Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Bathroom observations

The women’s bathroom has compartments with toilets that don’t reach the ground exposing feet of the person in the stall. The floor is tile with a drain in the middle. There are many places to dispose things as well as many things to dispose such as toilet paper and paper towels, as well as tampons and pads you can buy and dispose. There is soap and sinks that are varying heights, a mirror, and a place to clean and change babies. Everything is color coordinated. There is a separate room called a lounge with a couch.  

The men’s bathroom has no lounge but the same color scheme and sinks. There is one stall and two urinals with a small divider down the middle. There is a baby changing table, but no tampon dispenser. The mirror and floors are the same as well. In both bathrooms have sinks that turn on automatically and manually.

http://www.california.com/~rathbone/foucau10.htm

Hmm, not sure if I did that right. If you can't link to the webpage directly from this page, just copy & paste into your browser.

As we approached a singular object that makes up part of what is called "The Soup", we noticed to our right on the blue exterior wall, under a covered area, a brown, somewhat spongy, though still firm, rectangle. Stuck upon this rectangle were various other rectangles. These flat rectangles seemed to have no order to their placement, though occasionally two of them would appear to be exactly the same. I snatched one of these flat rectangles as an artifact. I will transcribe it as follows:

After I retrieving my artifact I ascended the stairs directly in front of me. I noticed the area around me festively decorated; I took note of some colorful flat objects stuck onto the blue walls. These objects gave me a vague, though lacking feeling of welcoming. They were nice, though what they were attempting to cheer up was not. It was harsh and foreign seeming. Upon reaching a landing I found myself looking over the covering of the path leading up to the building, and the whole “Soup” itself. I looked down upon the blue walkway covering and noticed some short brown hair clumps, laying as though they had jut been clipped from an inhabitants head and clumsily been thrown out of an above window. Interesting behavior…

 

The the bookstore is a large single room consisting of seperate aisled sections.  These aisles contain items for purchase that the human "student"(person enrolled in an institute of education) could need to get through their day.  Some of these items are educational(books), some the implements of art or trade(various papers, pens, paints etc.), while others seem to be offered as comfort and support to weary minded students(candy, candy, candy) or proof that someone actually attends the learning institution itself(who really needs geoduck socks?).

As this space is so packed full of so many different objects, our observations were too many to list in this blog space.  Here are a few of the ones that I found the most interesting:

• Although the aisles were far enough apart to allow plenty of room for two people to pass without any contact, anytime the situation arose one or both parties would stand still long enough for the other to pass with the latter invariably muttering "s'cuse me"
• Among the candy located at the front of the store were some "Endangered Species" chocolate bars, with wrappers depicting varios animals.  Of these bars, the ones with the most widely renowned "super cute" animals on the wrapper were in shortest supply, while the more fierce or ferocious beasts were well stocked
• By the writing utencils were pads of paper for testing said utencils.  Some were covered in seemingly random scribbles, others with one word over and over(most notably the word pen as if the writer was in need of a reminder of what they were trying out), others predominately signatures.  One had the statement "this pen works", followed by the question "but does it really work well?" in a different hand.  Did this questioner think that the statement giver would at some point c

The Evergreen State College smoking tent is a physical place where human students, faculty and visitors go to inhale smoke from cylinder consisting of a dried plant called tobacco rolled in paper. This object is called a cigarette. These people are labeled “smokers” and they are isolated to “designated smoking areas” as signs clearly state around the Evergreen education facilities. My fellow anthropologists and I chose to study the smoking tent located outside of the COM building.

            This area is called the smoking tent because there is a “tent,” or shelter, in this location. The tent consists of metal bars that form an exposed square base and these bars support a blue tarp that begins about six feet from the base of the support bars.  The blue tarp is formed in the shape of a pyramid by metal bars. This served the purpose of sheltering smokers from rain. The tarp does not prevent wind and extreme temperatures from affecting the smokers. This was obvious when we arrived at the tent and no people were standing under it. Ten smokers were, however, standing 10-25 feet away from the tent in patches of sunlight that penetrated through the dense trees. These people were obviously breaking the “designated smoking area” boundaries, as specified by the signs. However, no authority figures corrected the smokers on their breach of regulated campus rules.

 It is also important to note that the tent can only comfortably fit 10-12 people in the event of rain. This could be a problem, especially when we observed 39 smokers using the facility during a 23 minute period.  There is also a bench in the smoking tent which is the only designated place for smokers to sit. The bench can fit 4 people and we failed observed more than two people sitting on the bench at one time. Some smokers who needed to sit placed themselves on the cement ground or on the stairs located near the tent.  

