feld-readingresponses2

**My Freshman Year pg. 41-66**
Nathan came up with new theories in chapter three which further investigated the idea of "community" at AnyU. The beginning ideas mentioned by Nathan involving involvement in the dorms reminded me a lot of what I've noticed in my own dorm. The idea of the RAs handing out interest surveys to get the floor involved was exactly what they did in my dorm last year, and this year for that matter. As Nathan described, it didn't work, even if the whole floor agreed and wanted to complete an activity after deciding on a day and time that worked no one would show up at the actual event. This year they tried to do the same thing but I know even in my room one of my roommates didn't even hand in the form so not everyone takes this seriously and wanted to get involved. I also noticed that this year to get the hall involved and to start a "community" they required the CAs to bring at least five floor residents but even getting just five girls was like pulling teeth. I have also noticed that what Nathan was observing with keeping doors open is what happens in my hall, no matter how many times the CA and sophomores on the floor tell everyone to keep their doors open and be friendly there are the rooms that I don't even know what the residents look like because they have their own social networks and those are the only people they socialize with. The topic of diversity at Bloomsburg is a puzzling one for me. In some ways I agree with Nathan and see that people tend to have networks with people of similar demographic characteristics but at the same time I know that BU does so much with acceptance and has organization on campus which involve all types of ethnic backgrounds. I know that when I look at sororities and fraternities there are some that all the girls or guys look the same but there are mixed backgrounds in some organizations, I see all different types of people walking around campus with the same greek letters. Also living in Columbia Hall I have been surrounded by the Fredrick Douglas Living and Learning Community which is a LLC of acceptance so I am used to seeing mixed networks throughout the dorm, all of whom have at least said hi to me if not invited me to dinner or just to hangout with them even though I was never apart of this LLC.

A key point that I discovered in this part of On Ethnography was that ethnography is not about what is being shown, it is more about analyzing observations. Each enthnographer tends to create a theory of what they think is true about a topic that they are focusing on and the work; through observations, research, and analyzing, to support or deny their theory. We take on the role of being an ethnographer in this sense as we complete the CLUE project. By making assumptions through our observations we work on gaining more evidence to decide if our data supports or denies our original assumptions. Another key point mentioned by Shirley in this chapter is that ethnographers ask every question except "why." I don't really understand this, why is it that they can ask every kind of question except "why" when the answer to "why" questions usually gives meaning to a theory or assumption.
 * On Ethnography pg. 27-47**

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