Dr. Terry Alford speaks about his upcoming biography of John Wilkes Booth: "Fortune's Fools."

Dr. Terry Alford’s upcoming biography, Fortune’s Fools is about the life of John Wilkes Booth, the famous actor and infamous assassin of the 16th president of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln scholar has already written two books published by Oxford Press, made numerous television appearances, worked as a consultant for the 2007 film hit National Treasure 2, and helped found the NOVA Honors Program. He was recently awarded the 2010 Outstanding Faculty Award by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is the only community college professor to ever receive the accolade.

Booth was apparently the Brad Pitt of his day and earned $20,000 income for acting alone in 1864. Only six months before he would take Lincoln’s life, he performed to a crowd of 2,000 for New York’s elite in Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City. Still, Booth could not escape the feelings of self reproach that increased as the Civil War deteriorated.

Booth lived in a rural community outside of Baltimore, Md. A Confederate sympathizer, Booth became unhinged at the capture of Richmond, Va., on March 25, 1865. Alford’s biography traces the tragedy of Lincoln’s murder through the lens of Booth’s experience, so the reader knows the events chronologically as Booth would. The novel also lacks a Lincoln deathbed scene, which — in the words of Alford — “has been done 500 times before.”

What makes Fortune’s Fools different from other books on the same topic is the humanity and color in each individual character. For specific details, Alford researches in a variety of places contain only parts of the story of Lincoln’s assassination.

Alford fits those pieces together to create a full picture, and much of what is in the book comes from firsthand eyewitness testimonies of people who witnessed the murder of Lincoln.

“That’s what takes so long, is finding all these facts and determining what’s credible,” Alford told the NOVA audience of 23 students and faculty. “Newspaper articles are good sources. However, people lie today like they did back then.”

There was a little-known connection between Booth and Lincoln. The medium Nettie Colburn Maynard who conducted the White House séances was also a friend of Booth. When her friend said that Lincoln should be shot, Maynard warned Lincoln that he should beware of crazy people who might want to do him harm in the capital. Later, a senator gave Lincoln a similar warning, and Lincoln replied, “That’s what I have been hearing.”

The biography is scheduled to be released by Oxford Press in 2011. Alford teaches history at the Annandale campus.

Holocaust Survivor Regina Spiegel speaks to a group at the Woodbridge Campus about her experiences during the Second World War.

“Everything seemed to be going my way,” Regina Spiegel recently told the large audience at the theater at the NOVA Woodbridge campus. The Polish winter was her biggest complaint in life. The topic turned serious as the guest speaker talked of her experience as a survivor of the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz on April 8.

She remembered the exact date that the German army attacked her village in Radom, Poland: Sept. 1, 1939. The building shook with the force of the army. Spiegel ran from her home, where her mother, Brandla, was preparing a traditional Shabbat dinner, to see what was happening.

“All of a sudden, I saw something I couldn’t imagine. They dragged an old man from his beard behind a truck. I was 13, but I grew up fast because I knew we were in trouble.”

Spiegel listed the tyrannical actions Hitler used. Jewish children were prohibited from going to school, families were required to give up valuables, workers were prohibited from jobs and banks closed all accounts held by Jews and seized their assets.

It was the children who suffered the most and were the first to be eliminated. They were the largest group of victims because they were largely of no use to the Nazis. Children got sick. Children could not perform heavy labor.

Within three days of their arrival, the Nazis ordered Jews moved to what they termed “a Jewish neighborhood.” Spiegel’s family was forced into the Radom ghetto.

“They took barbed wire, put guards in front, and made all the Jews go in. Within weeks the starvation got so bad,” Spiegel recalled. “It was unreal.”

Two families were assigned to a little room. Spiegel had a big family. It was so crowded that there was not enough room for each person to lay down when it was time to sleep.

Those were not the only changes to her once charmed life. There was the armband, a white band with the Star of David. She had always been proud of the Star of David, but now its meaning was twisted into something she was supposed to feel ashamed of.

Spiegel’s mother told her to flee to her sister Rozia Spiegel’s town in Pionki, about 30 kilometers away.

“Why me?” Spiegel argued. However, there was no arguing with her mother.

“I want to tell you, all the years in the camps, I never forgave myself for not saying goodbye… So I always encourage, do that, because you don’t want to go around with something like this in your head,” Spiegel advised her listeners.

Her sister was a dentist in a farming community. She was not wealthy, although she made a decent living. When the Germans invaded, things changed. Because farmers sold food, a commodity high in demand in wartime, their fortunes improved.

