“One of the greatest hurdles for sociology is the Hawthorne effect, when subjects alter their behavior because they know they’re being studied. The effect referenced in the name comes from a study about productivity, when, as you might guess, workers picked up their pace when they knew they were being watched.”
My Sociology 101 professor, an eighty-year-old woman in a navy pantsuit, slips off her reading glasses, and looks out to the class, an auditorium of freshmen (mainly) and seniors (more than there should be) who almost forgot they had to fulfill this requirement.
“This is a bit like how cell phone usage might go down in this class if there was a team of scientists filming you instead of just a half-blind old bat at the front of the room. But then again, I still see, say, you there in the third row with the blue phone case.”
Everyone shifts in their seats. The boy in question turns red, and a few people laugh.
“Tell your mother I say hello. I do hope the only person you felt the need to contact during my class is the woman who brought you into this world. Otherwise, do put it away.”
He sheepishly slides the phone into his backpack.
“Now, where was I?” She puts her glasses back on. “Oh, yes. The Hawthorne effect. So now, knowing this, it makes sense to conduct some studies covertly, although, that of course carries its own array of risks...”
The door in the back of the room swings open, but luckily, Professor Abbott is too engrossed in her notes to notice.
I see someone walking down the aisle out of the corner of my eye, but I am too terrified of my tiny, fierce professor to look.
“Excuse me,” a familiar voice whispers.
My heart skips a beat as Jordan shimmies past the rest of the people in my row and settles into the seat next to me.
I steal a glance. He’s fishing through his backpack for a notebook, so luckily he doesn’t see me staring. He’s wearing a checkered button-down and light blue shorts, impeccably dressed for a nine o’clock class. And he looks good, like so good I have a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was hoping he wouldn’t live up to the memory I had replayed in my mind as I lay in bed the night before. But instead he’s even more beautiful than I remembered. I’m painfully aware of how close he’s sitting to me, scared I’ll give myself away, like he’ll hear my breath catch or my heart race.
He looks over, and my eyes dart to the front of the room, where Professor Abbott is rambling on about things that honestly would probably be very helpful for me to know. But I can’t focus, can’t hear anything but my own heart beating wildly.
I keep my eyes forward as he leans over and whispers, “You could’ve just told me you were going to DTC.”
I glance over. “I didn’t know what to say.”
He stares at me like he’s trying to figure something out. Then he shakes his head and turns to his notebook.
He doesn’t say anything for the rest of class, taking notes in tiny, neat handwriting and meticulously organized columns.
My own notes are an appalling scrawled mix of cursive and printing, sometimes veering off the lines.
When the lecture ends, he leaves without saying anything to me.
Okay, then, bye.
I head out into the fresh air and feel a bit better in the California sun. I cut through the sandstone quad, past the dry fountain and toward the coffee shop.
I am here, I keep telling myself, but it doesn’t seem real as I walk through scenery I’m used to seeing on postcards.
I grab a cappuccino so I won’t be too dead for my first meeting with the professor who will be helping me with my independent study.
My project coordinator, an uptight blonde from the Upper East Side who’s constantly checking one of her countless social media accounts on one of her two smartphones, is not my favorite person. We’ve had several Skype meetings, and she is always wearing designer business wear and telling me that this topic “is so hot right now” and “will generate so much buzz” once we go public. That’s her favorite word, I think, buzz. She truly sounds like a bee during most of our calls. It just worries me that she doesn’t seem to care what people will say about the project as long as they’re saying something.
But I do have to give it to her; she hooked me up with about the best faculty adviser in the history of ever. I’ve been a fan of her for years, reading her entire body of work the summer I first heard about her, and impatiently anticipating the release of everything she’s done since. One of the top women’s studies professors in the world, and she’s going to sit for an hour a week and listen to me rant about frats. I almost feel bad for her.
The imposing door in front of me opens. A beautiful, tall black woman smiles at me. She’s wearing a patterned dress that complements her headscarf. She looks polished and smart, but also like she exudes sunshine. A bit different from the salt-and-pepper-haired old men in heavy black and navy suits who teach so many of the classes here.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Eva Price.”
I know. I’ve read all your books. “Cassie Davis.”
“Would you like something to drink? Coffee, water, juice?” she asks as she leads me into her office.
There is a grand dark-wood desk, and ornate bookshelves overflowing with easily hundreds of books, as well as vases and boxes covering every available surface.
Most notable are the pictures on the wall behind her desk, so that when she sits she’s flanked by photographs of her at the Fruitvale Station protests, holding a sign outside the Supreme Court during Roe v. Wade, meeting Malala on the floor of the UN, deep in conversation with Nelson Mandela, shaking hands with the president of the United States. Jesus.
She sits, and so do I, feeling about an inch tall. There is no way she should be taking on my project. She’s light-years too big for this.
“Well, I’m going to make myself some tea, if you don’t mind.” She grabs a mug off her shelf.
Speechless, I nod. It’s always odd to see larger-than-life people do such mundane things.
