A “Super Smash Bros.” video game tournament on Nov. 9 doubled as a fundraiser for Homelessness Awareness Week.
The tournament, however, was delayed half an hour when fire alarms rang out and everyone was evacuated from the Marietta campus student center.
“We don’t know what happened,” said sophomore IT major Brian Luong. “We were in the ballroom, and then we were being escorted out of the building.”
Employees of the student center offered no comment on the matter, and conflicting reports of the alarm’s cause were never confirmed or clarified.
After returning to the building, participants were able to start setting up monitors and gaming systems to get the tournament started.
Junior engineering technology major Andrew Huntley organized the event. Huntley competes in several gaming tournaments.
“I helped promote the event on social media,” Huntley said. “I created an event page on Facebook and sent out invites.”
The Marietta Activities Council, Student Life, Student Affairs and the CARE Center were present for the tournament to show their support and contribute to the fundraiser.
“This is the first year of the Marietta Activities Council, and we teamed up with Student Life for this event,” said MAC member Melissa Barrett. “We provided the food and drinks for tonight.”
Marcy Stidum, the director of the CARE Center, explained the process of planning for the event.
“Homelessness Awareness Week takes about eight months to plan, so we started in April with the planning,” Stidum said. “The CARE Center is not funded, so with this fundraiser participants pay $5 and proceeds will go towards the center.”
The donations for the CARE Center will be used to fund next year’s Homelessness Awareness Week. The board of the CARE Center hopes that it will be bigger and better than this year.
“We’ve just started a Thanksgiving food program as well,” Stidum said. “We are trying to sell Thanksgiving dinners to the community to further help needy students at Kennesaw State.”
Stidum explained that the CARE Center is dedicated to providing students in need with food and shelter so that they can stay in school. The center also has a food pantry for students and organized a B.O.B. trip this year that took students to Wal-Mart so they would have access to food.
Dale Fitzpatrick, a KSU alumnus, experienced firsthand what it was like to be homeless for part of his college career. He participated in events like this as a student.
“I heard about the event when I picked up a flyer. I could relate,” Fitzpatrick said. “I was the guy in college who slept in his car.”
The tournament featured a winners’ and a losers’ bracket, and participants Wil Caruso and Ameen Cooper were announced as the tournament winners at the end of the night.
“I heard about the event from a friend of mine, and I wanted to do the charity thing, but I also wanted to meet new people,” said Angelo Lewis, an alumnus of KSU.
The “Super Smash Bros.” tournament is one of several events that were held throughout Homelessness Awareness Week. The Center for Student Leadership closed the event with an educational conversation about homelessness and opportunities to help.
