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Wake Ranked 7th least friendly LGBT School by PR

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Newenglanddeac

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Deacsfan27 said:
Great article by Tre.
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Not really sure that it was such a great article. I'm very glad that he stuck up for Wake, and I do think Wake has gotten much better the last five years or so. This just wasn't a well-written critique in my opinion. Princeton Review has taken heavy criticism over the past few years for a lot, which probably should have been mentioned, and a look at any other schools on the list would have been nice. Just ranting at PR because you didn't experience things the way PR assumed you would isn't really doing your research, something he yells at PR for not doing. There is plenty of information about the methodology available, and clearly from the survey responses, plenty of people did not have the same experience he had at Wake. I agree with his premise that LGBT students should go wherever they want to go, but scapegoating PR for LGBT inequality makes no sense to me.

Also, "vehemently homosexual"? And shudder, not shutter.

I have plenty of gripes with Princeton Review.
 
It's not a well-written article. I'd hope a Wake grad would write better than that.

Great points, Townie. I'm guessing Tre is an outgoing guy by virtue of his position as student body President. That may help him overcome issues that other LGBT students face. Us extroverts are often dismissive of problems introverts face. I imagine that is even more salient for introverted young people on a conservative campus deciding whether or not and how to come out.

Maybe Tre needs to consider why a large number of survey respondents answered in the negative to this question:

"Do students, faculty, and administrators at your college treat all persons equally regardless of their sexual orientations and gender identity/expression?"

Perhaps the things he mentioned haven't moved the needle yet. Maybe the LGBT center needs more time to have an impact, particularly in a few years after every class doesn't know a Wake Forest without it. Just bashing Princeton Review doesn't accomplish much and is an intellectually weak exercise.
 
I read in the comments that the methodology was based on one response out of 80 questions about people's experiences. There was something about "how would you view the openness and friendliness towards the LGBTQ community at your school" or something to that effect.
 
While his article wasn't technically sound and was clearly written from an emotional place, I still thought it raised a really good point: Making lists like this is not helpful. Let people make their own decisions based on their visits and experiences - don't steer people away from a school before they have a chance to experience it, especially with something so anecdotal in its evidence. Wake HAS and IS making great strides in this area, and including it on a list like this is two steps back. I would imagine other schools on there feel similarly.
 
Everybody can make their own decisions. Princeton Review and other publications are helpful in helping people make their decisions by giving them information they otherwise wouldn't get. It looks like you're saying Wake is trying hard we should ignore survey responses that indicate these efforts haven't worked yet.
 
TownieDeac said:
Not really sure that it was such a great article. I'm very glad that he stuck up for Wake, and I do think Wake has gotten much better the last five years or so. This just wasn't a well-written critique in my opinion. Princeton Review has taken heavy criticism over the past few years for a lot, which probably should have been mentioned, and a look at any other schools on the list would have been nice. Just ranting at PR because you didn't experience things the way PR assumed you would isn't really doing your research, something he yells at PR for not doing. There is plenty of information about the methodology available, and clearly from the survey responses, plenty of people did not have the same experience he had at Wake. I agree with his premise that LGBT students should go wherever they want to go, but scapegoating PR for LGBT inequality makes no sense to me.

Also, "vehemently homosexual"? And shudder, not shutter.

I have plenty of gripes with Princeton Review.
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vehemently homosexual pretty much is synonymous with power bottom, right?
 
PhDeac said:
Everybody can make their own decisions. Princeton Review and other publications are helpful in helping people make their decisions by giving them information they otherwise wouldn't get. It looks like you're saying Wake is trying hard we should ignore survey responses that indicate these efforts haven't worked yet.
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I think the point Tre was making is that everyone is certainly entitled to their own decisions and that he believes that since PR is incorrect in labeling Wake this way. I think the methodology used is pretty piss poor.
 
