Thom Julian does what in his free time!?...

by Griffin Frerichs, Staff Writer

Illustration by Rishi Shah-Nelson + Graham Diz, Contributors

For years, the Esports Club had been operating in dark alleys and in silence. Forced into common rooms and basements, they began to lose hope. However, after countless hours of blueprinting and weekly teases in the Campus Digest over the summer, the Esports Arena is here! This moment unites us. Assuredly, we all have the same reaction. We’re all jumping up and down? No. We’re storming the castle at midnight? No. We’re happy that the Esports Club now has a place to call home? Maybe.

Truly a miracle, Oberlin has managed to complete a construction project—and in Wilder of all places. Poor WOBC, will you ever find stable ground? Perhaps this is a landmark moment. Maybe current freshmen will see a proper student union building. I wanted to get in on the hype, so I sat down with Esports Club president Dillon Flynn. Flynn was ecstatic to talk about what the Arena will provide gamers on campus.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Griffin Frerichs: What is this club?

Dillon Flynn: The esports scene in Oberlin has been around for a long time, but it’s always been kind of a front for the Smash Club. All other esports—games like Overwatch, League—all these clubs were run separately and had no affiliation with each other. But with the recent development of [Wilder] 306, the esports room, I have tried to gather all of the separate organizations and merge them into one space.

GF: How did the new Esports Arena come to be?

DF: Man, I don’t know. It’s been in the works for many years. Thom Julian had first found out about this project in 2019, and he’s been doing a lot of the blueprinting—the ordering of the PCs, the monitors, and all that stuff—for many, many years now. I believe that just over the summer is when they finally put the go ahead on it. They got it done in like a month and a half and now it’s here, up and running.

Upon unearthing the Thom Julian connection, I quivered. Something is the matter. That man’s smile is so genuine. Surely anything he touches is pure of heart. Never has an Oberlin College initiative had such positive aims and been so deliberately followed through on. I rushed Thom’s office, escorted his four o’clock to the hallway, and began my questioning. The answers will shock you…

GF: Are you much of a gamer?

Thom Julian: Yeah, but not as much of an esports gamer. You know, I grew up playing Nintendo. I still play it when I can, in between everything. I played a lot of competitive Pokémon. I still dabble in that, and then some Counter-Strike.

GF: What excited you about this project?

TJ: There’s something special about coming together, playing in the same room and forming a collaborative team. Oneon-one fighting games—you’re sitting next to somebody and having an experience that I think is unique because you’re living so close to so many people who have the same interest. I’m really excited about what [the Arena] is going to do for the social scene of gaming on campus. This is simply not what I was expecting.

Thom passed my rigorous auditing process with flying colors. A naturally occurring commensal relationship between an admin and student organization—how queer. I guess there is good in the world. Dillon and I reconvened, and he gave me the exciting specifics of the club’s new venue.

GF: Can you describe what the Arena is to the still uninitiated?

DF: I think it’s a little corny. I just call it the game room, but it’s basically a room on the 3rd floor [of Wilder] with 10 monitors and 10 PCs, all laid out on this very large table with dividers in between them. So, when you sit down there, you have your own little space with your own little fancy gaming chair—you get a nice mouse and keyboard. We’re gonna have headphones in a minute, we’re gonna bring in mouse pads. It’s basically your own corner that [has everything you could ever] really need out of a gaming space.

GF: What are you most excited about?

DF: There are so many people on this campus who are interested in esports. When they find out that, one, this room exists, and two, that it has a club for the game they’re interested in, they’ll sign up. People just don’t know about us yet.

Gamer or not, I hope you find it in your heart to celebrate a campus organization’s win. At the very least, this means you won’t be competing with a rambunctious and perspirant Smash mob when you and your friends want to watch Fantastic Mr. Fox in the Barrows common room for the 13th time.