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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

New GEEC director elected

Union Board approved the selection of its new Gaming and Electronic Entertainment Committee Director, sophomore Jack Harmening, at its weekly board meeting Thursday.

A selection committee was created to appoint the new GEEC director.

“We had to look for somebody who balanced both the interests of the Gaming and Electronic Entertainment Committee, an ability to pull off a large program like BloomingCon, and leadership and delegating projects to people,” said Steven Johnson, chair of the selection committee.

President of Union Board Jacqueline Bales said the selection process was competitive among the ?candidates.

“We’ll probably end up with someone who is not only very passionate about Union Board and ready to jump on with Union Board’s mission, but they will also be very either interested or very skilled in this specific area,” she said.

Harmening said he has been very involved in programming for other student gaming groups on campus, namely IU-Bloomington Smash. The group is a subgroup of IU Gaming that specifically plays video games in the Super Smash Brothers series, Harmening said, which is his favorite.

His connections in the gaming community make him qualified to take on the position, Harmening said. It is a “grassroots” community where knowing as many people as possible is valuable, he said.

“It makes my job easier to know people,” he said.

Harmening said IU-Bloomington Smash has grown in size and demand, beginning with biweekly tournaments in a member’s apartment to running a tournament with 130 entrants from across the Midwest.

“I usually don’t get too involved with all the clubs that I’m in, but doing all that stuff, doing that event organizing was some of the most fun and passionate I could get about doing things at IU,” he said. “It’s being able to do fun things that I like to do the work for.”

Harmening said he likes Super Smash Brothers because of the connections it allows gamers to make.

“It’s a very fundamentally fun thing to do,” he said. “It requires you to meet in person. So I have, like, a special place in my heart for those gaming communities that kind of exist in the real world.”

As the new GEEC director, Harmening said he wants the IU gaming community to have a more prevalent existence in campus life. He said after planning BloomingCon, a Bloomington gaming and electronics festival scheduled next semester for Sept. 25-27, he hopes to plan a variety of gaming events on campus.

Harmening said he wants to promote the gaming community on campus because there is already a large ?demand for it.

“It’s very much a ‘if you build it, they will come’ scenario,” he said. “We went from 10 guys in a guy’s apartment to about 40 every other week, and really it felt like all it took was asking people if they wanted to come. ... I mean the community does exist, it just is a matter of making bonds apparent to everybody.”

Although there are not many stable career opportunities in programming in the gaming community, Harmening said he plans to stay involved beyond college.

“I will definitely always be involved in the gaming community in terms of the organization side of things,” he said. “Because that means I get to play games, too.”

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