Every other Thursday night from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., students gather on the fourth floor of Columbia’s library at 624 S. Michigan Ave. for Board Game Night hosted by the school’s Board Game Club. Attendees range from regulars to newbies, curious about what the night has to offer.
Students find a community where they can let loose, take their worries away from school and bond with others.
This was the first year that the Board Game Club was recognized as a student organization with Alex Lanting, a sophomore film and television major, as president.
“I really want people to walk away with a sense of fun and the sense of belonging,” Lanting said. “We’re just a fun place where we want people to come and play board games and enjoy themselves.”
TRANSCRIPT
0:28: So my name is Alex Lanting.
0:31: I am a second year film and television BA student, and I am the president of the Board Game Club at Columbia.
0:48: So I came by, and it was Brendan with like five other students, very small group.
0:54: They were only playing one game, and then they were like, ‘Hey, do you wanna play board games with us?’
0:58: And I was like: this is the college experience that they tell you about, I guess, where it’s just, yeah, you’re here for school, you’re here for homework.
1:10: But also it’s so much more than that.
1:20: It’s really more of just like a genuine space to get to know other people and to spend time with people that you get to see every two weeks.
1:33: Really, it’s Brendan’s club more than it is anybody else’s club at this point.
1:37: And I think he won’t say that if you ask that, and it doesn’t feel that way whatsoever.
1:41: It’s not like where he has like a dictatorship over the club. It’s that he’s been putting in this work for so long. I mean, he teaches a class about board games.
2:02: I know how much it means to Brendan, and he cares, so then it makes other people care about the club.
2:09: I knew that bringing in the student resources would really just allow us to grow. And I think that’s definitely one of his priorities.
2:25: I really want people to walk away with a sense of fun and a sense of belonging.
2:32: And, it’s not like, “Oh my god, like we’re a family,” but we’re just a fun place where we want people to come and play board games and enjoy themselves.
2:57: Board Game Club is something that I can depend on every two weeks.
2:59: I know that I can come in and I’m gonna see most of the same people, and I get to just not think about anything else for three hours except for just having a legitimately good time with other people who are also here to have a legitimately good time.
3:16: It’s something that I can count on and something that I can rely on to give me something to look forward to. If everything else in my life is absolutely terrible, I know that Board Game Club isn’t gonna change.
Copy edited by Patience Hurston
