In May 2024, Bowdoin students voted on a Referendum related to the on-going conflict in Gaza. The goal of the Referendum was to ask Bowdoin leaders to take specific action, in part related to Bowdoin’s endowment and its investments. Coverage of the vote is here. The content of the Referendum is linked at the bottom of this post.

As part of GOV 2080 (“Quantitative Analysis in Political Science”), we regularly conduct a poll of enrolled students and ask about important political and campus issues. We fielded that poll in February. We followed up with our sample this week, though, and asked about provisions of the Referendum. We received 200 student responses, with the reported vote of the respondents (% yes) matching the outcome of the election.

Our report on student opinion of the various provisions of the Referendum is outlined below.