The farmers began going to the dentist. It was there that Rozia provided free service to one farmer in exchange for mediating between her and a Polish guard at Spiegel’s camp in Radom so that she could bribe him to let Spiegel escape. The bribe worked.

Those who could get into a labor camp making munitions for the Nazi army had a chance at surviving. So, that is what Spiegel’s sister did. Once again coming to the aid of her little sister, she arranged for falsified documents to be drawn up to state that Spiegel, then 14, was 16 years of age.

Meanwhile, Spiegel’s sister had an 18-month-old baby that she sent to live with a Polish woman thinking that he would be safe. When Spiegel’s nephew was almost two years of age, the Polish woman caring for him turned the baby into a Gestapo office and told the officials that she was not the mother.

Unwilling to deny her child and allow him to be put to death, Spiegel’s sister confessed that it was true. She and the child were to be sent away in a cattle car. Before she could be sent away, she ran with the child. But they were both shot in the back while attempting to flee.

At this time, Spiegel met Sam Spiegel. It was he who looked after her, made sure that she stayed in line, obeyed the rules and comforted her. If someone called in sick to work, then that person was hanged so that workers knew what would happen to them if they faked being sick in order to avoid work.

The day eventually came when Spiegel was transported to Treblinka, a large concentration camp. Around 900,000 people died there, most within days of their arrival. The ironic thing was that Spiegel and the others from her village had been convinced to voluntarily go to Treblinka. The camp officials said that it was better than the slave labor camp they lived in.

They were told that Treblinka had a school, a hospital and that they would be fed. It was true that Treblinka was not the worst labor camp. There, they did receive a little bit of food. If the kitchen cook knew a person she would dig a little deeper in the pot and give a piece of potato. Spiegel’s stay in Treblinka lasted until 1944. Then she was moved to Auschwitz.

When she arrived in Auschwitz, the train doors were opened as German soldiers yelled, “Aus, aus! Marchen!”

Spiegel understood these words, “Out, out! Move it!” because of their similarity between German and Yiddish.

Sam Spiegel understood more than Regina Spiegel. He perceived what was going on. He turned to her and said, “If we ever get out of here, meet me in my home town.”

She replied, “Why yours and not mine?” Spiegel still had it in mind to return home and to tell her mother that she had been wrong. She would never see her mother again.

New arrivals were forced to strip and to give up every picture and possession that they had. Then they were forced to shower. Spiegel was fortunate. She emerged from her shower with her head shaved bald. Most new arrivals did not emerge at all — carbon monoxide gas came out instead of water in their showers.

Here, Spiegel’s sole possession consisted of the one set of striped clothes that she had to wear and a thin blanket. About Auschwitz Regina said, “That place was indescribable. The guards checked role twice a day as if obsessed with us running away. But nobody ran from Auschwitz.” She stayed there for about five weeks, though she is not completely sure. One lost a sense of time there.

One day her friend, Astusha, was feeling very bleak. Spiegel said to her, “Look, the sun is shining. Maybe [Hitler] isn’t so powerful as he thinks. The sun is shining, and he can’t close up the sky.”

After Auschwitz, Spiegel was sent to Bergen-Belsen.

Bergen-Belsen was an altogether different kind of hell, named after the town in which it was built. This was the prison in which Anne Frank and her sister Margot perished shortly before its liberation by the British army. There was practically nothing to eat, only whatever was found on the ground. Spiegel was then to be sent to Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

It was April 20, 1945, and the German army knew that their reign was nearing its end. The liberation armies were moving across Europe. Spiegel remembers one of the guards saying that the prisoners should be happy as they boarded the trains. It was Hitler’s birthday, and the prisoners were going to be given a piece of bread. At that moment, the whole sky turned black. The allies had dropped a couple of bombs on the trains that they were going to board.

“Thank God, they were not too accurate,” Spiegel stated. The trains were overturned, and whoever was able to move ran to the woods.

The allied soldiers who dropped the bombs sat at the edge of the woods thinking that German sharpshooters were hiding there.

“You see, we were 4,000 women. So no matter how quiet you try to be, 4,000 women are not gonna be so quiet,” Spiegel said, and a soft chuck rippled through her audience.

Eventually a few of them exited their hiding place and were told that the war was over. Spiegel bled from a shrapnel wound to the head. The women were invited to “shoot up some Germans.” But she could never shoot someone because they were German. “That is not our way,” she stated to NOVA students.

