Have you ever found yourself wondering what is all of the work that is put into student workers in residence halls? Have you ever found yourself observing students interactions and attitudes with student workers? For my ethnography project I investigated the relationships between the students and workers in the University Dining Services at FAR residence hall. I also observed the specific jobs and roles that the workers partake in, and their social behavior. I know some people may be wondering what is FAR residence hall? FAR stands for Florida Avenue Residence because it is located on Florida Avenue which is straight down on Lincoln.
The University Dining Services in
FAR is an area where students and dining services faculty come to dine in
the morning, noon, and night. There is also what's called late night. Late
night starts at 8:00p.m and basically serves as an eating and lounge place
for those who missed dinner which ends at 7:30. There are two different dining
areas in FAR. One is called Trelease and another is called Oglesby. This is
because students who live on Trelease side can dine in the Trelease hall,
and the students living in Oglesby can dine in Oglesby hall. However, there
is no penalty or punishment for those who choose to dine in the area opposite
of their side. The dining service provides various foods each day. They even
supply vegetarian dishes such as pasta and lasagna aimed towards vegetarians,
but of course non vegetarians are welcomed to it. There is also several
different desserts and multiple beverages. This space is used for different
reasons. Sometimes students come to the dining hall to get some of their
homework done and to study. Others just simply use this space as a means
of eating and socializing with friends. The purpose of my research is
to evaluate the attitudes of students and workers. I also want to touch on
the different roles that each worker is assigned to.
Methods:
I gathered my data by evaluating for a half an hour
to an hour the things that occurred in the dining services on a day to day
basis. I chose to record five specific days where things were not normal.
When I say not normal I mean things that did not normally happen each day
that I ate dinner. Since I stay in this residence hall and eat dinner
mostly, I chose to observe during the dinner shift. During my observation
I tried to sit close to the area where the workers were walking around
at and observed them. I also chose to observe certain student behaviors
towards the workers, and also students'
behaviors as a whole to them. When I first walk into the dining hall
I would write about the greeter who is at the front door. I wanted to
see if her attitude was pleasant, sad, angry or frustrated. After that
I observe the attitudes of the workers who stand behind their designated
jobs such as beverages, desserts, and the food line.
Observations:
As I began to move closer to the food I noticed that
the workers appeared to be very busy. There were about five or six workers
who had to keep rotating and bringing several things like chicken and macaroni
and cheese because it was so busy. I noticed that there was always a shortage
in food. It took the cooks in the back to fry more chicken for about ten minutes.
The students would wait impatiently by tapping their feet and saying things
like, "I wish they would hurry up". There was soon a form of
hostility between the student and the workers because the students wanted
food to eat, and the cooks felt as though they were working as fast as
they could. I then started to observe the beverage area. The beverage area
appeared to be very messy. There were three stations for beverages. The
chocolate milk and the milk sections were the messiest. They were the messiest
because for some reason a lot of people chooses to eat cereal for dinner.
Students would sloppily press the button to receive the milk and let the
milk spill over. Obviously the worker who wanted to not be disclosed but
agreed to be talked about who was in charge of the beverages had a very
mean look on his face because he knew that he was going to have to clean
all of the mess when dinner was over. Every one of the students appeared
to be having a good time. Whenever a song would come on everyone would
sing along to the song as they were socializing with their friends and
acquaintances. Even though with some people the communication between the
student and workers were negative, with others the case was different.
Some of the students had friendly conversations with the workers because
the workers were students who they knew. One of my friends named Joanna
engaged in a long conversation with two of the workers there that she knew
quite well.
