The Rand Project
Saralyn Marshall Jake LaManna Obinna Ubabukoh Aaron Stannard Linda Vongkhamchanh Robert Proudfoot
Issue date: 3/14/05 Section: features
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Have you ever noticed that black people sit together during lunch in Rand? Indians claim their big table too. In fact, Rand seems to have minorities all in large groupings, swimming in a sea of white people. But it does not end there. Sorority girls will crowd thirty to a table, while frat guys claim the C-room. And let's not forget the music-lovers (the band kids) upstairs. We here at Versus noticed this phenomena, and decided to investigate by conducting the RAND PROJECT.
Description:
The RAND PROJECT is a comprehensive study using qualitative and
quantitative methods to analyze the seating patterns of Vanderbilt's main dining facility. For a two-week period a team of seven investigators
surveyed Rand dining hall, including the adjoining C-room and the tables
on the second fl oor. We charted the distributions of students based on
gender, ethnicity, and observed social cliques throughout diff erent times
of the day spanning the lunch hours. Basically, we watched people eat.
Method:
Each day of the RAND PROJECT, our investigators would record the seating patterns in Rand. This included walking throughout the dining hall
and recording the number of people at each table, the gender, race or
ethnicity, and whether that person belonged to a salient social group, such as a fraternity, sorority, or the band. If there were ever any ambiguities, the researcher would query the subjects as to their backgrounds. The times of the observations ranged between 11:00 am and 1 pm. Often the noon measurements were made at 12:30, when the lunchroom had reached its critical mass of students. A uniform survey sheet was used by all investigators, and included a diagrammatic representation of the facility.
Results:
The original intent of the RAND PROJECT was to plot the demographics of the seating patterns each day, using means and standard deviations of each trend, fi nding statistical signifi cance of said patterns. This would involve Excel worksheets, histograms, and regression graphs examining correlation coeffi cients. It was brought to our attention, however, that this would be a lot of work. Instead, we have decided to point out general trends observed, as well as outliers. (How s'bout that for a cop-out?).
We have pooled together from the conglomeration of data collected, and noticed some predominant trends listed below. While there was variation in the trends found, including outliers in the groupings, the following seemed to hold consistently throughout the duration of the study: