Even on the busiest days in the old Commons, said Marty Laurita \u201908, there\u2019d often be empty seats.<\/p>\n
Those chairs were unoccupied \u2014 but not unused, Laurita explained. They had a vital function as buffer zones between student groups at the table.<\/p>\n
It was a turf thing. \u201cOnce we knit ourselves together with certain people, group space becomes a factor,\u201d said Laurita, of Camden, Maine.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether those groups actually exist isn\u2019t the point,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s the perception we\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 a room that, in fact, seemed to serve generally as a venue for social display.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople there seemed to subscribe to the concept of status and hierarchy,\u201d explained Laurita, himself a denizen of the Back Room. \u201cSo there are opposing ideas of what it is to be a Batesie. Does that identity call for being part of a hierarchy, or not?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019d be around for the new dining hall\u2019s \u201csoft opening\u201d during February break.<\/p>\n
\u201cFriends of mine are going to be here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to go stake it out and see where we\u2019re comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even on the busiest days in the old Commons, said Marty Laurita…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":465,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-471","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11012,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/471\/revisions\/11012"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}