Bingo lunch provides big insights

By Sophia Potter
Student Editor in Chief 

I make it my personal mission to say yes to being silly whenever possible. I firmly believe life is as interesting as you make it, and the more you are able to expand your own comfort zone, the more opportunities for excellence open up.

Upon seeing the post in The Star, LCC’s newsletter for employees of the college, about a staff-wide bingo game hosted by the President’s office, I knew instantly that was something I had to sign up for (very on-brand for me)—so instantly, in fact, that I did not read far enough to realize one of the prizes for winning was lunch with President Steve Robinson and his team.

Not that knowing this information would not have dissuaded me—quite the opposite. A shirt would have been enough, but lunch with the president was almost too exciting for me to wrap my head around. Suddenly this game of bingo I had signed up for on a whim had stakes.

Part of what made it seem so silly to me in the first place is that the whole thing took place on Webex, which is such an interesting venue for bingo. I was curious how exactly that would work and was not disappointed.

There were so many more participants than I had guessed. While I was largely unaware of this staff bingo before stumbling upon it the week or two before, but it turns out the event is highly anticipated around campus. A new number is posted every five minutes, and the times between are filled with cross-department commiseration over empty boards.

From 8:30 a.m. to almost noon, more than 70 of us sat on the edge of our seats to see who would be the new champion. I started off strong with three in a row within the first few calls, and then had an uneventful stretch with just a few calls here and there until call 13, when my three in a row became four.

By call 15, there had not been a single O. At this point, the very small portion of my brain capable of doing math began to put together that whenever that first O got called, someone would win—and that someone could be me.

I began chanting, “O-61, O-61, O-61,” at my computer screen as we went into “rapid fire” rounds. Call 16 comes in: G-55. I continue chanting. Two minutes later, my pleas are answered: call 17, O-61.

It wasn’t until I had actually won that it hit me that I had just won lunch with the college’s president for my entire department, which, at that moment, consisted of just myself. When I said as much a week or so later over email to Trisha Rothoff, executive assistant to the president, we began scheming together. Why have lunch in the President’s Dining Room when there were so few of us that we could go out on the town?

So out on the town we went—to Weston’s Kewpee Sandwich Shop, no less. Robinson, Rothoff and Chief of Staff Layne Ingram drove down together in the Presidential Car (which ended up getting a Presidential Ticket despite paying for parking, in true Lansing fashion) and chatted about everything from Instagram to the institutions we have all worked for.

Once we were finally at lunch all together, I did the best I could to just be fully present and soak it all in, because how often does an opportunity like this land in your lap? There is a sense to which being the student editor-in-chief of the school paper and sitting right next to the college president eating a cheeseburger feels unreal.

Instead of arriving as a journalist or even student, I tried to just arrive as myself. We even talked a bit about the notion of having roles like “president” or “teacher,” the ways we show up in different spaces, and what types of activities blur the lines between those titles and being “just a person.”

There are lots of things that I admire about Robinson, like his humility and appreciation for art, so it really was an honor to chat with him about the mundane. He takes his job very seriously without taking himself too seriously, which is a trait I hope to achieve. 

Perhaps the most fascinating part of lunch for me was a conversation that we had about Vivian Maier that merged those two ideas into one. Maier, a favorite artist of Robinson, was a nanny and photographer who passed away in 2009 without ever sharing her gift with the world. It was only after her death that her extensive body of work was found. Many of the photographs are mirror selfies taken in reflections of buildings, which are Robinson’s favorites.

What was so interesting to me about the discussion about Maier was that, since I had started following Robinson on Instagram, I could tell just from his photography that we cared about the same types of things—not just on an aesthetic level but also a personal one.

Maier, too, seemed to use photography as a way to explore what it means to wear many hats. She was deeply private and compartmentalized these heavily, and yet she is the focus of much of her own photography.

As a journalist, teacher and student, it can be challenging for me to decide how much and what types of authenticity to bring to the table. On a personal level, it often feels like the answer is simply “as much as I can handle,” but this opens the conversation of how much can one person truly handl. How many hats is too many?

It was so affirming to speak to Robinson and the rest of his team about all the hats they wear, and how much they love every single one. In a sense, that is what community college is all about. Maybe more of my colleagues are committed to silly the same way I am in a way I did not recognize before.

The next Stars bingo will be taking place Friday, August 29, at 8:40 a.m., and I highly encourage any staff to start your fall semester off with a little whimsy!