The student lounge in the cafeteria plans to re-open soon. According to Don Turney, dean of students, several problems occurred that prevented the lounge from opening at the beginning of the semester as planned.

The lounge first opened when the spring semester started on Jan. 18, 2006.

The games, jukebox and pool tables are provided and maintained by Rick Freels from Games ‘n More. The profit made from the lounge is split 50-50 with Games ‘n More and the SGA.

“It’s a business partnership. I provide the students, he provides the games,” Turney said. “He will put in games that are latest and greatest, games students are interested in.”

The games in the lounge are House of the Dead, Pac-Man, air hockey, Dance Dance Revolution, Chinese checkers and chess.

“I like to play pool, like to play House of the Dead,” said student Lionel Washington. “In between classes it’s something to do instead of going to the library all the time, especially when you don’t have to study or nothing, you just go in there and play with some friends or whatever, meet up there, play, eat, go to class afterwards.”

All the games are at a minimal cost except checkers and chess, which are free. The cost for the games, jukebox and pool table ranges from 25 cents to $1. The jukebox is 50 cents per song but if you want your song to be played ahead of others, it cost $1.

“The room has Internet jukebox which can play any song in the whole world that they want,” Turney said.

Also coming soon to the lounge is free wireless Internet that will have games for students to play.

“Computers are there, just not up and running yet,” Turney said. “When up and running, anyone with a laptop can go to the SGA office and register a certified Mac number and when enter that Mac number, they can do whatever they want. They’ll have access to MySpace, Facebook, at regular speed.”

“The computers are completely out of the school system, it’s a separate entity,” Turney said. “It’s not tied into the school at all. The company we went with has a college firewall. Some hackers may get through, but most of them won’t.”

The profits made from the student lounge and ATM machines are immediately reinvested to students, according to Turney.

The lounge did not open at the beginning of the semester because the SGA couldn’t get any workers until school started.

The SGA only hires students from federal work study to supervise the lounge.

“The idea was to benefit the students, by hiring students from work study, instead of a non-student, to help them earn money to go towards school,” Turney said.

Another delay in opening the lounge is renovation. There are ceiling tiles falling down and other problems that Turney felt were unsafe.

“We will not open the student lounge until we feel that it is safe,” Turney said.

“We just didn’t want to put any of our students in harms way when we knew that a ceiling tile was loose and hanging down.”

Lastly, the SGA is waiting on another source (Senate Bill 135) to help in funding.

“With federal work study dollars being real tight this year, the federal government cut everybody, so that was another way we had to look for a source of funding that we thought was fair and tapping the SB 135, which allows us to take a dollar per unit up to five units,” Turney said.

The lounge hours will be Monday through Thursday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.