Since 2022, college student interview videos have increased in popularity on social media. The general format of these videos goes like this: a person approaches a student on a college campus, asks said student various questions about social and political issues, then posts the video to a social media page. Most notably, interviews on BYU campus have gained much traction on social media. At the beginning of their popularity, BYU campus interviews generally included anti-BYU sentiments, aiming to criticize different BYU policies and practices. Recently, however, these interviews have shifted from a social commentary on BYU as an institution to a negative social commentary on BYU students.
The most notable group that conducts such interviews is the Black Menaces. The Black Menaces, a social media activism group that gained immense popularity in early 2022, have a wide variety of videos, ranging from on-campus interviews to podcast clips, all of which are aimed at increasing awareness of diversity and equality issues at both BYU and other campuses.
In watching such videos, I wondered if the responses in the videos truly represented the BYU population. On average, a BYU on-campus interview includes at least 2 and at most 4 respondents, which cannot rightly be used to generalize all of BYU’s 34,937 student population [1].
And so, I set out to test how diverse BYU students’ opinions are on hot-button topics. To do this, I conducted a field survey that measured student opinions on different topics from feminism to LGBTQ issues. Since I wanted to test the reliability of the interviews, I modeled most of the questions on the survey after questions that the Black Menaces have asked students in the past. While I initially wanted to obtain 300 survey responses, handing out surveys to people proved more difficult, time-consuming, and intimidating than I initially predicted. Because of this, I obtained 102 responses (a big thank you to everyone who helped) [2][3].
Demographics
- 50% of respondents were men and 50% were women.
- 22.5% of respondents were freshmen, 24.5% sophomores, 29.4% juniors, 20.6% seniors, 2% graduate students, and 1% BYU alumni
- 44.1% of respondents identified as republican, 27.5% independent, 12.7% democrat, 4% unaffiliated, 2% moderate, 4% preferred not to disclose their political leaning, 1% leftist, and 3% responded “other.”
- 32.4% of respondents voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, 14.7% voted for Joe Biden, 5% did not respond, and 48% listed “other,” which includes 32.4% who did not vote, either due to being an international student, underage, or a missionary at the time, and 15.6% due to forgetting or unintelligible responses.
Questions
“Who is the current Vice President of the United States?”; “Do you consider yourself a feminist?”; “Do you support same-sex marriage?”; “Would you ever date a transgender individual?”; “Do you believe that sexism exists?”; “Do you believe that racism exists?”; “Do you believe that systemic racism exists?”; “Do you believe that BYU is inclusive?”; “Do you believe that the United States legally oppresses any group of people?”
Results
My overall hypothesis for this survey was that BYU students’ opinions would be more positive than the opinions showcased in the interview videos, where positive opinions on average represent 20% of the responses shown in the videos [4]. Here are the most interesting results:
- 53% of respondents consider themselves a feminist, 46% do not consider themselves a feminist, and 1% did not respond. 43.1% of male respondents and 62.7% of female respondents consider themselves feminists.
- 48% of respondents support same-sex marriage, 49% do not support same-sex marriage, and 3% did not respond. 43.1% of male respondents and 51% of female respondents support same-sex marriage.
- 5.9% of respondents would date a transgender individual, 93.1% would not date a transgender individual, and 1% did not respond. 4% of male respondents and 7.8% of female respondents would date a transgender individual.
- 76.5% of respondents believe that BYU is inclusive, 17.6% do not believe BYU is inclusive, and 5.9% did not respond.
- 78.4% of respondents believe that systemic racism exists, 19.6% do not believe that systemic racism exists, and 2% did not respond. 72.5% of male respondents believe systemic racism exists and 82.4% of female respondents believe systemic racism exists.
Discussion
What can we conclude? The data, with random sampling and as minimal measurement bias as I could control for, shows that BYU students generally have more positive social and political opinions than social media would suggest. The most evident outlier in the data is BYU students’ views on dating transgender individuals, the results of which do fall in line with social media portrayal. It is also important to note that merely believing that racism or sexism exists does not imply active effort to mitigate racism or sexism on campus. Even so, I do think it is encouraging that the data shows an acknowledgment of important diversity and equality problems in our society today, thus signaling BYU students’ increased awareness relative to social media portrayal. And so, the next time you are on social media, remember that it is truly “not all BYU students.”
