MAC Remains an Embarrasment

The construction site for the spacious Beren Tennis and Squash Center, which will provide Harvard athletes with yet another training center primarily for their use, is a reminder of the ever-widening disparity between training facilities for athletes and other students.

While many Harvard athletic teams have entire buildings furnished with state-of-the-art machinery devoted solely to their use, Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) patrons are crammed into a few small rooms. The MAC's weight lifting equipment--most of which was built when the pulley was the hot new invention and steel existed only in science fiction--fits snugly into three rooms of the building's hot and stuffy basement. The machines are as inadequate in number as they are in quality; users often must wait in line to use the MAC's two bench presses and meager selection of free weights.

The basketball courts are an even greater atrocity. Because they double as the practice an game sites for the Harvard Volleyball teams, which generally practice in the afternoon, MAC users rarely have access to all three courts during the peak week day hours of 4 to 6 p.m.

Consequently, the 20 to 25 people who wish to play basketball often are squeezed into one court. The volleyball players are not pleased with this arrangement either, as they often complain about basketball players scuffing the floors.

The only adequate pieces of machinery in the MAC are its treadmills and Stairmasters which were recently given to the University by an anonymous donor. But the administration should not wait for donors to bring the MAC into the 20th century as the rest of the world moves into the 21st; donations for athletic facilities almost always go toward specific sports programs rather than to the student body as a whole.

To make the MAC acceptable, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences must pour money into the facility. Its machines need to be updated, the weight rooms need to be moved out of the basement into a cooler and more spacious area and the volleyball teams and basketball aficionados need separate courts. If the building's architectural structure does not allow for these renovations, then we implore the University to construct a new building.

Exercise is a crucial part of the happiness and well-being of Harvard students. The Faculty, with hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal, should feel embarrassed about stuffing hundreds of MAC users each day into a dingy basement and basketball court.