, but he avoided direct eye contact with her and hasn’t experienced additional harassment.

Since the incident, Pereira has received support from the Center for Student Inclusion and Belonging, the Wellness Center and numerous student organizations he joined, including the Rambler Brotherhood Project, Inside Government and Loyola Democrats, which helped him move on from the experience and connect to the Jesuit value of care for others via career opportunities and community service.

Pereira said he didn’t know of any other students who’d experienced discrimination, or any who were comfortable telling him about any such incidents.

“That really gave me the joy, the happiness to move forward and continue finding what I’m passionate about,” Pereira said.

For faculty and staff respondents, job title or position was the most common reason attributed to exclusionary treatment, representing 32% of faculty and 52% of staff who had indicated exclusion.

Respondents identifying as having a disability, as gender expansive, as non-binary or as non-religious or spiritual — or any variation of those identities — had significantly lower sense of belonging scores than respondents not identifying in such groups. 

Beyond observed lack of belonging for many respondent groups, other issues relating to compensation and career advancement were indicated by employees. Thirty six percent of faculty respondents felt compensation was fairly distributed within their departments, and 29% of staff respondents felt their salaries were competitive. Twenty two percent of staff respondents indicated the existence of clear career advancement opportunities and procedures. 

To gain detailed insight into community perspectives behind areas for improvement indicated by the survey results, the OIDEI will host a series of community dialogue sessions between late February and late April, according to Turner, who’s chairing the process. 

Schedules for community dialogues are available at the LUC Climate Survey Sharepoint site. Interested students must register on the site, where updates on campus climate decisions and initiatives will be posted.

Turner said each of these dialogue sessions will collect opinions and perspectives of a specific population — students, staff, or faculty — with respect to a specific identity category, including religious affiliation, race or ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation and ability status.

Unlike the town hall meeting, Turner said these community dialogues will be interactive conversations among smaller groups of the Loyola community, inviting participants to share personal stories and shedding light on whether issues indicated in the survey results are isolated experiences or structural patterns.

Turner strongly encouraged students to participate in these sessions to provide the OIDEI with valuable insights to consider in their decision making.

“If you care about this community, if you want it to be a better place, your voice matters,” Turner said. “This is our outreach, our call to our Loyola students to say, ‘Come tell us what you think and feel, because we want to listen, and we want to learn, and we want to move to some action.’”

After all the dialogue sessions have been conducted, Turner said the OIDEI’s task force will use insights from the sessions to form campus policy recommendations. Over the summer, the OIDEI will work with the Office of the Provost, faculty and staff councils, Student Government of Loyola Chicago (SGLC) and other partners to decide which of the OIDEI’s recommendations to implement next school year. 

Brandon Arnold-Wallace, a member of the SGLC Senate, said he agrees with the OIDEI’s plan for conducting community dialogue sessions. In light of exclusionary treatment, Arnold-Wallce, a first-year cellular and molecular neuroscience major, said he believes SGLC should conduct a focus group about students’ feelings of belonging on campus to support the OIDEI’s research.

Additionally, Pereira said he believes student organizations should raise more awareness of the continued existence of discrimination on campus.

“I really wish that every organization, whether it’s Student Government or any type of organization, really should be much more transparent and held accountable for these types of issues,” Pereira said. “No matter if we know ourselves or if we don’t know the other person, we have to have mutual respect.”

Wallace said he’s uncertain how SGLC will collaborate directly with the OIDEI in their efforts, but he believes they should do so by any possible means. 

“I personally am potentially excited for collaborations with student government, especially for the purpose that we do exist to improve the student body,” Arnold-Wallace said.

While the OIDEI resolves to collaborate with a wide breadth of university departments to make campus policy decisions as holistically as possible, the process cannot completely accommodate every individual’s needs and concerns but can cater to predominant, recurring issues. 

“The reality is that we can’t do everything, every recommendation that is made,” Turner said. “But the things that have the greatest impact, we hope to move forward.”

Although institutional changes will take several months to years of planning to effect, Pereira advises students on ways to take more immediate action, by vocalizing the need for change and embodying the changes they wish to see.

“Advocate for yourself, and always ask for help,” Pereira said. “Whatever you need, no matter what, always try to ask for help from staff, advisors, or even your mentors or tutors. In life, there are a lot of limits, but nothing is impossible to achieve.”