Better, But Not Quite There: Reviewing the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center
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“Mens sana in corpore sano”: a healthy mind lies in a healthy body. So wrote the Roman satirist Iuvenal. Stanford Students certainly are a healthy bunch. The comparatively warm and sunny weather entices us outside to run, bike and compete against each other. But if we truly want to develop our bodies to complement our minds, odds are we’ll have to see a yoga mat or the inside of a gym or from time to time. To serve this need, the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center opened in early October.
The Rec Center fills a gap in Stanford’s athletic offerings – a full gym for non-athletes. It houses basketball and squash courts, a multi-purpose work out room for yoga and Pilates, a climbing wall, an Academic Resource Center, and space for the fencing team and the Sports Medicine department. And of course, no Rec center would be complete without a spacious weight/fitness room.
The exercise room has approximately ten treadmills, ten stationary bicycles, several ellipticals, a large rack of free weights, and a complete circuit of weight machines. All of the equipment is brand new and in impeccable condition. The room is spacious and clean. Nonetheless, it shows signs of a lack of preparation. The distribution of free weights is skewed toward the heavy side. Racks of dumbbells weighing 100, 120, 150 pounds go unused while exercisers must scan the wall searching for 20 and 25-pound weights. Perhaps the athletic department expected only Iron Men to use the gym. Indeed, the gym at first only had weights in five-pound increments, which do not allow for an easily incremented workout. A week after opening, a rack of old dumbbells in odd shapes and sizes, apparently scrounged from another gym, mysteriously appeared next to the racks of brand new dumbbells to make up for this deficiency.
Indeed, the entire gym seems to exist in a constant state of flux. Every time I enter the gym one thing or another has moved. One day, the sit-up benches are together at the east end of the room. The next day, one of the benches has mysteriously sprouted legs and migrated to the West end. Another week goes by and both sit-up benches are on the West side. Scant other pieces of equipment possess varying degrees of mobility.
Indeed, the building hasn’t quite left the construction phase. For a week and a half part of the floor of the weight room was removed as wiring work was done. The Sports Medicine department is an empty shell. The landscaping outside of the recreation center consists of four palm trees and dirt. And the construction can exact a toll on one’s workout. One Thursday morning, as I was finishing my workout in the weight room, the fire alarm went off. Though we ignored the glaring klaxon at first, everyone in the weight-room finally left when coerced by an employee. The exit from the weight room, which lies below ground, leads to an outdoor patio and a set of stairs to the ground level. The entire area was dusty from construction work and the stairs were blocked by construction and incredibly dusty and polluted air. Half of those exiled from the gym scrambled up a dirt embankment on all fours, trying to get out of the gym. The other half waited for a few minutes before being allowed to leave through the weight-room.
Interestingly enough, the gym didn’t burn down.
However, some of the gym’s problems are unlikely to fade away. The gym is full at times, causing long waits for the cardiovascular equipment and overcrowding in the weights section. Parts of the room are closed at times for the Health Improvement Program (HIP) and other classes. Alleviating this equipment shortage would require more space than the AFRC has.
A more serious shortcoming lies in the gym’s lack of shower rooms and locker facilities. The nearest such facilities are in the Arrillaga Sports Center, a 100 yard trek across four lanes of Campus Drive traffic. Right now, this means parts of the floor space in the multi-purpose room, the weight room, and the ball courts are perpetually covered by backpacks and clothes. As a student, I can simply change and shower in my dorm room and bike to the gym, but many faculty and staff don’t have the same option. And this situation can only worsen with the onset of the winter rain and colder weather.
What makes these omissions so glaring is that these missing features are de rigueur in any neighborhood YMCA. In addition to shower and locker rooms, the new gym also lacks an effective air conditioning system. As a result, large fans run during the day to keep the gym at a reasonable temperature. The cardiovascular equipment also lacks a feature that has been commonplace in many gyms for several years, built-in televisions. Though I am hardly an advocate of the boob tube, it can make a workout more pleasant and provides an extra incentive to come to the gym. Such things as television, air conditioning or locker rooms are hardly luxurious objects. Rather, they are part and parcel of a well-equipped gym.
Critically pouncing upon all of the gym’s shortcoming does make it far too easy to lose sight of the ways in which this new gym is a significant improvement over what was previously available to non-athletes. The new weight-room is both significantly nicer and better-equipped than the Tresidder weight room, albeit less centrally located. The increased multi-purpose space and ball courts also free up the Roble gym for conversion to space for the drama department, increasing the net balance of space on campus. As Kira Ching, an assistant softball coach and former student notes, “The new facilities are an improvement for non-athletes.” The new gym also frees up space in the Arrillaga weight room (not in the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center, but the Arrillaga Sports Center), which Kira explains, “was also used by non-athletes.” She goes on to explain: “You need to realize the weight room is an important aspect of being an athlete and their ability to perform.” Thus, the AFRC is a net improvement for athletes and non-athletes alike.
Where the AFRC does fail, it’s often at little things like lack of preparedness or the specific facilities, not the structure itself. We should be grateful for the gift the athletic department and John Arrillaga have given our school. However, the small problems seem part of a larger trend of failing to consult with students. From holding commencement at Frost Amphitheatre, signing us on to Yahoo music, moving the bike shop, changing the meal plan system, and a myriad of other changes, the University has not necessarily made bad decisions, but it has made decisions that don’t quite perfectly meet the needs of the Stanford community. I feel we can all call upon the University to make greater attempts to involve students and the community in the decision-making process and prevent such snags in the future.
