A petition to add public skating hours on weekends and after class times has not been met with action from Lynah Rink’s management. Additionally, the administration seemingly has no plans to bring back intramural hockey.
Cornell has a long and rich skating and intramural hockey tradition, dating as far back as the 1920s, when Cornellians skated on Beebe Lake in the freezing cold. In 2009, Cornell dissolved its intramural hockey program amidst widespread budget cuts and hiring freezes. At the time, the intramural sport was still widely popular and the dissolution was not considered to be permanent, according to a Sun article.
Almost exactly 13 years later, on October 12th, I brought attention to the limited public skating times at Lynah Rink and lamented the termination of the once-vibrant intramural hockey program at Cornell. Concurrently, I started the petition to expand public skating times for students, specifically asking for weekend and after-class times, which received nearly 300 signatures from students, family, faculty and alumni.
The issue drew enough attention to merit an October 30th article in the Sun, which included comments from Anita Brenner, Deputy Director of Athletics for Intercollegiate Athletics and Senior Woman administrator. Brenner stressed that the rink sees a lot of use from Cornell’s hockey teams, PE classes, and local club teams. Brenner also stated that there were pre-existing plans to implement a Sunday skate time, “once the seasonal staff [was] in place,” as had existed prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In an email to the Review, Brenner said she was “not aware of any plans for the return of intramural ice hockey.” Any attempt to reinstate the program would be dependent on financial and human resources, she said.
Not only has a Sunday skating time failed to materialize, but in the weeks since the petition, Lynah rink has reduced public skating hours. From the beginning of the semester until the time of the petition, Lynah Rink had been hosting public skates four days a week on weekdays for one hour a day around noon. In the six weeks since the petition was launched, only two have had even four days of public skating. For those six weeks, Lynah has averaged just three hours of public skating time a week.
Students head home next week for Thanksgiving break, and the weeks following will be a rush as they plunge into finals season. The semester may be over before anything changes at Lynah Rink, if anything changes at all.
