Do you ever feel like your race or religion affects how your peers perceive you or that your professors are too intimidating to approach to clarify a simple question you had from lecture?

The Office of Institutional Research at Sacramento State recently released the results of the 2007 Campus Climate Survey Report to get a better understanding of what college students on campus think about racial, gender, sexual and religious issues in classrooms and around the campus.

The findings indicated that students feel a lack of community on campus and that there are not a lot of activities to keep students involved at Sac State.

Emiley Huage, a freshman undeclared major, agreed with those findings.

“Coming from a high school with a lot of extracurriculars after school, Sac State just doesn’t seem to have that,” Huage said.

In the fall of 2007, 100 classes were selected from various major departments to participate in the research.

A total of 2,043 questionnaires were distributed with 1,293 received for responses. The Office of Institutional Research performs the report every three years, the first one being in 2003. They were unable to perform the research in 2006 because of the teacher’s strike that was taking place in the fall of that year.

Research is done to help promote a sense of community here at Sac State.

“It is done for the university to get a feel on what students feel about campus life as a whole and whether or not they were pleased,” said Jing Wang, director of the Office of Institutional Research.

Some students like sophomore business major Katie Arnst feel as though Sac State is a very active school, yet the students lack to participate in the events.

“We have all the spirit of other colleges, we just don’t have students who are willing to get involved,” Arnst said.

Resigned Resident Advisor Marlee McInnis feels that there is not enough amenities on campus to draw students in.

“I think we don’t have enough facilities that are here after classes, most people just go home. We need to find a way to become less of a commuter school,” McInnis said.

Vanessa Johnson can be reached at [email protected].