Linfield is full of great places for students to have fun. Recently, the game room has undergone many renovations and improvements to better serve in entertaining students.

Senior Isabelle Porporato is ASLC’s Student Center Director, and a large part of her job is maintaining the game room.

“I fell in love with the Game Room my freshman year by playing hours of Pac Man and Guantlet with my friends,” Porporato said. “My sophmore year I was really close with the Student Center Director through my connection with senate and was upset when Guantlet broke down and was sold.”

During Porporato’s junior year at Linfield, she worked in the game room during Jan term and was reminded of just how much she loved having that space on campus.

Porporato began coming up with ideas of things that could be improved in the game room, which is why she ultimately applied to become the Student Center Director last year.

“I had my visions…and I knew that I could and would follow through with them,” Porporato said.

Porporato truly believes that the game room plays an essential role in life at Linfield.

“It can be a great place to come study during the day, as well as a great place to come relax and de-stress while not having to leave campus to do so,” Porporato said.

Porporato spent a large chunk of her summer fixing up the game room.

“I had the vision of going paperless in the game room, which meant getting a computer installed, then figuring out how to set up an electronic database for the DVD’s, and making all the employee spreadsheets accessible through winfiles,” Porporato said.

Porporato also had the game room’s carpet replaced, finished up most of the painting that needed to be done, and had the door and windows replaced with a new sign hand painted on them.

“I had the cable fixed and put a DVD player and Wii over by one TV so someone could play Wii while others were using the X-Box 360,” Porporato said. “I added a new air hockey table, put speakers up, and added some new furniture.”

Porporato also had the old Pac Man machine replaced with a newer version that has 60 different games on an LED screen, and spent the last couple months fixing the Pinball machine so that students could use it starting this semester.

In addition, the game room’s movie collection has been increased by 50, and the board game collection has nearly doubled.

“I am also looking at adding one more upright arcade game, probably a four-player action type one in the next week or so,” Porporato said, “So come check that out.”

Part of the job requirement of the Student Center Director is to put in ten hours of work each week, but Porporato easily puts in much more than that.

“I often spent my Saturday mornings figuring out how to fix the pinball machine as well as selling the old broken arcade games and fixing the air hockey tables,” Porporato said.

Porporato spends much time outside her ten office hours researching and buying new movies, board games and arcade games.

“I love this job and would probably consider it more of a hobby than work,” Porporato said.

Out of the 1,700 students that attend Linfield, not a lot of students utilize the game room, but a solid handful of them spend a fair amount of time there.

“I would love to see attendance increased,” Porporato said. “All students should come at least check it out at some point and utilize it.”

Everything in the Game Room is free for students. A good portion of the student body fee goes toward the budget of maintaining and improving it.

“I wanted to make this a place where more students would want to come hang out, and I hope to have started moving it in that direction this year.”

The game room is open from 1:00pm to 11:00pm Monday through Saturday, and 1:00pm to 10:00pm on Sundays. This is a great space to come study or hang out with friends.

Suggestions are always appreciated by Porporato, and if students want to keep up with what gets added to the game goom they can ‘like’ the ASLC Game Room Facebook page, or check out the ‘What’s Added’ posters in the game room.