Although I managed to acquire enough information to formulate these conclusions, I encountered a couple of significant challenges in the pursuit of this data. Prior to starting my field work, I was quite naïve about gaining informants. I assumed since there were so many people working at the memorial, I would be able to talk with them and gain some useful information. However, within a week, I was informed of the official memorial policy, which stated that staff members, be they tour guides, janitors, or guards, could not talk to the “Press.” All interviews would have to be arranged through the personal relations coordinator of either the memorial or the tribute center. Even though I had no relations with any formal media outlets, I was inhibited by this policy. Early on, I tried contacting the respective PR executives and received no contact. Nevertheless, only after trying again through a different means of contact was I able to secure and arrange an interview with a tour guide. With this obstacle not being resolved until late November, I was forced to interview random guests at the memorial, which was challenging.
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I would circle around the memorial for hours, trying to find the right person to interview. I had a strict criterion: the individual had to be alone, not in a group, he or she had to be sitting down in the middle section or away from the memorial, and he or she also had to appear as if they were passing time, as if waiting for someone or something. Doing this required a form of bravery as well as a tolerance for awkwardness, for walking up to strangers, introducing oneself, and asking for their help on a school project is strange. Eventually, I became bolder and less picky. However, this did not result in more interviews but only more rejection. That being said, I felt conflicted about interviewing memorial guests. On the one hand, they are the actors who participate with the memorial first hand and can give me important perspectives related to my research. On the other hand, however, I did not want to disrupt people, for I did not want to ruin an intimate moment or activity they were sharing with their family or having with themselves. Next time a project like this is carried out, organizing a better way to interview guests or having a controlled group to interview may be easier for the researcher and prove less disruptive and conflicting. Likewise, I realize that all of my informants pass for white people, even though a few may have been/were Latina. This may have been the result of my own unconscious racial prejudices or the fact that a significant amount of visitors were white. In addition, I assume since most of my guests were out of state that they reflect a specific type of class privilege since they have the time and money to visit New York and the memorial. Overall, inquiring about the memorial from other racial, ethnic, national, and class perspectives may reveal more pertinent information about how the memorial is received, interacted with, and interpretted. Over the course of the semester, I accumulated a massive amount of information about the memorial and the actors. Sifting through information and data and determining how to approach my research project problem were difficult. While I am not complaining about the amount of data, for I would prefer to have too much than not enough, at times the information was overwhelming as if this project could
I would circle around the memorial for hours, trying to find the right person to interview. I had a strict criterion: the individual had to be alone, not in a group, he or she had to be sitting down in the middle section or away from the memorial, and he or she also had to appear as if they were passing time, as if waiting for someone or something. Doing this required a form of bravery as well as a tolerance for awkwardness, for walking up to strangers, introducing oneself, and asking for their help on a school project is strange. Eventually, I became bolder and less picky. However, this did not result in more interviews but only more rejection. That being said, I felt conflicted about interviewing memorial guests. On the one hand, they are the actors who participate with the memorial first hand and can give me important perspectives related to my research. On the other hand, however, I did not want to disrupt people, for I did not want to ruin an intimate moment or activity they were sharing with their family or having with themselves. Next time a project like this is carried out, organizing a better way to interview guests or having a controlled group to interview may be easier for the researcher and prove less disruptive and conflicting. Likewise, I realize that all of my informants pass for white people, even though a few may have been/were Latina. This may have been the result of my own unconscious racial prejudices or the fact that a significant amount of visitors were white. In addition, I assume since most of my guests were out of state that they reflect a specific type of class privilege since they have the time and money to visit New York and the memorial. Overall, inquiring about the memorial from other racial, ethnic, national, and class perspectives may reveal more pertinent information about how the memorial is received, interacted with, and interpretted. Over the course of the semester, I accumulated a massive amount of information about the memorial and the actors. Sifting through information and data and determining how to approach my research project problem were difficult. While I am not complaining about the amount of data, for I would prefer to have too much than not enough, at times the information was overwhelming as if this project could