Literature Review #4

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     2. Moffatt, Michael. Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989. Print. 15 Nov. 2016.
     
     
     3. This book gave informative incite into the college residence hall environment at Rutgers University. There was a study performed in one of the halls on College Avenue that mapped out the students living there and their relationships with one another in the hall. The book also discussed the overall community of the hall and how it impacted each of the students living there.
     
     
     4. Dr. Michael Moffatt was a Rutgers University anthropology professor who conducted a study within one of the halls for this book. He first started out studying the "Untouchables" in India, but later became a lecturer and professor at Rutgers University. After writing this book, Coming of Age In New Jersey, Dr. Moffatt started another book The Rutgers Picture Book: An Illustrated History of Student Life in the Changing College And University. 
     
     
     5.  One key term or concept used in the piece is floaters, which are individuals in the hall whom did not connect with one social group exclusively, but instead talked with multiple or all of the groups in the residence hall. These floaters did not connect deeply with any one member of the hall but ventured elsewhere to make those deep connections. The second is the concept/term of RAs or as stated in the book, preceptors. They are described by Dr. Moffat as students who, along with administrators, try to force a sense of community in the residence halls.
     
     
     6.  " If you are a good, normal American human being in the 1980s, you should be ready, under certain unsteady circumstances, to extend friendship to any other human being regardless of the artificial distinctions that divide people in the real world" (43).
          " The residents of Hasbrouck Fourth breathed a collective sigh of relief when 

     Pete finally resigned. By now the floor was used to taking care of itself in any 

     case; in the opinion of most of its residents, it did not really need a preceptor" 

     (117). 

         " Social class even reared its head. Jay might have felt superior to other residents of Hasbrouck Fourth, somewhat beneath himself at Rutgers. And Pete had apparently had his lower middle-class buttons pushed during the fall by his experience in an affluent, upper-middle-class high school" (123).
     
     

     
     

     
     

     
     

     
     
     7. Dr. Moffatt's personal experiences and documentations of life in a residence hall helped me get a better understanding/outside view (coming from a resident assistant) of residents living together and trying to feel inclusion. The maps that Dr. Moffatt made in the book also helped me solidify the fact that my own notes of social patterns and groups within the halls help to distinguish social isolates from social butterflies. I think it is also really cool that this study was performed within my university by a Rutgers professor.
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