A $100 annual fee instituted this year for using the Lake Shore Center residence hall gym on Northwestern’s Chicago Campus is inciting strong protest from graduate students.
The gym, which previously had offered its services to students for free, will use the fee to help fund more than $9 million in inspections and repairs.
Over the last three years, University Housing has made renovations to the gym’s locker rooms, squash court, handball courts and weight room. The university also has used the fee to increase security and meet Chicago city codes.
Because the gym is paid for by room-rental income and not tuition, residents of Lake Shore Center have in past years paid for all of the gym’s maintenance costs, said Charles Loebbaka, Northwestern’s director of media relations.
“Students, faculty and staff others who don’t live there have not paid anything,” Loebbaka said. “It’s an enormous expense, so the $100 is just a modest way to offset all this.”
But some students said they believe the services and facilities should be free and open to all students.
“I don’t go to the gym every day, but I would like to be able to work out occasionally, and now that I have to pay $100, it’s just not worth it,” said third-year law student James McLaughlin. “It just seems like another thing they’re trying to make a profit out of.”
In response to the strong student reaction, Seamus Ryan, the Law School’s student body president, and David Van Zandt, dean of the Law School, have talked with the administrative heads of University Housing, Student Affairs and the Lake Shore Center about changing the new policy.
“The guys are just very territorial, and there’s a fascinating lack of customer service,” Ryan said. “They were basically like, ‘Well, sorry, but we’re still going to charge you, so go screw (yourself).'”
However, the $100 fee, charged only to nonresidents of the Lake Shore Center, is “very reasonable,” wrote University Housing Director Garth Miller in a letter explaining the fee policy. Van Zandt and officials with the center were unavailable for comment.
The fee, which amounts to $8.33 per month, is the cheapest plan for any of the gym’s user groups, Miller said.
McLaughlin acknowledged that the fee is lower than those of other gyms but said he is more “pissed” about the policy in principle.
“If we’re paying $34,000 for tuition, I just think we should have a gym,” McLaughlin said. “It seems like at every other university, there’s a free gym for students to work out at. For us to not have one, it just seems absurd to me.”
