A big part of being a college student is time management with all the different classes, clubs, organizations, or jobs various students may have. Within all those things, people need to find the time to get in their gym time as well as time to do school work.
When students choose to go to the gym depends on when the gym is open. The current hours of the Campus Recreational Center, according to the university's website, are: Monday-Thursday 6:30 a.m. - 10 p.m., Friday 6:30 a.m. - 8 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. - 8 p.m., and Sunday 1 p.m. - 10 p.m. There are various classes offered throughout the day and night such as spinning, yoga, core training and zumba, but those times are very limited as well. When the building opened back in fall 2007, the Associate Dean of Wellness & Director of Campus Recreation Mathew McGregor said, "We went into it with what we thought would work."
McGregor went on to talk about how a survey went out before the opening of the gym, asking questions like, "What time do you think you will use the gym?" That is how they got the hours they have today but McGregor said, "We went in with the idea that we would tweak the hours if we saw trends developing, and for the most part we haven't changed them too much."
What they have tweaked, according to McGregor, are the hours on holidays, having the gym closing earlier or opening earlier. For example, the Tuesday students returned from fall break, the center was open 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.
For many students, getting schoolwork done in their dormitory or apartment is hard to do with all the distractions around. Those students utilize the library to get their work done and use the resources available to them. The library hours according to the university's website are: Monday-Thursday 7:30 a.m. to 12 a.m., Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday 1 p.m. to 12 a.m.
Dean of the Library Suzy Szasz Palmer said a couple things go into making the hours what they are. Palmer explained two things that determine what the library hours are, "We do respond to some needs of the students, and that's why we officially started opening early at 7:30 a.m. when school is in session. We also look at how much staffing we have."
Funding is a huge part of expanding library hours, and according to Palmer, no extra funding is given, so money for adding resources to the library such as computers or books is all pulled from the same "pot of money."
What you hear from students a lot is if one building is open why isn't the other open? Senior Longwood student John Gara said, "If the library is open until 12, why isn't the gym open until 12?"
McGregor's response to this was, "Each building is going to be different, and each person who manages the facilities has to decide when the best times for them to get things done are … As you get later in the night the numbers really do drop off."
On the other side of this, students have argued that the gym is open on days when the university is closed, but the library is not. Sophomore Chris Colberg asked, "So I can work out, but I can't go study?"
Palmer's response to this is, "When I talk to students more in depth, it isn't that they want more hours but what they really want is study space … the library is a really expensive kind of building to keep open for just study hours." Palmer continued, "I confess, I was looking at how staffing was done before … I didn't want to come in and make all these radical changes … It is something we can look at even though it is a university holiday because that is what we do on Thanksgiving break on Sunday."
Something else Palmer pointed out is that most of the resources the library has are available online but the space is what everyone wants. Both McGregor and Palmer said that they are always open to listen to student's ideas or comments they have about the hours for the gym and library.
