Patrick Minihan ’15, Staff Writer
This past week I had the privilege to learn more about the man we all know on campus as, “The Mack Card Guy”. The Mack Card Guy, formally known as Eddie McGee outside his office, is the Mack Card Manager here at Merrimack College. For those of you who just know Eddie as the man dealing out the student ID’s, there a lot more to the man sitting behind the wall of computers and tablets than you think.
Eddie grew up in North Andover and currently lives in Amesbury with his wonderful wife of 32 years and has three sons. He continued his education after high school at Northern Essex Community College, but later decided to transfer to Salem State. He graduated from Salem State with a degree in Education and a minor in Theatre.
Eddie is passionate about technology and its continual growth; he spent 34 years in the radio industry working as a DJ for well known stations like WLLH, and HHV, the Haverhill Community Station. Nowadays Eddie has taken a step back from DJ’ing, although he does the occasional party here and there, his main interest outside of Merrimack College is theatre. He was in the production Lend me a Tenor last October at Spotlight Place in Haverhill. Eddie also informed me that just last week he auditioned for a role classic production, It’s a Wonderful Life in Haverhill. He has been passionate about theatre for as long as he can remember, in 1983 he acted in a play at Merrimack College called The Fantastics playing the role of El Guyo. In his free time, Eddie enjoys riding his Goldwing motorcycle around town and spending quality time with his family.
It’s hard to imagine life at Merrimack without our Mack Cards, the first online Mack Cards came to campus in 2006. They were far less advanced than the cards we use today, the only thing they had was a photo ID of the students. These cards were presented to the front desk workers at each building who then allowed students access. Eddie told me a little about the process of how the Mack Cards partners with local restaurants and explained that Blackboard is heavily involved in the process. Bertucci’s, CVS Pharmacy, Fuddruckers, J&M Subs, Seafood & Pizzeria, Kings Subs & Pizza, Mr.Takeout, Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt, Panera Bread, Papa Gino’s, Perfecto’s Caffe, SportClips Haircuts, Sunbanque Tanning Salon, and Tripoli Pizza all take the Mack Card.
If you were wondering if the system keeps track of how many Mack cards you lost, the answer is yes, they do. Eddie had the pleasure in showing me my personal file and brought up every instance I came to him about a lost Mack card, down the moment I had it deactivated which happened 9 times. I found it very interesting that swipe we take with our Mack cards is recorded into a database.
McGee has been a part of the Merrimack Community since 1990, working for a company by the name of College Town on campus as manager of the Campus Computer Store. Today, Eddie is in charge of all the aspects our Mack Cards have to offer. Eddie works on a daily basis with branches of the college like Residence Life, Student involvement, Sodexo and any other organization involved with the school. He keeps track of daily reports and records along with any other fiscal affairs. Eddie is welcome to visitors and encourages everyone to stop by and see what the Mack Card is all about.
