It's a Monday afternoon in June, and the question at the Graduate Student Center is: "Are you ready for some football?"
The answer is a resounding yes, given that here, "football" means soccer, and the match underway isn't a step towards the Super Bowl's Lombardi trophy - it's part of the quest for the title as champion of Euro Cup 2008.
This month, the GSC is holding "viewing parties" for this quadrennial soccer tournament as a way of providing access to what is otherwise hard to find on network television.
"Our thinking here at the Grad Center is that when [a game is] on satellite or cable, graduate students don't have cable, so we want to give students, particularly international students, a chance to see the games that are important to them at home," said GSC director Anita Mastroieni.
Sarah Van Beirdin, a graduate student from Belgium, echoed Mastroieni's sentiments. "I don't have cable, so I have to go here or a bar [to watch]," she said.
Though Belgium is not in the tournament - "We suck!" Van Beirdin said - she is following Holland, who she said is doing "surprisingly well."
She noted that the GSC is a nice place to watch the matches because, "I can go back to [doing] work, or just hang out. I have a lot of friends that come here."
However, not all students agree that the ability to complete school work while watching the game is a good thing.
"This is the most quiet European championship viewing that I've ever done," said Daniel Harenberg, a visiting graduate student from Germany. "Usually people jump up and shout, but nobody's shouting," he said.
Sami Alom Ruiz, a sixth-year graduate student from Spain, agreed. "It cannot be any more subdued," he said. At the same time, he noted, "Sometimes it's nice to watch it quietly without monkeys jumping around."
The Euro Cup viewings are not limited to international students - first-year graduate students Timothy Bush and John Curto are from the U.S.
Both agree that Euro Cup viewings offer more enthusiasm than is usual for soccer fans in the U.S.
"It's [fun] to hear people shouting in their own language [during a game]," said Bush. "It's nice to get away from the U.S. apathy [for soccer]."
Subdued atmosphere or not, Mastroeini lauded the Euro Cup viewing parties as a good way for graduate students to "bond along non-academic lines" and "get out of labs and libraries and have fun once in a while."