Her voice quaked with sorrow as she lamented that she will never know why Hitler chose to kill her family, a wonderful mother, her beloved father, her sisters and her brothers. Two brothers did manage to survive.

Spiegel works at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Denise Chong reads excerpts from her book, Egg on Mao.

Canadian author Denise Chong spoke about her most recent book Egg on Mao at the Annandale campus on the afternoon of April 8.

Her book follows the life of one of three persons, who during the Tiananmen Square student sit-in in Beijing, China in 1989, threw eggs filled with paint at the giant portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong in the Square. They were subsequently arrested, termed vandals and counter-revolutionary reactionaries, and sentenced to various terms in prison, from 16 years to life.

In speaking about her book, Chong related how she came to research and write it over the course of three years. She also read three excerpts from the volume.

Chong first began thinking of this book in 2006 when an editor came to her about the recent arrival of Lu Decheng, who was one of the perpetrators who had recently been granted political asylum in Canada. She, along with many other journalists, interviewed Lu in Toronto.

Chong became interested in writing the book and mulled over what type of book it should be. Though interested in human rights, she decided not to make direct mention of that subject.

She asked herself what is a moral being and what causes one to act. A moral act included one of defiance in trying to attain certain rights for the general good and the good of the country, such as freedom and democracy in Communist China, with grave repercussions possible. She decided to relate Lu’s life to see how he arrived at his moral act, also relating the repercussions of that act.

In her research, Chong interviewed Lu for days at a time and visited China in 2007, including visits to Beijing and Lu’s home town of Liuyang in the Hunan province.

During her visit to China, she took pains not to be caught doing research on her Tiananmen Square book, a forbidden topic in that country. She was continually alert to possibly being followed and carried no cell phone, which could have been traced to find her whereabouts.

She also had a story to fall back upon if questioned since she was also doing research on another topic, for which she had documentation available.

Chong’s book begins after the three had thrown all their eggs at the Mao portrait and ends with the throwing of the eggs. In between, the chapters alternate between the history of Lu’s family through several generations, his life before traveling to Tiananmen Square and much of his life after the eggs were thrown, including his time in prison. These chapters are interesting, giving a depiction of life in rural Communist China and of Lu’s life in prison and afterwards (the prison life being not quite as onerous as one might suspect for a political prisoner).

Before the egg throwing, Lu was a bus mechanic in the hinterlands far from Beijing. He had limited education and was not a member of the intelligentsia but was still interested in personal and political freedom.

Chong answered questions after her talk.  Several of the questions related to whether she was actually being followed during her China visit. She stated that she was not sure but nothing overt had occurred. She was also asked whether she had suffered any repercussions about the book’s publication, in which she had not.

Chong has written two previous books, the family memoir The Concubine’s Children (1994), a Canadian bestseller, and The Girl in the Picture (2000), about a napalmed girl in Vietnam after the war.

Egg on Mao is available at book stores and online with a retail price of $26. The book may also be found at nearby libraries.

Korean Students Association member Jungho Moon explaining the basics of Korean pronunciation.

At the Annandale campus, the Korean Student Association is currently providing tutoring sessions for students taking a Korean course or those with an interest in learning the language.

On Mondays and Tuesdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in CF 230, officers of the association and some fluent speakers are teaching a few students ways to speak and write in Korean. The majority of the participants have been non-Korean but they said that they welcome those who were born in America and have Korean roots within their families. This gives them the opportunity to learn their own language.

Young Jun Ji, Academics Manager of the KSA, is in charge of the two-day a week sessions and seemed very eager to teach Annandale students.
“When I first came here, I didn’t have many friends,” he said. He interacts with everyone in the sessions, getting a sense of comfort that Americans and people from other cultures want to take time after class to learn something they could get both outside and inside a classroom.

Teaching the native language is a way of sharing or showing Korean culture and the different meanings of expression and perception versus the American way. “We teach students to read and write,” Jun Ji said. “They learn the language fast without the pressure.”

For those who are non-Korean born but have family roots, he wanted to let them in to “help uncover [their] identity crisis.” In a way of speaking, Jun Ji gives them opportunities to learn their language which helps them decide whether they wish to further their advances in the culture.
“I was interested in learning Korean because I had a friend who is from Korea,” said Alie Yatco, an Annandale student who has been attending the sessions since the beginning of the semester. She’s not Korean born but a student who likes to learn about different cultures.

