An official report on diversity within the Duke Student Government Senate found that the organization's demographics parallel the racial breakdown of the undergraduate student body but deviate in greek affiliation.
DSG collected voluntary information from its current 41 elected and appointed senators. The report "A Demographic Survey of the Current DSG Senate" displays the demographic break down in six categories-gender, undergraduate school, family background, state and national origin, major and greek affiliation.
According to the report, 43 percent of the senators self identified as students of color, which is higher than the 34 percent present among the general student body.
The document also found that male students in the Senate outnumber female students 22 to 17, with two senators abstaining.
President Paul Slattery, a senior, attributed the differences between the demographic makeups of the Senate and the rest of the student body to a hesitation among certain groups to run for positions.
"Ideally, DSG would be proportional to the diversity of the student body," he said. "It's not clear why we would divert from that."
The organization had not officially compiled and released their demographic information in past years, said sophomore Spencer Eldred, Senate president pro tempore, who released the report.
He said he is generally pleased with the amount of diversity elucidated by the report.
"There have been complaints that DSG wasn't representative of the student population, so we decided to see how representative it was," Eldred said. "We're pretty pleased that there seems to be some representation from most groups without any effort to do so."
A disproportionate number of senators-92 percent-are enrolled in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, the report shows. Eldred said the Engineering Student Government lures many students of the Pratt School of Engineering away from leadership roles in DSG.
The document also indicated that 55 percent of the Senate, excluding freshmen, is affiliated with a greek organization, compared to 37 percent in the student body. Of the seven greek organizations represented in the Senate, Alpha Delta Pi sorority claims the highest presence with five members.
Senator Bethany Hill, a member of ADPi and a sophomore, said it is coincidental that members of her sorority outnumber those in other greek organizations.
"I just think it's cool," she said. "Two [members of ADPi] were elected, and two were appointed. The other two had pretty strong credentials. I don't think there was any bias."
Executive Vice President Jordan Giordano, a junior, compiled a similar report on the demographics of the DSG cabinet. The findings revealed that the 11-person board of president-appointed advisers is male-dominated with only one female member.
Eldred said Giordano first proposed investigating the organization's makeup and created the survey to collect the information for the report.
DSG will evaluate the effectiveness of the internal review and decide whether to release similar reports in future years.
"If it's successful, which we will evaluate later in the year, we might do it again," he said.
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