The Bystander Effect [Marnie]

[Philip Romano]

Lip never minded group projects. As a business major, they were essentially inevitable, and he was sure he’d have to deal with plenty of them after college. However, he wasn't really a fan of working with students he didn't know. Oh well.

He figured this psych project would be a breeze. The class had been a cakewalk so far, a great recommendation from one of his old roommates who’d taken it the semester before. Lip didn’t even need the class. He just needed a few extra credits - easy credits. Plus, his advisor said that psychology was a good class to take as a business major.

They’d been assigned partners and topics randomly. The class was enormous so their professor had just posted the pairings outside the door after the lecture was over. Lip didn’t know his partner - Marnie - and they only spoke for a few brief minutes as they exchanged phone numbers. They’d agreed to meet in the library today to get a start on it. She seemed fine. Even though Lip didn’t know her, he’d seen her in the lecture before. She was cute, a little bookish-looking, but cute.

By some miracle, Lip had arrived at their designated meeting spot early. He usually arrived to everything - including classes - a few minutes late. Today, he’d gotten out of his Global Business class early, and decided to stop by the Student Union to grab a coffee on his way to the library. The line had been nonexistent so he was in and out in five minutes. He'd even bought one for his partner, which he thought was nice of him. Lip practically lived off the stuff, so he just assumed every other human being above the age of eighteen did as well. Hopefully she liked dark roast with cream; it wasn't like the Student Union had much else.


The library was quiet, most students were either in class or furiously trying to finish up last minute assignments. So Lip picked a table toward the back, setting down the two coffee cups and pulling out his phone, scrolling through Facebook while he waited.

[Marnie Sullivan]

A pre-spring gust tugged at Marnie's scarf as she hurried to the library. She'd lost track of time, nose buried in her reading assignment after lunch; only the sound of another student's cereal bowl shattering on the floor was enough to snap her out of it long enough to check the time on her phone.

The library, fortunately was relatively quiet; with most students in class at the moment, that only made it easier to spot her psych project partner. It helped that they had already met, even if only to exchange phone numbers; actually recognizing Lip was less awkward than texting and following her phone around the library like a diving rod. Marnie strode to his table, hastily unwinding her scarf as she went.

"Hi, sorry, have you been waiting long?" she asked as she dropped her backpack next to the chair across from him. Her scarf and peacoat she slung over the chair's back; her cheeks held a pink flush from the wind outside.

[Philip Romano]

Lip couldn’t be too upset by his partner’s lack of punctuality. It was usually him that was late anyway. And he wasn’t mad. At all actually. Maybe he would be if he was just sitting there, twiddling his thumbs, but Facebook was keeping him entertained for the time being. He was even getting comfortable too, leaning back in his seat and about two minutes away from kicking his feet up. Although, the librarians always yelled at him when he put his feet up on the table. Not that he cared.

However, he didn’t get to that point because his partner showed up, cheeks flushed and windblown from the cold air outside. “Nahh…I’ve only been here a couple minutes. I got us coffee.” He pushed the cup toward her as she sat down. It looked like she needed it.

Now that she was here, Lip figured he should probably pull out all his stuff. He pulled out his laptop and his psych notebook, where he shoved the already battered piece of paper that had their assignment written on it. Lip had been planning on doing a little bit of research on their topic last night, but that didn’t really end up happening. Instead, he spent two hours watching clips of What Would You Do? on Youtube. But that was kind of like research. Sort of.

“So…” He glanced down at the assignment while his computer started up. “It says we need to put together a handout for the class, and a presentation.” That sounded pretty easy. Lip was great at presenting. “Should I start up a Google PowerPoint?” Or whatever the Google equivalent to PowerPoint was called. He thought it was Slides, but no one ever called it that. At least none of the people he’d ever worked with.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie's braid paffed against her shoulder when she plopped into her chair, glad to be off her feet. Before she could properly settle, though, she unzipped her backpack and began digging through it.

"Yeah, sounds good," Marnie answered as she pulled out her psych text, notebook, and a couple of pencils that scattered noisily when she dropped them onto the table. With a frantic "eep!" Marnie snatched them up before they could rattle off the table. She probably looked as scatterbrained as she felt, she thought with a twinge of embarrassment.

But with her supplies gathered and ready, Marnie straightened and smiled like she knew what she was doing.

"Are we just modeling the handout after the Powerpoint?" she asked. "Same outline, I mean?" Marnie's blue eyes fell on the pair of coffees between them; how long did Lip plan on standing that he needed two coffees? Unless one was for her, but Marnie didn't want to assume that without his saying so.

[Philip Romano]

Lip nodded, already logging into his Gmail and pulling up Slides. He glanced up, letting out a light chuckle as Marnie dropped her things all over the table. She looked embarrassed about it though, so Lip decided to keep his teasing to himself. “What’s your email address?” He asked instead, typing the name of their project into the header.

She composed herself pretty quickly, looking prepared and ready to work. Lip wasn’t…well he sort of was. All he had was his laptop and their assignment sheet. His notebook was out too, but that didn’t really have any information that was relevant to their project. Lip didn’t like to take notes. And his textbook was still in his backpack. He’d get that out later if he needed it. For now, he had the Internet and it always told him exactly what he needed to know.

“That sounds like a plan to me.” Lip was not about putting the extra work in to make a completely different handout. Their class could deal with one similar to the PowerPoint. It wasn’t like they would even notice if it was different. “We can design the handout after we make the presentation.” That would be the easiest way.

He looked up again, watching as her eyes fell on the coffees he’d placed in the middle of the table. Maybe she hadn’t heard him offer it to her? She did look a bit flustered when she came in.

“One of them’s for you.” He said, an amused smirk playing on the corners of his lips. “Hope you like dark roast.”

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie had, in fact, completely missed his offer. What a nice surprise! They were off to a good start, she thought as she took the cup gratefully.

"Oh, that's perfect, thank you," Marnie beamed. Dark wasn't her favorite, but it would carry her through their work here and hopefully the history lecture she had afterward. She made a mental note to reciprocate with cookies or something the next time they met up.

Marnie took a careful test sip - not too hot, wonderful - while she skimmed her notes for an idea of where to start. Not wanting to show up empty-handed, she had prepared a few ideas to bounce off of Lip.

"Okay, so I was thinking," she began, "probably everyone's gonna talk about the Kitty Genovese case in their presentations. And I think we should too, it's too famous to leae out, but I think it'd be a good idea to use other examples."

[Philip Romano]

Lip was grateful that she accepted the coffee, apparently okay with dark roast. He would have drank the second cup, but he didn’t need it. He’d already had a two cups this morning, one before he left his apartment, and another before his first class when he arrived on campus.

“You’re welcome.” He said, glancing back down at his computer. “What’s your email?” He asked again, “So I can share the doc with you.” He’d already created the PowerPoint, and since she clearly had more ideas/notes than he did, he figured she could take the rains once she had access to it.

He’d read about the Kitty Genovese case briefly the night before, but hadn’t done more than skimmed the Wikipedia page. He agreed with her though. He hated doing presentations that were similar to everyone else’s. “Yeah, that makes sense.” He agreed. “I think we should use the Wang Yue example too, the one about the little girl in China.” He’d read over the famous ones quickly before his What Would You Do? binge started.

He pulled up a document in Microsoft Word, typing the ideas out, and then switched back to a few of the scholarly sources he’d found after quickly searching through Google. “So which of the social research experiments do you want to focus on?” There were a ton of them to pick from, though they wouldn’t be able to touch on all of them unless they wanted their presentation to be way longer than it needed to be. Lip certainly did not.