She settles into her chair. “So, I know this is the last thing you want to hear right now, but as feminists—You do consider yourself a feminist, yes?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Good. I always like to avoid the whole ‘feminism means equality’ conversation when I can. You do not understand, Ms. Davis, how exhausting it is to have to urge young women to align themselves with a movement that simply fights for their dignity.”
She takes a sip of her tea. “So, as I was saying. As feminists, I don’t know if this is exactly what we want to or need to be getting behind right now, and I know that’s scary to hear. But I think as a researcher, an activist, or a writer, that sort of self-reflection, continuously asking yourself, Why am I doing this? Is this the best way to go about it? Is this what the cause needs right now? is endlessly important.
“When it comes to creating a just world, you have two main fights, in my opinion. There’s the legal and the social. Do you know the slogan ‘the personal is political’?” She gets up and scans her shelves, finally grabbing a book and handing it to me before she sits back down.
“It comes from second-wave feminism,” she says. “The idea that we aren’t just fighting for the vote, which we had by that time. It meant that the issues women continually face in personal relationships, like gender roles in the traditional family, are a huge social problem and not isolated incidences. It’s similar to the philosophy that microaggressions—those little acts of prejudice, like asking a biracial person ‘what they are’ or touching a black woman’s head in public because you want to feel her natural hair, or assuming all Hispanic people are Mexican—can add up to become a major contribution to the continuation of systematic oppression.”
She pauses, probably to see if I’m still following, so I nod.
“And while I don’t think people are wrong when they say that these little things are unjust, I sometimes worry that people will think the fight is over if we talk about them too much. Like they think all that’s left of racism is a rude comment about my hair being frizzy when there are people of color being shot by police and imprisoned at alarming rates. Because as much as it bothers me that working women still spend more time doing housework than their husbands who work the same or fewer hours outside the house, there are still places in the world where women can’t vote or safely seek an education. So, which battles do we choose?”
“Why can’t we...uh, do both?”
She nods like I’ve made a comment as articulate as hers, when in reality I’m struggling to even say anything. “That’s the problem with the social side, right? Because the legal one is clear, you just get the votes. But the social aspect is so controlled by humans and the ways they react. You can’t force people to act a certain way, so we have to play the game a little bit or else people won’t listen. For example, in 1955 a pregnant teenager gets kicked off a bus. That could’ve been the beginning of the bus boycott. But that’s not very good PR, to have a pregnant teen as the face of the movement. So they wait. As a feminist, that enrages me. But they were right. In 1950s America, that movement had enough challenges without adding to it. So they wait for Rosa Parks, a grandmother, and the world is changed. But no grade-schooler will ever be in a skit about Claudette Colvin.
“You think only the bad guys have to spin, but when you are trying to change the world, you have to remember that social systems are made of people, and you have to sneak in change like giving vegetables to a child, make it easy to swallow at first. Because if you’re too blunt with the privileged, they will shut you down before you begin. So we have to worry about what our movement looks like, unfortunately. We have to care what people think of feminism, so it’s not written off.”
She pauses to pour herself a second cup of tea. “If it was up to me, fraternities wouldn’t exist. It’s that simple. I think they’re bad for almost every marginalized community—women, black people, LGBTQA people. But...do I want the next piece of academia with my name on it to say that? Or to say something about education for young women under the Taliban? Am I shying away from it, even though it’s important, because it may be controversial? That would be bad. Or am I shying away from it because there are more important things to focus on and I would needlessly push away those who might otherwise be allies? I just don’t know.”
She’s quiet for a while, sipping her tea.
“So, um, with all due respect...” I catch myself nervously playing with the hem of my skirt. I fold my hands in my lap. “Why’d you take on my project?”
“I’m a researcher, Ms. Davis, so I don’t say no when I’m unsure. I investigate. In this case, you seem better suited to investigate than I would be, but I would like to help you. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not asking you to go in there and find out if this system is messed up. I need you to go in there and find out if the system is messed up enough that we need to make it our next priority. Is that all right with you?”
I nod furiously. “Yes, absolutely.”
“Excellent. Let’s get started.” She stands, leans down and picks up a large crate, setting it down on the desk with a thud.
“I had one of my assistants compile the research on fraternities, women and minorities, and women and minorities on college campuses more generally. I suggest you get started as soon as possible.”
I pick up an article off the top; it’s from CNN.com and entitled “Are Frats an ‘American Apartheid’?”
“I also have arranged for a series of interviews with average Warren students. They won’t find out what the study is about until they have decided to participate and signed a nondisclosure agreement, of course, to maintain the objectivity of the study. And while you’ll be involved, you obviously can’t be in the room without giving your cover away, so we’ll figure out something with that. But I thought it’d be best to have the greatest breadth of information possible for background.”
I nod.
“Let’s do our due diligence, pay attention to nuance and see exactly what this problem is and what the best course of action may be.”
Her words still ring in my ears as I practically skip across campus, pulling out my phone to text Jay and Alex.