The Blanket Experiment

The Set Up: Duct tape a sheet to a high-traffic area of campus walk.

The Hypothesis: Most people will assume that it is something important and walk around it. Eventually, as it begins to show signs of trodding, people will begin to feel more comfortable walking on it.

The Account: After assigning people to take pictures and video in between classes, we assigned Zack to lay down the sheet and duct tape it in the wee hours of the morning.

When I went out at about 8:45, the sheet wasn’t there. My first thought was, “Son of a bitch. Zack got drunk and passed out, didn’t he?” I called him up, and he assured me that, in his drunken stupor, he did manage to tape the sheet down at three in the morning, as planned.

The guy from facilities was parked in his golf cart where the sheet should have been. I went up to him and asked him if there had been a sheet there. He said that there was, but the Athletics Director (what the fuck?) said that ‘it didn’t look right’ and took it up.

I later found out from a woman who worked for facilities that early that morning, when they found the unmarked sheet, they had a two-hour debate regarding what to do with it. Some argued that it was a hazard (I believe that leaves present a greater hazard than a polyester tablecloth duct taped to the ground) while some, remembering the fiasco from Bat Boy last year (apparently, the promo people put bats all over campus the day after Halloween, and were mistaken for leftover decorations) wanted it to stay because students had obviously done it.

The guy from facilities still had the thing balled up on the back of his truck, and offered it to me. I took it and deposited it in my room, and angrily went to Arabic class.

After class, I got the sheet and went to GW to find out where the Athletic Director’s office was. I trudged to Goolrick to give him what’s for, but he wasn’t there. So on my way back, I peeled off the duct tape which had wadded itself around the tablecloth (good thing it was a sturdy cloth).

As I neared Trinkle, I called up Zack. Together at 10:30, we taped the thing back into its rightful place. As we were doing it, a few passers-by asked us what it was for. Our answer was terse and to the point – “Art.”

We stepped back and watched the hilarity ensue. In the interim between classes, there developed an eye-shaped absence of human bodies around the five-by-seven-foot sheet. Groups of four heading for the sheet would split off so as to avoid it.

At 12:58 someone proposed that perhaps a body were hidden beneath the cloth.

Another person asked a friend, “What’s this?” When the friend responded that she didn’t know, he said, “Well, I’ll walk around it just in case.” Others proposed that it was for break dancing or that it was a “free canvas.”

Even some passing trucks swerved to avoid the polyester menace, like this one at 2:56.

Some deeply engrossed in conversation would notice it at the last minute, stop, and turn to avoid the thing.

The Athletic Director did end up calling me, as I had left my number with his secretary. He represented the polar opposite end of the “sheet relic” spectrum, and I laud him for thinking outside the common social mores. He regarded it as trash. It was unmarked and on the ground. Thus, it was trash. As much as I didn’t think he was justified in making judgments on things not regarding Goolrick or sports teams, I must credit him with his rational, concrete value system, even if it did disrupt the experiment for an hour and a half by stepping out of the bound of his jurisdiction in order to enforce them.

When Chris went to take photos at 5, he remarked that he had to turn his flash off because people were changing their behavior when they saw the flash. Sort of a Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle kind of thing, I suppose.

In all, the experiment went well. Eventually, the thing did accrue some footprints and tire tracks in addition to leaves blowing on it.

Toward the end of the day, people got more bold. People began standing in it, dancing on it, jumping on it, jumping over it.

If nothing else, it certainly provided those who understood the experiment copious amounts of entertainment between classes. Perhaps, in a year or so, we’ll do it again on another part of campus.

--Mike Isaacson, GALL President

To view more pictures from the blanket experiment, Click here to see the PhotoBucket album.