Semester 2 started in silence for students in Sociology.

Mr. Darren Hornbeck decided to start the class full of new students with an experiment. He tested how students would react to a teacher acting unusually by sitting silently in front of the class watching. The test was to see how many students would attempt to fix the awkward situation, which relates to the first unit we learn in the class “Understanding Social Norms.”

Megan Plazinski said, “The experiment made me feel uncomfortable.” She understood it had something to do with sociology.

Hornbeck said that he has been presenting this experiment on the first day of every new semester for years, “I like to see how long students will last sitting in silence.”

Hornbeck also mentioned that the longest time a class sat silently was for 17 minutes or so.

On February 15, Hornbeck decided to do another activity relating to social norms. A few groups of students around the classrooms were given a red paper stating “I hate it when..” and a green paper stating “I like it when..” The activity was for us to give examples of things we hate and like that people do throughout the day.

Some of the responses from the activity were, people hate it when others pay more attention to their phone than their face to face conversation, people who chew their gum loudly, and people who walk slowly in the hallways.

Some responses for “I like it when..” were: people who give are polite and people who respect teachers/others.

Plazinski said, “This activity was very helpful to understand how social norms work in our day to day lives.”