KSA President Miriam Hyeon is also a Korean speaker and came to the U.S. in 2006. “I was born in Argentina but my parents taught me how to speak Korean,” she said. Like Jun Ji, she’s happy to teach students Korean and enjoys the interactions with the teachers who are actually NOVA students that tutor students.

Hyeon and a couple of other teachers also explained some of the intricacies of Korean. In any foreign language, direct (command) and indirect (statement) speaking is always taught. In Korean, there is formal and informal speaking. When speaking formally, the direction is towards someone that the person is meeting for the first time. Informally, the direction is towards someone that the person has known for long periods of time, such as relatives or friends. Gradually, the formal speaking can become informal speaking once the person has known a friend, for example, longer than when they first met.

The purpose of teaching students Korean is to have students come together to step outside their comfort zone to learn something different.

“Learning the language contains everything about culture,” Jun Ji said. “It’s also to share how to deal with academics.”

Students who need more than the tutoring center on campus provides can attend a Korean tutoring session until the end of the semester.Students taking a Korean course can partner with KSA officers for added help with their final studies before exam day. The KSA is also holding a KSA Day on April 10 from noon to 3 p.m. in the CF building.

Members of the NOVA Relay for Life Board meet to discuss the upcoming event at the Annandale campus.

“Relay never stops because cancer never stops” is the slogan and theme of the Relay for Life, the flagship fundraiser of the American CancerSociety. The event, which started at NOVA in 2002, allows students to channel the passion of those words and continue to make an impact in the war against cancer. For two nights, on April 17 and 18, over 170 registered students making up 26 teams will honor the lives of those with cancer through joining in the planned activities.

Phi Theta Kappa starts planning the event near the start of the fall semester. However, students can join the race anytime they wish until the event begins at 7 p.m. the evening of April 17. They can run, walk, and volunteer the evening of the event, and participate in a silent auction or the Mr. Relay Beauty pageant.

If they can’t make the Relay for Life event itself, they can attend an annual Fashion Show the first week in April or help paint the Annandale campus purple – the official ribbon color representing all cancers –during the second week in April.

The Relay for Life began in 1985 in Tacoma, Wash. when Dr. Gordy Klatt, a colorectal surgeon, walked for 24 hours around a track to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

The event started when Phi Theta Kappa chose the Cancer Society as the national charity their group would support. PTK’s president at the time, Margaret Reed, decided that NOVA’s Annandale PTK would host the first Relay for Life held at any college in the metro Washington, DC area. She has led the event every year since and is still very proud to be chairperson of the event. She is now an adjunct professor of history at Annandale and a breast cancer survivor.

When the event first started 10 teams totaling 110 people raised $10,000 for the American Cancer Society. This year, 170 people have registered as of March 31.

Students will have an opportunity, not only to walk or run around the track at the Annandale campus, but also to participate in a silent auction, the luminaria event (lighting candles for cancer patients and survivors) and the Mr. Relay pageant contest, where one man is able to dress up in ‘evening gown’ apparel, perform a special talent and collect donations. The man who collects the most money from folks watching the pageant to donate to the American Cancer Society wins the coveted crown and title of Mr. Relay.

Events for the Relay begin at 5:30 p.m. on April 17 with a special reception to honor cancer survivors. The silent auction will take place from 8 to 9 p.m. One can still register to participate in the Relay for Life online or by making a donation. There is a $10 registration fee and a fundraising minimum of $100 is suggested. Cancer Survivors wishing to participate have the option to receive a purple T-shirt when they register.
More information on the NOVA Relay for Life Event is at acsevents.com.

Jerry Boyd prepares fresh squid for a Vietnamese dish at his home in Fairfax, Va.

NOVA plays host to a wide variety of students and faculty. All manners of talents are displayed on campus, from musicians to football players, and from computer wizards to fashion divas. Annandale campus boasts a very special inhabitant; however, Gerald Boyd, Dean of Languages and Literature, has a talent which makes him very popular in the office. He is a professional cook.

Dean Boyd started his cooking career at the age of 15. He was a dishwasher in his home state of Pennsylvania. When his father, who was in the military, was stationed in Germany for several years, Boyd sampled the best food of Europe.

In high school, Boyd was active in sports, and always ate a healthy, balanced diet. When he attended college at George Mason University, he worked as a waiter at Fritzby’s. Working full time on top of his schoolwork, he was able to pay for his education, receiving his Bachelor’s in English and his Master’s in Linguistics, all while being promoted from waiter to bartender, and eventually to manager.

