Observation of the Soul Food Dinner

Evan Wynn
English
Professor Meek
03/04/08
Observation of the Soul Food Dinner
For my observation I had trouble trying to decide what I was going to observe, and who I was going to observe. I finally decided that I was going to go to the soul food dinner in Scanlon hall. This was an event set up by the student support services office. I thought that this would be a real good event to go to because there would be a lot of people there that I could take notes on. Now that I knew what I was going to observe everything seemed to fit in to place.
When I first walked into the door I saw everyone was sitting down in their seats waiting for the food to be ready. The atmosphere was real light and friendly. I was really surprised to see how many people actually showed up for the soul food dinner. After I went over to the table where I had to pay 5 dollars to get in and be served food I myself looked for a seat. There were more than fifteen big round tables set up in the place that it was being held at. At every table there was a center piece of flowers.
The people in the room ranged from freshman to upper classmen to teachers, and other types of educators. I became I part of the environment of people in the event. Instead of me just sitting back and observing I became an active participant in this social group of people. I knew a lot of the people who were there already so it seemed only right for me to become part of the social climate that was going on. The soul food dinner seemed like a family reunion of sorts. Everyone was there to support each other, and to show that they cared.
There was no animosity towards anyone. When I did see someone that I didn’t know they were friendly and made sure that they introduced themselves to me.
I did notice small clicks though were certain people would hang out together. I noticed all the people who were doing poetry readings sat together. I also noticed all of the people who were receiving scholarships where sitting in close vicinity of each other. This could have been because that is how it was supposed to be set up, or maybe that is just how the students wanted to sit with. Another thing that I noticed was how most people sat on the right side of the room. The left side was the only place where seats were empty.
When it was time for the poetry readers to come forward they decided who would go by gender. The two guy poets went first. Then the two girl poets went after them. For the guys there was a one white poet and one black poet, and it was the same way for the woman. The white person went first for each gender. When it came to the announcing of who would be getting the scholarships all of the people who won where dressed up in what seemed to be there best outfits. All of the winners of the scholarships seemed to understand how big of a deal it was to be one of the people who got one of the scholarships.
The soul food dinner was a great thing to observe because of the great diversity of people there. No one person was a like but everyone was being friendly and encouraging their fellow classmates. Meeting new people was easy because of how friendly everyone was. Learning how people can come together was a great thing to witness and be a part of.