Tre is a good guy. He was in my college gf's freshman advisory group. She also did the campus musicals with him, so he was at her apartment frequently. I applaud him for writing this response simply because he stands up for his beliefs and fights for what he worked so hard to achieve at Wake. I'll say that during my time at Wake, Scales was pretty much the congregation area for a good bit of LGBT students and now strides have been made in opening more doors for them campus wide. I agree that the creation of the LGBT center should be recognized by PR. Having Wake listed as the 7th least friendly LGBT campus makes us sound backwards when it clearly isn't. This determination was made off of 80 surveys? I had to do more than that for a sophomore sociology class. That's awful.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
I think the point Tre was making is that everyone is certainly entitled to their own decisions and that he believes that since PR is incorrect in labeling Wake this way. I think the methodology used is pretty piss poor.
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#lawschoolanalysis
 
how is OGB boards ranked as far as college messageboard LGBT friendly?
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
I think the point Tre was making is that everyone is certainly entitled to their own decisions and that he believes that since PR is incorrect in labeling Wake this way. I think the methodology used is pretty piss poor.
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How would you improve the methodology? Sure it could be more robust, but asking survey respondents "Do students, faculty, and administrators at your college treat all persons equally regardless of their sexual orientations and gender identity/expression?" to determine how friendly a college is to LGBT individuals is efficient.

I don't know how many of the 126,000 student surveys at the 378 schools were filled out by Wake students. I'd guess given the size of the universities on that list that about 100-150 students filled out the survey. That's decent for a survey of 378 different institutions.

Now if you think Wake should get points for having an LGBT center or electing an LGBT student president, you're assigning a value those things instead of letting respondents determine how these things impact their perception of the experience.

If you think responses among LGBT respondents should be weighted more, that's a fair criticism. Then how is Princeton Review going to sample just the LGBT students without going through LGBT centers, which may lead to selection bias?

Princeton Review did the simplest thing. One question that captures what they want to know and then ranked how people answered that question.

If you don't like the answers, work harder to change things at Wake.
 
Who cares about the article - this guy's twitter feed is fucking boring.
 
did not read, but i am guessing "tre" looks something like this:

Lamar%2BLattrell.jpg
 
DeacGeneral11 said:
This determination was made off of 80 surveys? I had to do more than that for a sophomore sociology class. That's awful.
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No, the determination was based on one of the 80 survey questions. We don't know how many responses there were to the question.
 
PhDeac said:
How would you improve the methodology? Sure it could be more robust, but asking survey respondents "Do students, faculty, and administrators at your college treat all persons equally regardless of their sexual orientations and gender identity/expression?" to determine how friendly a college is to LGBT individuals is efficient.

I don't know how many of the 126,000 student surveys at the 378 schools were filled out by Wake students. I'd guess given the size of the universities on that list that about 100-150 students filled out the survey. That's decent for a survey of 378 different institutions.

Now if you think Wake should get points for having an LGBT center or electing an LGBT student president, you're assigning a value those things instead of letting respondents determine how these things impact their perception of the experience.

If you think responses among LGBT respondents should be weighted more, that's a fair criticism. Then how is Princeton Review going to sample just the LGBT students without going through LGBT centers, which may lead to selection bias?

Princeton Review did the simplest thing. One question that captures what they want to know and then ranked how people answered that question.

If you don't like the answers, work harder to change things at Wake.
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"It could be more robust" is quite the understatement. Taking one question's answer from roughly 3% of the student population and turning it into a ranking is hardly giving the [touchy] issue its due process.

People's answers to that question are most likely going to be based on anecdotal evidence ("well, that one gue was kind of douchey to that one kid, so I'll give it a '3'"). It hardly paints the whole picture of what the school is actually doing or even how LGBT students necessarily feel, as we don't know who answered those surveys. I do think LGBT should have been weighted more or differently, because perception vs. experience could give two different answers.
It absolutely should have been taken into consideration what resources the school has available, or even what ideologies the schools have that could have impacted the decision (ex: BYU's Mormon-ness, other school's Christian influences, etc.). There's just so much that wasn't even looked at to make these rankings, and it's unfortunate because it doesn't put a very good light on anyone's ideas of what Wake is like who aren't familiar with the school. For people not in the South, stupid lists like this make it that much easier to write it off as another conservative private school in the Bible Belt... which I really don't think is the case.

To say "If you don't like the answers, work harder to change things at Wake." is dumb because Wake IS trying hard to change things and as is par for the course at many schools, students are pretty open, but this survey/rank recognizes none of it. PR made a quick survey to throw something out to the internet, and it's pretty damning for how little effort seemed to go into it.
 
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