Ethnography

            According to a couple of students, Cox hall is the location for food on Emory’s campus to go if you’re sick of the DUC. With a variety of options and a busy environment, most freshman—once they have eaten at the DUC too many times to count in a month, upperclassmen, graduate students, and many other staff and faculty members go there when they eat on campus. Cox allures its customers with tacos, pasta, crepes, salads, rice bowls, Indian, and much more. While being interviewed, both Libby Dunne and Addie Owens told me that Cox is there favorite place to grab a meal on campus because of the large selection. However, because of this, it gets very crowded, very fast, especially during lunch and dinner rushes.

            Arriving at Cox on a Friday afternoon at noon, I knew it would be busy. Luckily, I am on the earlier side of the lunch rush, so I am able to find a seat pretty easily. While ordering my tomato, basil, and mozzarella crepe, I can tell the workers have a good time working there: they interact nicely with the customers, joke around with each other, and make some good crepes. One woman, with her black hair up in a bun with a visor, even gets excited to make my order because “it is her favorite crepe,” according to one of the other workers.

After getting my crepe, I sit down in a central location in the cafeteria. I am close to the registers and the different restaurants, but also I have a good view of over half the seating. Throughout the forty-five minutes I am there, the noise continues getting louder and louder as more and more people come into Cox. The large variety of people coming in consists of undergraduate students, medical students, doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, staff members, and more. Most of these people come in with at least one other person, even if they just take their food to go.

After around thirty minutes, the cafeteria gets crowded enough where strangers have to sit next to each other at tables because no seating remains except for a few tables outside that nobody sits at because of the extreme heat. The smell of the cafeteria contains a blend of all the different foods being made and a little bit of sweat coming from everyone entering from the scorching outside and being in close proximity to each other. As I leave, I can tell the crowd is there to stay for a little while longer, the biggest drawback to Cox according to Dunne and the only real drawback I saw myself. However, I found Cox Hall, while crowded, to be a place where the Emory community comes together, from undergraduate freshman to graduate students to faculty and staff, to get some good food.