A group of first-years from Husman Hall gather in Alter to watch movies

By Hannah Miller | Guest Writer

With only being a month into the school year, students have started to fall into the pattern of day to day life. Through the bonding of Manresa, a large group of students have made it a habit to meet up at Alter on Friday nights. Majority of the students boarding in Husman have created movie watching parties. It started out with watching movies required by a class, then movies that were recommended by fellow classmates. Iain Kirby, a freshman exercise science major, stated that it just happened one Friday that a group of students wanted to watch IT, so they gathered to watch in Alter 204 until 2 a.m. First years, Seth Birch, Iain Kirby, and Ben Thomson are considered to be the founders of this group.

            When asked why go to Alter and not Husman’s basement, Kirby’s response was this “The basement gets really hot real easily and I know that for a lot of people that’s a problem. So, we decided that Alter has bigger screens and has two of them, so you don’t have to focus your direction on one. Half the people can look at one, the other half can look at another and it gets us out of our area; gets us out of Husman so we’re not just constantly in the same area all the time.”

Kirby goes on to confirm the time and place. “204 Alter is the constant place we go to. 99 percent of the time, we’d be in there. The only time we wouldn’t be is if another group already went there, but we usually do it. We usually start at 10:30 or 11 at night on Friday nights so its usually not a problem. Cause most people don’t want to be at a classroom and most people who do watch movies, they do it earlier, I guess. So yeah, Alter 204 and if you have any questions they can ask me, Ben, or Seth. We’re the three main people that help facilitate, but then the movies are suggested in the group chat where people will say ‘This week, we wanna watch comedies, we wanna watch horror.’”

When informed and asked about the film watch group, economics, sustainability, and society (ECOS) senior, Margot Bond said, “That is awesome. That is so great. I wish I had that when I was a freshman. Just people connecting together that’s really awesome.”

            Each night has been a success so far, but when asking students about any suggestions for the group, Katherine Harr, a freshman exploratory major responded, “It’d be really cool to make it a club. That way you could get school funding to rent movies, buy snacks, or take trips to see new releases in theaters.”

            Thomson and Birch both agreed with the idea of it becoming a club. “Yeah that’d be so fun. Iain has been buying all the movies. Come by, see what its like and hopefully don’t get scared away by our dark senses of humor.” Thomson says.

            If wanting to attend one of the movie nights it is every Friday night in Alter 204. The usual start time is around 10 to 10:30 p.m. If you have any questions or future movie suggestions, feel free to contact them by their Xavier emails. Birch: birchs@xavier.edu; Kirby: kirbyi@xavier.edu; Thomson: thomsonb@xavier.edu