When I first approached the office,  I noticed it was very makeshift.  This area is currently a temporary location, and so it looked like the office was thrown together.  The waiting area consisted of 3 chairs (no plants, magazines, etc.), and the main reception partition was so tall that the person on the other side could barely look over it sitting down.  Outside the office was a narrow hallway with 3 signs posted by the door that said, "DO NOT BLOCK THE DOORWAY!  Several times our observation group was mistaken for the actual line because this functional space was so small.  As I mentioned before, there was a main reception area where people came up to inquire about their registration needs.  When you enter the office, it looks like that is the only reception area, but it isn't!  Off to the left were other desks, with people ready to assist other people.  Very confusing to the student who wants to be helped.  You get the impression that there is only one place to go.  Because this was the last day on registration, our group was hoping to find crying students fighting for their class schedules, but alas, we were the ones that left in disappointment because everyone looked actually contented with their current schedule status.

 The buildings were uniformly three stories with a blue roof and blue walls. The approach to the building was a paved covered walkway. On one side were horizontal boards that bodies rested on and the other side objects composed of two circles and a frame were hanging. The rectangular entrances were protected in a stairwell. There were two rectangular frames below the level of the paved path. Climbing above the path revealed another set of two doors and even higher another set of two doors. On these doors were pieces of paper with writing on them, some having four pieces and others having six. Walking around the building, there were regularly placed rectangles containing glass. Observed from the outside the pieces of glass at knee level were blocked by something on the inside. The pieces of glass on the two levels above were clear and allowed images to pass through them. A body was observed in close proximity to a glowing box in the second level of rectangles and letters spray painted onto the wall “Occupancy limit 10”. Paved paths branched off into gravel and wood lined paths. Off the path a small green plant seemed to try to grow. The paths we were surrounded by tall brown and green sunblockers. The blue buildings were quite numerous on a wider circular path. An awful smell was detected when passing a cluster of rectangular objects with wooden roofs. 

Computer Lab

We entered a big rectangular box. The box was filled with different types of objects-many of those objects came in different shapes, sizes, and colors. There was one particular object that grab my attention, it was a small flashy box, because it had the power to hypnotized everyone that dare look at it. The box looked like it was constructed out of plastic, but on the front size of the box it had a piece of glass. This glass ,if you looked inside, it would change colors and shapes. Sometimes, if you looked inside, the shapes were of human beings, and in the top of the glass it would say you tube. The only time that I saw the human beings take their attention away from the flashy square was when they had to walk to a bigger box. This bigger box would released white flat squares.

The second floor of the CAB contains two doorways that are set back away from the main hallway. These two entrances are significantly unique from the rest of the doorways in the building. Here lie two short hallways, one blue, one purple. On the exterior of the entrances are words, respectively to the colors, "MEN 201A" and "WOMEN 202A." Upon entering the short hallway, there are more doors. The MEN entrance says "MEN" again next to a placard with a visual symbol: a simplistic body shape standing straight up next to a figure sitting on a circular shape. The WOMEN entrance says "WOMEN" next to a similar placard, but this standing figure had a triangular abdomen (the sititng figure is identical to its MEN sign).

In the purple WOMEN's entrance, a person has the option to enter a doorless room before entering the closed door straight ahead. This doorless room on the right side in the entrance has dim lighting, white walls, and an orange bed/couch/chaise lounge. This small room is entitled, in a sign in the hallway, "LOUNGE."

In the blue MEN's entrance hall, an average person does not have the option to enter a doorway on the left hand side of the short hallway. This doorway is locked, has a white board on it, and is entitled "JANITOR."

While it may appear the two restooms are markedly different, the layouts inside are mostly the same. Save the fact the women's has three stalls (tall make-shift 'rooms' containing a porcelain bowl filled with water) and the men's has only one… and that the men's has two porcelain bowls (no water) propped on one wall at two different heights. A minimal board divides the two bowls here. In any case, both rooms have three porcelain bowls that produce water next to dispensers of scented liquid and dispensers of paper towels. These sinks are at a low enough height that a person in a wheelchair could use them, but we noticed that the doors did not open automatically, potentially making entrance difficult for some people.

My group went to the registration office (on the last day to add/drop classes).

My initial observation was that there were only 2 or 3 students in or around the office, though I had expected a crowd. There were, however, large signs posted in the hallway which read, in big, bold, print, "DO NOT BLOCK DOORWAY," and "DO NOT BLOCK HALLWAY." These signs were repeated several times around the area. Inside the office, there were two people seated behind counters which reached their eye level or above, and behind them were several cluttered desks with very little space between, and 3 or 4 more people working on or around them. There was an overall air of makeshiftyness, assuredly thanks to the office's recent move to a much smaller location.