Saturday, March 16th marked the beginning of a new experiment by the Meyer Recreation Barn: additional hours, specifically for those who were “female or female-presenting.” These “after hours” would take place only on Mondays and Saturdays, and would extend the gym’s operating hours to 10:30 pm. We sat down with the student life employee who manages the gym, Xander Holt, to ask about this initiative.
Xander stated that one of his gym monitors had approached him with an idea for a “woman only” gym time. This was not the sole reason behind the installation of these hours, however, as Xander went on to tell us about an important interaction he had with a concerned student. “Later, I had a different monitor come to me.” He says, “She was surprised that there were cameras on campus, and brought up a concern. She wears a hijab, and she said that she would sometimes go work out after hours without her hijab on. She was worried, now that she was on camera and didn’t realize it, that if at some point I went looking at the camera, I would then see her.” It was, then, partially out of concern for privacy that this idea was brought about. But there was a third reason as well. Xander tells us: “I also thought about how there are some students who have male- or male-body-presenting-based trauma.” There was a desire to create a private and safe space for femme-presenting students to work out, especially if the typical crowd at the gym had been preventing them from wanting or being able to do so. Xander confirms this idea: “We’ve always wanted to have an extra hour at the gym for people who, for some reason or another, might not have been going to the gym. And a lot of the time that ends up being a woman, because they feel a lot of pressure at gyms in general—they kind of tend to be a male space, and even if it isn’t male, there tends to be a lot of masculinity that can push people away. We’ve always wanted to have that time.”
One particular student, Linds Leggett, was thrilled at the addition of these hours. She told us: “Extended gym hours have been something I have begged for from Student Life since the beginning of my first term. Everything on this campus operates within the same window 8-4/9-5; you’re expected to attend your classes, get enough hours in shifts, meet your advisors and professors and other offices, retrieve your mail and eat your last meal before 7pm. With regular rec hours, that gives you 2 more to make it down there IF you do not have a required event like literature night or other personal event to attend to. Having extended hours allows me to blow off steam after what are sometimes 16 hour days.” She also adds, “In the winter, it allows me the ability to stretch and get physical activity in when it’s nearly impossible to go outside due to weather–– this campus is also not safely walkable in the dark. There is no light!”
The wording on the posters plastered around campus and in the Recreation Barn sparked some controversy, though, as some students were upset at the specification in the identity of “female or female-presenting.” Xander responded to the negative feedback by agreeing that the wording was tricky, he didn’t particularly like “female or female-presenting” either and was supportive of using terms such as “femme or femme presenting” in place. He has only seen anonymous responses and no student has emailed him or approached him directly with these concerns.
So why only Mondays and Saturdays? Xander tells us, it’s purely due to budgetary constraints. Xander tells us: “I wish that I had the money to pay for monitors to be there from 6AM to 11PM. If I were to expand this—first, I haggled for four days of ‘girl time’—I don’t know what to call it. I asked for four days and then I got haggled down to two.” The attendance to these expanded hours was small at first, but since March 16th more and more people have begun to head to the Recreation Barn during this “affinity hour.”
It was a complicated and sensitive process to implement these hours, but the intent to create a safe space for students to work out remained. Xander ended the interview by telling us why this was so important: “Physical wellbeing is directly tied to mental well-being. A lot of issues we deal with, like students having breakdowns and then they come to us, could be more easily dealt with or even prevented if everyone on campus was healthier in body and mind. And I’m not saying all things—It’s not like they just work out and get better. But it’s a de-stresser. It’s important for people.”
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