By Jean Wang:

Photos by Wendy Qiu:

In the upcoming weeks, an air hockey table will be made available to students in the Student Activities Center (SAC). “Ping pong was a great addition, but air hockey makes it like an arcade,” senior Alyssa Pereault said. “That’ll be sick.”

The Student Executive Council (SEC) was first approached with this idea when Human Relations Commissioner Alex Barthelemy mentioned that one of his friends, senior Jackson Gardner, was looking to sell an air hockey table. After some consideration, the SEC decided the table would be a good investment and bought it for $100. “The funds come from an amount that we put aside at the beginning of the year for the SAC upgrade, as this was my big goal as student body president,” Gunn Student Body President Malik Gill wrote in an email.

Although the air hockey table has already arrived at Gunn, Gill and Barthelemy plan to restore it to better condition before placing it in the SAC for student use. While the table works, the air current isn’t very strong, which Gill and Barthelemy hope to fix by polishing the table surface and vacuuming the dust out of the holes. “With bean bags, ping pong, hot chocolate and now air hockey, the SAC will be the coolest hang out spot on campus,” junior William Yu said.

When ready, the air hockey table will be placed near the ping pong tables that were introduced to the SAC last school year. Students can expect the air hockey tables to follow a similar borrowing system as the ping pong tables, requiring collateral to receive the puck and mallets with which to play.

However, many students remain concerned that the air hockey tables, like the ping pongs tables, would be dominated by seniors who have several prep periods. “I would like it, but the underclassmen would probably never get to use it,” sophomore Adriana Noronha said.

In addition to the air hockey table, the SEC has several other plans to upgrade the SAC. These include two new televisions and two Xbox 360s, which will be made available in the coming months. “[The air hockey tables] will add more variety to the SAC, and it will also keep kids excited until we get the new Xbox’s and TVs,” Gill wrote.