Design firm presents pedestrian safety proposals to city, SGA
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WVU’s Independent Student Newspaper
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THURSDAY FEBRUARY 7, 2019
Meet Joe Wasserman, WVU’s resident board game expert BY RACHEL JOHNSON ASSISTANT CULTURE EDITOR As an R1 research institution, WVU is involved in a multitude of research projects in fields such as biology, physics, psychology and even board games. Joe Wasserman, a Ph.D. student at WVU, is a board game expert. Wasserman was recently cited in a Wirecutter article as being a board games and learning researcher. Wasserman grew up in the Chicago area and received his undergraduate degree in anthropology from the Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He then received his master’s in communication from WVU and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. “After graduation, I organized and hosted several tabletop game design jams, which is basically like a group of people getting together for a short time and making a game,” Wasserman said. “Typically, it focuses on digital games, but for us, it was always tabletop games. Through that, I sort of got the reputation of a board game person.” In the article for Wirecutter, Wasserman was asked what the best board games for beginner gamers are. Wasserman said it is difficult to name the best board game because people are so diverse in their board game taste. “Without playing games, you can’t know what your taste is,” he said.
PHOTO SUBMITTED BY JOE WASSERMAN
Joe Wasserman Wasserman conducted studies on people’s motivation for playingg board games. He found that face-to-face social interaction, being a part of a community, intellectual challenge and being immersed in a fictional world were people’s top reasons for playing. For Wasserman, the reason he plays games is due to the combination of getting together with people he enjoys the company with and who have a shared interest in board games as well as figuring out how games work. Wasserman said his favorite style of game is games that are fairly complex with a very broad decision space. Examples of these types of game are Container, Rolling Stock, 1830 and
Start!
Grew up in Chicago area
Received undergraduate degree in anthropology from Reed College in Portland, Oregon
Received master’s in communication from WVU
Working on a Ph.D. at WVU
GRAPHIC BY COLIN TRACY
Indonesia. Wasserman said he is not a fan of games where the best move is obvious or the outcomes are completely left to chance. He enjoys board games for the ability they have to bring people together and the options they give players to create their own game dy-
namics, as opposed to video games where the rules are set. He said that he plays to have fun and not necessarily win. “In any given game, only one person can be the winner, so most people are not going to be,” Wasserman said. “My research most broadly is
about cognitive, social and behavioral consequences of consuming media. But within that, I’ve been focusing on games and learning with a further emphasis on tangible games like board games and systems thinking competencies or the ability to understand complex systems.”
WVU Board of Governors to vote on e-cig, smoking ban on Friday BY JOE SEVERINO NEWS EDITOR The WVU Board of Governors will vote Friday morning whether to enact a policy aimed at banning all tobacco types on campus, including e-cigarettes and vapes. The Tobacco Free Policy, if passed, would officially enforce a six-year-old rule WVU passed in 2013 that bans all tobacco on campus and add e-cigs to the list of banned products. Rocco Fucillo, a state and local relations specialist at WVU, said the old policy was not effective because there was no enforcement, and the language used didn’t specifically prohibit e-cigarettes and vapes. Fucillo also chaired
the task force that recommended these changes. “The reason why we put this group together; it was obvious that the policy wasn’t enforced,” he said. “One of the reasons why it wasn’t enforced was there was no existing entity that was in place that was responsible for enforcing it. So that will change.” However, WVU and the task force have not made a decision on who will enforce the policy. “Right now, quite frankly, the policy is not going to take its effect until Aug. 1. It will be established by then,” Fucillo said. “We have not specifically determined what that entity is going to be.” Fucillo did say it will not be the UPD that enforces it. While different enforcement strat-
egies are being considered by the task force, Fucillo said the entity will also work toward creating educational programs on campus and promoting wellness. “We don’t have all the specifics yet. What I can tell you is the enforcement strategy is in development, but the University is going to be committed to promoting a culture of compliance within our community, and so there will be an entity,” he said. “There will be someone responsible for ensuring that.” Fucillo noted that WVU’s campus has “hot spots” or areas where students smoke more regularly, which the entity will look at. If the rule is passed, Fucillo said WVU will still remain a completely to-
bacco-free campus and there will still be no smoking-designated areas. “No, that’s not going to happen,” he said about designated areas. “One of our major values is promoting health and wellness, and if you look at [West Virginia] as a whole, we lead in cardiovascular deaths, death by cancer, we are one of the leading tobacco users as a state. We don’t want to promote that culture.” “Instead, what we’re going to do is try to encourage people to help them stop, to provide an education and other resources to not smoke,” he added. Fucillo said the BOG received around 100 public comments since Dec. 14, when the policy revision was announced.
PHOTO BY COLIN TRACY
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