{"id":3412,"date":"2008-05-11T11:58:54","date_gmt":"2008-05-11T15:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/batesviews.net\/?p=3412"},"modified":"2016-02-08T12:59:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T17:59:19","slug":"you-are-where-you-eat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2008\/05\/11\/you-are-where-you-eat\/","title":{"rendered":"You Are Where You Eat"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Even on the busiest days in the old Commons, said Marty Laurita \u201908, there\u2019d often be empty seats.<\/p>\n<p>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<p>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<p>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.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhether those groups actually exist isn\u2019t the point,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s the perception we\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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<p>\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<p>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<p>\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><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A thesis looks at turf consciousness in the old Commons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":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":""},"categories":[224,11009],"tags":[10856,1417,7993],"class_list":["post-3412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society-culture","category-the-college","tag-bates-magazine","tag-dining-services","tag-social-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62715,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412\/revisions\/62715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}