Stephens Fitness Center extends hours to 12:45 a.m.

The extended hours will make the fitness center more amenable to all users’ schedules, former USG president Josh Weinstein ’09 said.

“The added hour from Sunday to Friday is incredible news because it will make exercise a lot more convenient, reduce wait time for cardio machines and make [Stephens] less packed,” Weinstein explained.

Students have already taken advantage of the change. Twenty-five people were still exercising in Stephens at midnight late Monday night, the first day of the new schedule, while six remained half an hour later. On Tuesday, nine people continued to work out in Stephens at midnight, and five stayed until 12:30 a.m.

The change occurred after the USG issued a survey to University students last April about their gym usage. Of students surveyed, 40 percent said they would use Stephens from midnight to 2 a.m. on weekdays if given the option.

Data collected from the turnstiles at the entrance to the fitness center confirmed that students used the gym late at night. At that time, Stephens was only open until 11:45 p.m., closing an hour earlier than the rest of Dillon.

After studying the survey results, USG members met with Associate Director of Athletics for Campus Recreation David Leach and recommended that Stephens’ hours be extended to 2 a.m. Leach agreed to a one-hour extension.

Though not as late as the USG had requested, Weinstein noted that the change was a step in the right direction.

“It underscores the positive working relationship we were able to build with Campus Recreation this year and the great improvements we were able to make because of that relationship,” Weinstein said.

The one-hour change might not seem significant, Leach said, but it will add more than 200 extra hours a year.

“It’s best to do these things in an incremental fashion,” he added.

Further discussion of Stephens’ hours is not likely to be high on this year’s USG agenda, USG liaison for campus recreation Liz Rosen ’10 said.

“I’m not pushing for more hours at this point,” Rosen explained. She added that she trusted Leach’s judgment that “one hour was useful and doable given the constraints that the entire University is under right now in terms of budget cuts.”

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Despite these concerns about the financial consequences of expanding Stephens’ hours, the schedule change has had a minimal effect on the campus recreation budget, Assistant Director of Campus Recreation for Stephens Fitness Center Matt Brzychi said in an e-mail.

“We did not anticipate costs associated with extended hours — it was easier to accomplish, as we staffed accordingly,” Leach said in an e-mail.

Brzycki said that the evening manager, Colt Murphy, was asked to shift his schedule back one hour from Monday through Friday, adding that they did incur an expense on Sundays when employees are paid hourly.

The recent extension follows last semester’s schedule change, which moved Dillon’s closing time back to 9:45 p.m. on Saturdays.