How much time each day do you spend not doing work? If you are a college student mired in the culture of compulsive overcommitment, we wager that your answer is very little. Beyond our immediate academic and professional goals, many of us have the intent to exercise our bodies as much as we do our minds near the top of our priority lists.

The passion to start working out is there for many of us — the New Year’s Resolution to start regularly exercising is a horse that was born beaten. However, the  million-dollar question remains unanswered: “In the midst of my five courses, two student jobs, and three clubs, can I even hope to fit in just half an hour at the gym?” At Oberlin College, it is tremendously difficult to answer that question. In part, this is because the regular operating hours for Philips Gym — the only facility on campus with a full weight room — are inaccessible to many students.

Philips is open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends. For Oberlin’s chronically busy students, faculty, staff, and working adults more generally, the gym’s weekday hours run practically from the beginning to end of our daily schedules. The same could be said of the weekend’s hours of operation — many of us have obligations that do not end before 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

If Philips’ hours of operation were extended even one to two hours earlier or later each day, the barrier to entry for those intending to exercise regularly during the school year would plummet. We think that the idea of our gym extending its hours is far from unreasonable considering the convention of other colleges and universities within the state whose athletic facilities’ hours typically range longer than Oberlin’s. Kenyon’s exercise facilities, for instance, open at 6 a.m. on weekdays and 9 or 10 a.m. on weekends and close at 10 p.m. on weekdays and 6–8 p.m. on weekends. Some other institutions even offer all-day or 24-hour access to their gym facilities, which provide students of all sleep patterns and schedules the important opportunity to exercise.

Not only would this benefit students, but student employees would also benefit from the extended range of hours they could choose to work for. We spoke to College fourth-year Kit Evans, who is a student- employee at the gym and said he would appreciate the extra hours.

“I definitely think that student- workers would be open to [expanded hours] because everyone wants more shifts as a facilities worker,” Evans said.

Of course, Oberlin occupies a unique position different from Kenyon or another institution with different operation hours. Creg Jantz, the senior associate director of athletics for Oberlin College, told us that Philips was stretched thin considering their available resources. 

“We are operating to the fullest extent given our available resources while also working to ensure a safe and well-supported environment for everyone who uses the facility,” Jantz wrote in an email to the Review.

For every hour that Philips spends operating their open gym, an enormous amount of resources in labor power goes into ensuring that people are exercising within a safe environment. College second-year Lucy Goebel spoke to us in her capacity as a student- employee for facilities at Philips.

“It takes a lot of people to run [the weight room] safely, because exercise in itself is a high-risk activity,” Goebel said. “There’s a reason they make me go through a bunch of physical testing the day I get on campus so that I can [exercise] safely. So, when you’re having people who may have not used free weights, having people and staff available to help, in case something happens, is really important. It seems like a stretch, but it can and has saved lives.”

For those of us who want more options to fit exercise into their regular schedule, we face a question of how Philips can get access to the necessary resources to facilitate a safe environment for more hours of the day. Like everything else, we face a political question — and now you feel silly for thinking we were just talking about how to get a pump in. 

Physical exercise is a valuable component of any person’s overall wellness and contributes more than just plain muscle health or physical aesthetic: It improves energy, mood, and cognitive function. Promoting gym accessibility at Oberlin stands to improve our capacity to be healthy in multiple dimensions. The benefits of regular exercise have been found to directly augment our ability to thrive in an academic environment, and the College’s current range of hours serves to prohibit students from fully enjoying many of these positive effects. 

If we want the benefits of exercise, we cannot tolerate inadequacy in any form when it comes to resourcing our staff. That tolerance will ultimately degrade our experience and limit the maximum potential of how great things can be on our campus. Things will not change without people advocating for our non-student staff to receive more resources in workforce size and funding. If you feel the same way that we do about Philips, the answer is to engage with initiatives demanding change from our schools’ administrators.