Benedum Dining Hall

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the academic and educational bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of this school building, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of administration entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they have to declare the causes which don’t necessarily impel them to the Dress-code Law.

The answer to this question can best be answered by socialization. Before answering the question, it is important to note the background of the high school. The research was taken at Matthews Middle School which is located in a large city that is never disclosed. It is made up of many different ethnicities but most importantly, it is located in a very poor and working-class area. The research even states that sixty percent of the students receive discounted or free lunch, which is evident of the economic conditions not only of the school but of the town. In short, poverty is existent. This is how socialization can best explain why this uniform code is created. Socialization is defined as the process through which people learn the beliefs and expectations of a group and how to play their roles properly. The group that is being socialized are the students. They are taught through many different methods that are common in socialization such as explicit instruction and rituals. Explicit instruction is the outright communication of one person to another on how to do a certain action. Ritual is best defined as recurring actions performed in a specific setting. They were taught through explicit instruction such as being told to tuck their shirt and by ritual as the boys are required to wear suits and ties for their presentations. Coming from a background of poverty, these students are being taught to be a

Food plays an important role in our lives, especially in college. Food affects people financially, nutritionally, and educationally. The dining halls at Virginia State University are a major source of meals and food for students. Needless to say, it is important that those students can eat at these dining halls. The problem with this is that the cost of campus dining is way too expensive for the limited options we have.

Norms in society are the expectations of actions in specific situations. Social norms keep human social relations and behavior stable. Norms are “rules” that have developed within a particular society taking into account its values, culture and way of living. Sometimes, it is even the case that individuals do not have a choice and rarely recognize that fact that social norms have arbitrary origins because they have experienced this during the ongoing process of living (Clinard and Meyer 2011:10). Thus, gender norms are sometimes seen as limiting, disenfranchising and oppressive. People who are in less-favored or less-accepted norms are sometimes pushed to “deviate” from the norm in order to achieve some form of “liberation” from their

The next day on Sunday, February 28 I went to Schilletter Dining Hall at around 3:33 PM. Schilletter was smaller than Harcombe and had a different layout. Schilleter is set in a shape similar to a circle which has the different food stations all around. At first I thought that this place would have more groups of people since it is smaller but it turned out to be the opposite. In schilletter I noticed a larger amount of people isolated from each other. There were more places for people who eat alone to sit because of the layout of the dining hall. It is interesting how the shape and the arrangement of a dining hall can modify how people sit and socialize. Because of the tables being all around people were able to make less contact with each

There is something subtle about attitudes toward women, something that many people act in accordance to but are only subconsciously aware of. It is the constant judgment that women face, and it is also something Deborah Tannen noticed while sitting in an ordinary meeting one day. During that meeting, she found herself noticing only the females of the room, not the men. Tannen then realized that it was because “The men’s styles were unmarked” (Tannen 389). While there are standard hairstyles and clothing for men, there are none for women. Everything that a woman wears is a reflection of who she is. In her piece titled There Is No Unmarked Woman, she writes about her experience and concludes that women cannot escape judgment no matter what they do.

As I walked into the glittery ballroom once again, trying my hardest to remove the white cat hair from my black sweater, I noticed that almost everyone had heels on and ignored the Panhellenic letter that suggested we wear “church attire.” I was already nervous about having to wear an overly conservative dress that didn`t match my style for the second day of sorority recruitment, so seeing that everybody else looked like runway models only added to my nausea. However, when I looked around the room I saw many girls who were didn`t fit in, like me; some who opted for slacks, some who decided to wear no makeup, some who just didn’t look like everyone else. We all had similar demeanors: uncertain smiles, furrowed brows, and faces that were pointed straight down, as if we were being reprimanded.

The narrator, who does not come from extreme wealth, privilege, or class has trouble dealing with his lack of social prominence. The school has an elite group of boys, which the narrator is not a member of, who are understood to “get a leg up from their famous names or great wealth”(3-4). Being a senior, the narrator has spent the past three years assimilating to the social customs of his school and adapting the attitude of the elite boys. He has recognized many normalities that some of his peers such as Purcell and George Kellogg live by. The boys have a constant laidback and relaxed attitude that is fostered because of their innate understanding of their wealth. They wear clothes loosely and without care and do not give much thought to their future. Additionally, through their class and wealth the elite boys are grouped together and bonded by what seems, as the narrator describes : “tribal tattoos”. This high class attitude of some of the students is ever present as the narrators says, “Class was a fact….His way of turning cold at the mention of money, or at the spectacle of ambition too nakedly revealed”(15). The narrator realizes that public school attitude and being on scholarship, like he is, are repugnant at his school. Rather than announce his perceived shortcomings, in social capital, the narrator is very quiet and abstains from showing his true self to his school.

The students in Campus Center Dining Hall all adhered to the social norms that have been set. Social norms greatly influence our everyday life, even when we don’t think they do, as is evident in the dining hall. The positive or negative sanctions that we face when we adhere to/deviate from the norms help determine whether or not we engage in a specific behavior in the future. By using the sociological imagination,

During the dinner time rush, many of the tables began to fill up, and at about 6:30 there were no clear tables. Often I saw that only one person was occupying a table that could potentially seat 6, but no one was willing to sit down where there was room. I noticed that many people stood around waiting for a table to open up, or they would hover naggingly around a table until its occupiers finally gave in, and relinquished the table. When

Throughout history young girls and women were limited on what they could and couldn’t do. Society had put more pressure on them than men and they had to act a certain way in public and in their homes. Females were the underprivileged gender and were greatly affected by the gender roles occurring in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and were taught at a young age these rules and expectations. Gender roles had limited women in the past from being more than a perfect wife and homemaker, fitting the generation's beauty expectations, unable to dress freely due to the school dress code, to use proper etiquette to please everyone but themselves, and to work the same job as a man and get paid a lower wage.

It is the effectiveness, of these skills that helps create and maintain social order. These unspoken rules of social etiquette lead to society having preconceived ideas of what is the ‘norm’. This is almost automatic, yet if normal behaviour is breached without repair, it is immediately noticed. In addition, anything outside of these values of normality is viewed negatively or with suspicion, this in turn can lead to exclusion of those outside of these so-called ‘norms’.

The social norm that I chose to violate was initiating conversation and talking to strangers on public transportation. By doing this I deviated from the unspoken rule which says that you should not talk to strangers and that you should not interact with others on public transportation because of the possibility of them harming or assaulting you. From doing this activity, I learned that power dynamics exist in every situation and that by violating a social norm I, as a young woman, put myself in a vulnerable position.

This experience made me start questioning the idea of normality. I realized that norms measure a person's happiness. If a person is normal, then he or she has found security and happiness. But, what about the rest of us? Just because I have not achieved, and in most cases unwilling to achieve, the norms of society, does this make me inferior to the norms?         Beside myself, many people have internally agonized over the idea of norms and how they serve society, especially dealing with appearances. Everyone comes to a point when they evaluate their lives against these standards. Often times, in a person's quest for normality, they have to conform and try to destroy their differences from what they perceive to be normal. Before they realize they are different, they are, in a sense, content with their lives. This idea can be found my many writings such as Elizabeth MacDonald's Odalique. "My hair is short can less feminine at this time, my face rounder, my body plumper.

The Dining Hall at State University is bustling with kids in sweatshirts and pajama pants. The make-your-own Belgian waffle line is long and students are complaining about the lack of forks. Phrases like “I got wicked smashed last night,” and “I really need a cup of coffee” can be heard around the tables. It’s typical Sunday morning on campus.