Boyd says all the skills that he learned working in the food business helped him get to where he is today. Management skills are required in both a food service and an educational environment, and therefore, he was able to quickly move up the ranks at NOVA. Starting as an ESL professor, he went on to become the Coordinator of Continuing Education, and then, eventually, to dean. He has been dean of Languages and Literature for 10 years. Boyd proudly displays his culinary awards alongside his academic awards on the wall of his office.

On top of his duties as dean, he also keeps up with his contacts in the food industry. He is often called on as a consultant for menu items at local restaurants, and always looks for ways to help support NOVA with his connections, and vice versa. He has also been the co-author on two books, The Accent of Success, and From the Classroom to the Boardroom. He has also been on a television show called “Delmarva Cooks,” on local access cable aired on the eastern shore.

Despite being an excellent cook, Boyd is very modest. He does not like to be called “chef,” as that is a title one earns from years of hard work and a degree in the culinary arts. He does admit that he could, however, most likely pass the final exams for culinary school.

Boyd has been married for 19 years. He has two daughters, both of which are very talented musicians, and have won multiple awards for their talents. His wife cooks for the kids every day, and Boyd himself cooks every night for his wife. A dish you might see on the Boyds’ dinner table would be skillet chicken with braised Brussels sprouts and stuffed poblano peppers.

Boyd is working on his PhD in Higher Education at University of Maryland. He does not plan on opening his own restaurant when he retires, but will likely continue working in the field which he enjoys so much.

Prepackaged food on a refrigerated shelf at the Annandale campus.

Students are frequently in a situation between classes where they are hungry but do not have enough time to go to a restaurant off campus. Although the chips and chocolate in the vending machines look tempting, there has to be a better solution.

On the Annandale campus, food options are limited. The main location to buy food is in the school cafeteria. But is choosing to eat there really the best choice?

Down the stairs of the CF building at Annandale, is the school cafeteria. To some, the cafeteria is rather small and dainty. To others, it is quaint and charming.

“The NOVA cafeteria is a lot like a high school cafeteria,” said Paul Kaye. “It is loud and kind of annoying.”

The room is small and looks as if it can only hold a couple hundred people. Long rectangular tables are joined to each other and travel across the length of the room. The floor and table tops are littered with trash and left-over food. It is hard to find a clean place to sit.

The cafeteria has standard choices like hamburgers, cheeseburgers, pizza, fries, cookies and chips. In the words of Jenni Bartell, “They have mostly stuff you would find at a fast food restaurant.”

There is also a small deli bar and two types of soups.

There is a refrigerated shelf with prepackaged foods such as wraps, sandwiches, fruit cups and pudding that always looks the same. They could have possibly been sitting on that shelf for months without anyone realizing the difference.

The cafeteria has more than enough soda, including a soda fountain, and a total of eight soda machines. At least there is no worry of anyone dying of thirst at NOVA.

In the very back of the kitchen, there is a small bar of food made daily. The food looks less prepackaged and frozen and a bit more nutritional. However the food is charged by the pound, which can get very expensive.

Many students don’t buy a full meal in the cafeteria partly because of the cost and partly because of the nutritional value.

“The food here is expensive,” said Paul Kaye. “I bought my food here a lot my first semester and ended up spending a lot of money. They need cheaper prices or a deal to make it less expensive for students.”

Many people will come and only buy one item.

Vegetarian options are limited, too.

“I usually come here to get fries,” said Sonia Altis. “Other than that there are not many options for people who are vegetarians.”

Other people bring their own lunch or come to the cafeteria just to see and meet with friends. According to Jimmy Chen, “Some of my friends will bring their game stations here, since the game room on campus has many restrictions. We will bring our laptops and play various games.”

Crowding can also be a problem. Chen said, “On a typical day I will go in to the cafeteria, try to beat the line, get food and get out. I think they need a second cafeteria. This one gets really crowded in the mornings, and they get all jammed up which creates a problem.”

Student sentiment seemed to be the same, the cafeteria could be better.

“I would never bring a friend here, I would rather go out to a restaurant if I had the time,” Kaye said.

Altis summed the situation up best declaring, “They need better and cheaper food.”

Jonathan Sprinkles gives a motivational speech to a group of NOVA students at the Annandale campus.

If one needed encouragement to counter balance the negative daily news regarding the employment and the economic downturn, the Ernst Cultural Center Theater on the Annandale campus was the place to be on Wednesday, Feb. 24. Author, entrepreneur and public speaker Jonathan Sprinkles was the special guest speaker on that afternoon.

