Esports 10/5/2023 6:03:00 PM Micah Warnock-Estrada

Ladies Lounge Brings the Gaming Community Together – For Free!

"Women in Gaming" is the fastest growing initiatives that GCU Esports has to offer. It is a growing movement made by students, for students. An especially notable event that has come out of the movement is Women Wednesday. At the end of the last Spring semester, GCU Esports hosted their first ever "Gamer Gala", and Women Wednesday won the prestigious award for event of the year. This year, Women Wednesday kicked off in full effect, boasting a Barbie theme and an impressive turnout with more than 50 attendees.

Working diligently as ever at the front desk of the Esports Arena was Tiana Mitchell, a driving force behind the Women in Gaming initiative. Tiana spoke on how proud she was to see how far the program has come, and the shared goals of everyone involved. Standing out amongst these was a commitment to make GCU Esports a space that is welcoming to everyone. When I presented the numerous ways Women in Gaming has made significant progress to that end, Tiana replied confidently, "This is only the beginning, and it will only continue to grow into a more inclusive environment from here."

Grow it has, with the introduction of GCU Esport's newest event: Ladies Lounge. Starting earlier this month, and recurring every other Thursday, the Ladies Lounge is the latest event to hit GCU's Esports Arena. The rules are simple: Women play for free, and so does anyone else who attends wearing pink.

LadiesLounge1 — Supporters of Ladies Lounge sporting the event's pink theme. (Stevan Perrino)

Hoping to hear more from the hardworking students behind this new outreach, I found Billie Staggs, who was more than excited to speak on her role here. Billie emphasized, first and foremost, how much of a team effort everything has been. Women in Gaming could not have happened without the efforts of multiple highly motivated students in our community, and Billie insists that the same is true of Ladies Lounge. She went so far as to mirror some of Tiana's words, kindly explaining their goal of making the Esports Arena a truly safe space for all. Billie then went further to tell me the specific goal of Ladies Lounge, to integrate the attendees of Women Wednesday into GCU's Esports community at large. GCU Esports hopes to encourage the women on campus to keep coming back to the Esports Arena for more and more events geared towards integrating everyone together into one all-inclusive space. In Billie's words, "I'm really excited to see how this affects how many women we have coming to the arena, and to see how they start coming not only to this event, but all our events."

Ladies Lounge is only just getting started. Students are encouraged to attend in order to meet new friends, support the program started by their peers, and to collect free PC hours for women and all others who wear pink! Both Ladies Lounge and Women Wednesday will continue far into the foreseeable future, and if the students leading the charge are to be believed, there is so much more to come! Keep tuning in to our news to learn more about upcoming events, opportunities, and initiatives.

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