With transformation of the Fireside Lounge into a new advisory and transfer center underway, gamers have lost a once very popular haunt, and find themselves confined to the increasingly-crowded Linksz Pavilion.
The college is renovating the old Fireside Lounge to make room for offices which will be the location of the new advisory and transfer center. The current Student Services section will continue to exist, but the college plans to extend their services down the hall.
Everything is currently “crammed together in Student Services,” said Christine Hagedorn, assistant dean of Student Services. The new advisory and transfer center will be more career-focused and will hold orientations, student advising, college transfers and career planning; while the existing Student Services will remain to help students with disabilities as well as counseling needs.
Christina Fogle, administrative assistant of Student Services, explained, “We are growing as a college,” and the space occupied by the old Fireside Lounge will “be used to the best of its potential.”
The Fireside Lounge was renovated three or four years ago and “got worn out way too quick,” according to Matt Cipriano, Director of both the Student Life Program and Athletic Department.
Due to offices that were located near the Fireside Lounge, Cipriano claims that he would receive complaints about behavior and “all sorts of issues with rowdiness.” Fogle confirms hearing about rowdiness and students sleeping in the lounge and adds that “ultimately this is a business.”
Digital Gaming Club member, Harrison Venema, said, “Most rowdiness now occurs in Linksz which should be used for studies. The Fireside Lounge kept it very contained and out of the way.”
Hagedorn stated that there was never a “real problem with gamers,” and in her 13 years with the college, “only a couple of times they got out of control.” Hagedorn does not want to eliminate gaming, but the Fireside Lounge is the “best location to put the advising and transfer center.”
Mark Voyk, another member of the Digital Gaming Club as well as the Table Top Gaming Club, is “largely apathetic” about the extinction of the Fireside Lounge and that it “limits gaming abilities.” The main hangout for gamers is now the Linksz Pavilion and Staff Lounge 114 in the Rollins has been given to the Table Top Gaming Club for use on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Voyk still would like to “just be able to use a TV and hook up a [gaming] console.” Personal laptops are pretty much the extent of video gaming, and card games like “Magic the Gathering” are now becoming much more popular among these students now that their options are limited with no game setups available.
Neither Venema nor Voyk disagree about the noisiness that may have occurred in the Fireside Lounge, but both admit that it can get rowdy in Linksz, too. Venema said that it “would probably be in their best interest to keep everyone contained again.”
“You don’t see people waiting an extensive amount of time for the [current Student Service Centers] downstairs so it seems to be a waste of resources,” said Venema.