Students’ opinions will be heard by the administration on issues as varied as the tenure process and the quality of campus toilet paper.

Macalester College Student Government last week issued a report on the broad-based surveys that they distributed to students at the end of the fall semester. According to Academic Affairs Chair Haris Aqeel ’02, who initiated the project, approximately 250-275 surveys were handed out randomly by members of MCSG. Of those, 176 came back with results that could be tallied. The number of respondents broke down by class fairly equally, with 19 percent of first years and 27 of all other classes responding.

Students were first asked several yes or no questions about their familiarity with MCSG and its role. According to MCSG President Nick Berning, the results indicated that first and second year students have a more positive view of their student government than juniors and seniors, which he said showed that MCSG had improved in the past four years. However, as Aqeel noted 57 percent of respondents answered that they feel MCSG is not accessible to the student body.

“There is a lot of room for improvement, still,” Berning said, adding that better communication with students was a top priority.

Respondents were also asked to list up to three problems that they wanted the MSCG to address in the spring semester. Some of the most popular issues mentioned were housing quality and availability, activity programming, internet bandwidth and the lack of a recreational space in the new Campus Center. Individual responses varied from the practical to the extreme, with one student suggesting “vigilante squads to catch the light bollard vandals” and another who suggested MCSG look into “waterslides.”

While some of these requests simply will never be met, such as the demand that Macalester legalize marijuana, others, MCSG hopes, will prove useful. With 60 percent of respondents indicating a desire for a game room in the Campus Center like the one in Doty, an issue that had been discussed may now be one step closer to becoming a reality.

“Now we can use the results to give our voice credibility,” Aqeel said.

Berning also views the desire for a Rec center as one of the survey’s key findings. “It’s something everyone wants,” he said, adding that the most significant obstacle will be financial, estimating the cost at $100,000, mostly because it would require a change in the ventilation system.

Students were also asked to indicate which administrative offices with which they had had positive or negative experiences. The library had the best showing, with 119 students reporting positive experiences and only 7 negative ones. Most offices came up winners, with a higher number of positives than negatives. Some, however, had a fairly weak ratio: Residential Life had an almost even split with 52 to 51, and Media Services fared poorly as well, with a ratio of 22 to 23.

Respondents were also given a space to give suggestions of positive reinforcements for any specific office. Of those who chose to write about Res. Life, all were critical, as were seven of the nine mentions of CIT.

One question on the survey asked students to describe the role of the CMA on campus. Most first and second years left it blank, and most who filled it out clearly were not aware of the group’s focus on issues of domestic diversity.

Berning was candid in his personal view of the CMA, calling it “a horribly ineffective organization with an unworkable structure.” These results reinforce concerns that were already there, he said, and which are in the process of being addressed in the form of focus groups to gauge student opinion on multiculturalism.

Both Berning and Aqeel are hopeful about the report’s potential to promote change. MCSG sent its findings to all of the administrative offices mentioned in the survey.

Berning sounded positive about the administration’s willingness to cooperate, saying that President McPherson had been interested in the data and had expressed an interest in working with the student government on several of the issues.

The main goal of the surveys was “to represent the voice of the students” Aqeel said. “They…give us more visibility and integrity on campus: hopefully the students realize that their view is extremely important.”

As far as the survey’s actual effects, Aqeel is enthusiastic. “The impact depends on how much noise we make about it-and we are ready to make some noise.”