Following several protests regarding the Lawrence Sullivan “Sully” Ross statue, the Texas A&M Student Senate released the results of their Sully Statue Survey on July 8.
Created by the A&M Student Senate in mid-June, the survey consisted of questions about students’ opinions of the Sully statue on the A&M campus in Academic Plaza. Since the data was collected, the senate has been working with Student Life Studies to examine the results, according to the Student Senate website.
In the summary of the results, the Senate found that 39 percent of all A&M students responded to the survey which was emailed out to the entire student body. Each of the results were broken down by labels such as race, classification, gender and college of the respondent.
When looking at the demographics, 61 percent of the participants were white, 23 percent were Hispanic or Latinx, seven percent were Asian, three percent were Black or multi-racial including Black, three percent were multi-racial excluding Black, three percent were international students and less than one percent was Native American Indian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.
The survey’s demographic data is generally reflective of the demographics of the total student body, except students identifying as white responded at a rate that was five percentage points higher than their representation in the total student population and international students responded at a rate that is five percentage points lower than their representation.
The largest disparity between these demographics can be seen when looking at how students responded to how likely they would be to support no change to the Sully statue. This category showed that 82 percent of the 726 total Black and mixed-Black students who responded, selected unlikely/very unlikely, while 65 percent of the 13,157 total white students who responded, chose likely/very likely. Key findings in the survey note that over 50 percent of students who identify as Black, Asian, Hispanic/Latinx and international students are very unlikely/unlikely to support the potential option of no change to the Sully statue.
Overall, the survey found that from all respondents, 57 percent supported adding a placard, 54 percent supported no change, 35 percent supported relocation to a library or museum, 33 percent supported complete removal of the statue and 16 percent supported relocation to a non-museum or library location on campus.
A&M Speaker of the Student Senate Zach McCue said that the results of the survey are being shared with those who will be making decisions regarding the statue.
“[July 8], the Senate passed a resolution which acts as an executive summary and provides the full written report along with the data dashboard as well. The resolution will be sent to all those who may have a say in the final decision,” McCue said. “Our goal is to make sure that whoever makes the final call cannot leave out the full student voice. The survey results will also be available to the public at tx.ag/sullyresults.”
The report, analysis, tableau dashboard and survey were created and prepared by the A&M Department of Student Life Studies.
For the full survey results, visit tx.ag/sullyresults, and for the full survey summary report, click here.