Status in the Cafeteria

For all of you who have never bothered to take a look around in the cafeteria during your afternoon lunch break, or crowded dinners, you would realize something that somewhat of a social phenomenon that has been occurring since your early middle school years. The Manhattanville Cafeteria, better know as “The Caf” is socially segregated into a wide range of groups. If a student is standing in the middle of the room and looks to his or her left, he or she would see that the back wall of the dining hall houses its group of rowdy baseball players. Off to their left is the goofy and “joke cracking” soccer team, and at their right the basketball team. In the middle of the left side of “The Caf” sits the towering hockey team, and close by the lacrosse team eats their sandwiches and argue about who had the better Halo score on X Box 360. If the person standing in the middle of “The Caf” gazes over their other shoulder they will see that the right side is filled with the artistic crowd, and those that do not have an exact social group to mesh with. In the back of this side of the cafeteria, one may see a student finishing a book, studying for a test that they have later on in the day, or a discussion about the latest theatre production to hit Manhattanville College. This social segregation in the cafeteria is something that reminds me of my High School and something that I thought I would never see in my college years. This goes to show you that people will only associate themselves with others whom they feel most comfortable with. For someone to sit with another person who they are completely different from, is asking too much from someone who can solve a complicated Statistic equation. It is so easy to strike a conversation with someone who you normally wouldn’t, that I am not sure that people do not do it because of laziness or fear. In any case, if anyone takes a second during their next meal to take a look around they will notice this unbelievable trend that has always been a part of our academic lives for as long as we can remember.