Polling indicates 24/7 gym in high demand, hours too short
Last week, on Thursday, Feb. 22, The Cor Chronicle began polling student opinion on the Maher Athletic Center gym hours. Two weeks later, the results are in! Garnering 142 responses across campus, the data collected represents approximately 9% of the UD undergraduate population, a statistically significant figure.
The poll asked four questions: “Are you satisfied with the UD gym’s current hours?,” “What time do you wish the gym opened?,” “What time do you wish the gym closed?” and “Additional thoughts? Let us know!”
To the first question, only 14.1% of students polled said they were satisfied with the gym’s current hours. 47.9% said they were not satisfied, while 38% said they were only somewhat satisfied.
Most students polled indicated they would prefer the gym to be open 24 hours, 7 days a week – 47.9% on both the second and third questions. This was also mentioned several times in the “additional thoughts” portion of the survey.
The second most popular opening time – after the “24/7” option – was 6:00 a.m., garnering almost a fifth of all responses, and the second most popular closing time, garnering over a quarter of all responses, was midnight.
However, UD students have more issues with the gym than just its operating hours. Check out these comments from the survey’s “additional thoughts” section. (Comments have been corrected for punctuation and capitalization per AP style. No words have been altered or added, except where indicated by brackets for clarity.)
“Please fix the machines that are broken! When things break, they are not fixed for months, and it’s very frustrating. Also, it is not airconditioned to a reasonable temperature. The offices upstairs are colder than the gym which makes no sense at all. Use the A/C more wisely!”
“We need better/ repaired equipment. I maintain a membership off-campus because our gym isn’t well kept and lacks equipment and room for the number of people squeezed into the limited operating hours.”
“I know that the gym is often late to open due to low staff, but I think it’s completely reasonable to have a self-service gym (the Rome campus supports a self-service gym and it works perfectly for students and staff). The students who have 8 a.m. classes (morning people) find it very hard to workout in the morning and get to class on time when the gym opens so late (7 a.m.).”
“As a former gym worker, I agree that the job in essence could be replaced by a key card door. It might be nice instead to have gym workers focus on cleaning.”
“Open 24/7 365 days a year. I live here year-round, and it’s really hard to work out during the summer.”
“Some of the equipment had been broken for over a year and desperately needs to be fixed.”
“The person who buzzes people in never checks IDs or anything. I think it would be more secure if people had to use their student IDs to get into the gym.”
“People who go to the gym early in the morning and late at night know what they are doing. Generally speaking, those individuals know the risks associated with working out when there are few individuals around. I personally go to a gym off-campus because of the UD gym hours as well as the lack of equipment and [maintenance] at the UD gym. It is an abomination to call the UD gym a ‘gym.’”