Today we had a group assignment in class to find a place on campus where people congregate, observe how people use the space and what the purpose of the space might be, and take notes. Furthermore, we were asked to disrupt the usual flow of activity in the space somehow and see what happens. My group chose the entrance to Geisel Library. We stood right above the entrance and peered below to observe the flow of people in and out of the library. For our activity, we chose to block half of the path by sitting on the walkway in front of the entrance and reading out loud. We sat in a small circle and read from our laptops at a medium volume so people passing by could clearly hear what we were saying. Despite the interesting material (reading for this class), no one paid us any attention. People just kept walking on a mission to get to where they were going. I thought we would at least get a few odd stares or remarks, but not one person reacted, at least in a noticeable way. The only person that stopped was my roommate and that's only because she recognized me. Frankly, we got more looks when we were standing above the entrance and observed.

We concluded that people passed by because it's a college campus and social experiments like this aren't out of the norm. This campus in particular has a lot of quirky students who do things like this somewhat regularly. Also, protests and other gatherings occur often here. Our attempt at disruption did not prove weird enough for the average UCSD onlooker. However, maybe people did have a reaction but they did not display it. If a person stopped to talk to us or so much looked our way, they may have felt that that gave us an opportunity to involve them in the activity. So to avoid being roped in, people may have intentionally ignored us.

If I was to do this exercise again, I would try something even more extreme. We considered doing something a little more invasive such as talking to people as they went in the library, either small chat or asking them if they needed assistance in the library. I'm always a little hesitant to do things like this not only because of embarrassment, but also because I hate to bother people when they look busy and determined. No one goes to the library to chill out, at least generally not on a college campus during summer. The only young people who are at the library are those taking classes who need to get work done. I'm also just afraid of how people will react. Some may get angry or uncomfortable, and while this isn't validated by someone simply asking you how your day is, I still don't like pushing peoples' buttons. I can see how in rare cases a person might feel unsafe, and I didn't feel like defending my artsy social experiment to a security guard.