Still a believer that the United States is the land of opportunity, Sprinkles said that he loves visiting this part of the country. One can talk to someone expecting one thing and get something completely different, the answer could come in any language under the sun.

This was evident during the course of conversation with one taxi driver from Ghana. Sprinkles asked the man why he had come so far to pursue his education. “In my country if you’re born poor you die poor,” the man replied. “Here no matter where you start out, you can choose where you finish.”

In America more money is spent on trash bags annually than all accumulated goods purchased yearly in some of the world’s poorest nations. “Somewhere in the world someone is praying for your problems,” Sprinkles asserted. According to him, immigrants to the United States are four times more likely to become millionaires than natural born citizens because of one word – choice.

Though many have experienced pain and disappointment and may ask, “Why me?” the motivational speaker turned the question on its head asking, “Why not me?” Obstacles shape us into the people we will become. Once one has suffered, that person is less likely to judge someone else in the same situation and more likely to help solve problems.

Eight years ago Sprinkles walked away from an $82,500 salary as a sales representative at Dell, Inc. to embrace an unknown future pursuing his passion, public speaking. A couple of years ago that same company hired him to speak at an event on leadership.

People may discourage noble endeavors, asking “Have you finished that associates? How is that business going? Have you gotten rid of that credit card debt?” Sprinkles told his audience to reply, “Stay tuned, it’s coming. The end is better than the beginning. Don’t let an underachiever determine what you can or can’t do. You were born an original – don’t be a copy.” If we accept the best and worst things that happen to us happen for a reason, then it is easer to take chances in life. As Sprinkles told his audience, “Why live a good life when you can live a great one?”

You can learn more about Jonathan Sprinkles at www.jsprinkles.com.

Students enjoying time off from studying in the Annandale Campus Gaming Club Lounge.

What’s better than playing video games at home, with all the lights off, just you and 5 million other people all connected by headsets? Playing with friends at school, that’s what. Video games have become more of a social past time than ever.

Let’s take a look at the past few years. Games like Halo 3, Gears of War 2, Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and a multitude of other games have involved less single-player and more glorious, fragging multi-player action.

With such a drastic leap toward social gaming, why are some gamers still insisting on sitting alone in front of their consoles day after day, playing against opponents they don’t even know?

Truth be told, we probably all do it. It’s easy, convenient and how college kids roll. But, what if it was just as convenient, just as easy, and even more fun to play games at school?

A gaming room recently opened at NOVA’s Annandale campus. During the school day, it is not uncommon, when walking through the CF building toward the cafeteria, to hear cries of victory, the rat-tat-tat of gunfire, and John Madden saying, “Now here’s a guy who, when he runs, he goes faster!” Players of all shapes, sizes and skill levels line up to beat each other up, shoot each other in the feet and jump on each other’s heads.

The room itself is unassuming: four walls, five or six HDTV’s and all the latest gaming systems and games. What does it cost to use? Just the temporary loss of your NOVA ID and a lot of time. As expected, there are time limits for playing so that everybody gets to play. But fear not, you can stick around and play the winner of the next game.

Every game picked is there to be played by multiple players. You won’t see all the latest and greatest in single-player RPGs, or single-player anything, for that matter. After all, how much fun is it to watch the ending of a game that you have sitting at home, waiting to be finished, played by someone who isn’t you?

Sorry, PC gamers, nothing for you here. But why not head down to the cafeteria and see if you can’t get a mini-LAN party started up?

But you don’t have to go all the way to Annandale just to play a game of New Super Mario Brothers because there is a new gaming room coming to the Alexandria campus. According to Haroon Ismail, president of the Alexandria Student Government Association, it will open sometime around the week after spring break. Located in the Bisdorf Building’s international café – which is across from the cafeteria – it will be the center of the gaming community at Alexandria. It will also be the meeting place of the brand-new Gaming Interest Group, led by Cody Hart.

While still in the stages leading up to becoming a full-fledged club, it definitely has some followers. How often do you see students sitting around campus, playing a game of some kind to pass time between classes, who are more than likely running late? Chances are, they have signed up for, or are thinking of signing up for, the Gaming Interest Group.

Organizers are currently in the late stages of hiring and training students to work there.

It should be open soon, so keep your eyes out for signs. If you don’t find any, take a good listen. If you hear someone scream, “Ha! I beat you!” chances are it is open.