Ask three Jewish organizations what Jewish life on campus looks like and you’ll likely get three (or more) answers. Ask Jewish students, however, and you might get a more realistic picture of what the Jewish campus experience is actually like.
With Ha’Am’s launch of the inaugural UCLA Jewish Community Survey, we’re hoping to rise above existing rhetoric and hear directly from students about what Jewish life is really like on campus. By polling Jewish students at UCLA, without a ulterior motive or organizational agenda, we’re hoping that honest feedback can paint the most accurate picture of Jewish involvement, experience with differential treatment and student satisfaction than an externally conducted poll might.
We at Ha’Am have no expectations as to what the results of the survey will be. As a journalistic publication, we’re not angling for a certain outcome or approaching this with any sort of endgame, other than accurately portraying the campus experience.
The survey, which will run through the month of April, will be the first statistically significant poll of Jewish students on campus that Ha’am has ever conducted. To incentivize participation, Ha’am is offering respondents a chance to win one of several gift cards (valued between $5 and $20) while maintaining anonymity of all respondents. Ha’Am will publish the findings later in the Spring and will make the full results of the survey available for maximum transparency.
Participation in the survey is geared toward UCLA students who identify, in some manner, as “Jewish.” The survey should not take respondents more than 7-10 minutes to complete.
Click here to begin the survey