By Dane Cobb | Contributor
The life of a college student is busy indeed. Between school and extracurricular activities, it is difficult for students to make time for much else. Many students often feel excessively stressed and feel as if they don’t have enough hours in the day to accomplish all their tasks. One way to mitigate this reality is by working out. Allowing your body to get out of the classroom and release healthy endorphins has been proven to decrease stress levels and lead to an overall healthier life.
Now picture this, to make time for a workout, a student decides to go to the Student Life Center on Baylor’s campus to get a quick workout in. It’s early in the morning, the only time this student has to work out and he drives to the SLC at 5:50 a.m. so he can be one of the first in the weight room when it opens at 6 a.m. He shakes off the sleep as he walks into the SLC and shows the front desk his ID. He is admitted into the facility and heads toward the weight room. As he smiles to the attendants and enters the weight room, he is stopped. He forgot a towel – the worst crime that could possibly be committed at the SLC. The student is informed that he is not allowed in the weight room without a towel, and he must head home not able to complete his workout.
This happened to me, and it was a frustrating experience to put it lightly. I propose a fix to this problem, a very simple solution that would benefit everyone: no towels required.
My reasoning for this proposed change is twofold.
The first reason being that we pay for usage at the SLC in our Student Fee that is a part of our tuition to even attend this school. This seems to me an arbitrary rule, the SLC wants you to get on their towel service or buy a $3 towel, which is just absurd. This feels to me as if this is just another cash grab and a way that Baylor can get even more money out of its students. Requiring towels in quite unorthodox, and my gym back home does not require towels, in fact they provide us with towels. That’s what you do for your customers. The SLC is a service that we as students pay for, and we deserve to be able to work out even if we forgot a towel.
The second reason that the SLC shouldn’t require towels is because the SLC will remain just as clean and sanitary if they don’t force us to bring our towels. The SLC already has antibacterial wipes that you can clean equipment with. I believe that this provides more than enough sanitation for a clean workout environment. If they care so much about us bringing towels, then the SLC itself should provide them for us.
I’d like to believe that Baylor generally looks out for its students, and I also believe that this is just one way to improve the student experience at Baylor.
Dane Cobb
Junior marketing major
Fort Worth
