From Naima: As the semester ends, it seems appropriate to give you all a quick little recap. This has been a busy couple of months; I guess taking five classes, working three jobs, and wanting to soak up every Bates moment before going abroad might have been a bit much. I went on more sunrise paddles, sang in some more a cappella shows, frequented football games, and attended some wonderful dance parties.

I also went to class. I read Aristotle, explored intoxication, examined the human body, recounted black histories, and recorded literary methods. But now as I write to you, I have finished my four term papers and am beginning my week of tests with little worry. My lack of worry is not because I am excited to sit down for hours with a pencil in hand, pouring my thoughts and revelations from these courses into a blue booklet. Instead, I am drifting between stress and freedom, agony and excitement. Now don’t get me wrong, part of me actually enjoys spending late nights in PGill and the Ronj, inhaling caffeine until I place the last period on the page; but sleep is nice too.

Even on the busiest days in the old Commons, said Marty Laurita ’08, there’d often be empty seats.

Those chairs were unoccupied — but not unused, Laurita explained. They had a vital function as buffer zones between student groups at the table.

It was a turf thing. “Once we knit ourselves together with certain people, group space becomes a factor,” said Laurita, of Camden, Maine.

No casual observer of seating habits in the now-closed Memorial Commons, Laurita based his anthropology thesis on a perception study of student cliques and their table choices. He asked some 20 students to map the dining areas and where distinct groups habitually sat.

“Whether those groups actually exist isn’t the point,” he explained. “It’s the perception we’re looking for.”

While the thesis was still under way at press time, Laurita could share a few common perceptions. It was thought, for example, that athletes tended to sit next to the salad bar in the so-called Big Room — a room that, in fact, seemed to serve generally as a venue for social display.

“People there seemed to subscribe to the concept of status and hierarchy,” explained Laurita, himself a denizen of the Back Room. “So there are opposing ideas of what it is to be a Batesie. Does that identity call for being part of a hierarchy, or not?”

Given the demise of Memorial Commons, Laurita was proud to have captured this snapshot of a passing piece of College history. In a January interview, he was also glad he’d be around for the new dining hall’s “soft opening” during February break.

“Friends of mine are going to be here,” he said. “We’re going to go stake it out and see where we’re comfortable.”