For some, walking up the slope is all the exercise they need. Others cannot help but notice the absence of venues for sport and exercise on West Campus.
West Campus has only the facilities at Noyes Recreation Center, which includes a weight room, an indoor and an outdoor basketball court, and a small bouldering wall. There are no outdoor courts for tennis or volleyball, no sprawling soccer fields, and West has relatively few convenient options for hiking and other outdoor activities (though walking across the bridges on Stewart Avenue and in the Fall Creek Gorge is very popular).
By contrast, North Campus has expansive soccer and football fields, tennis courts, sand volleyball courts, basketball courts, a multisport gym, bowling lanes, numerous weight rooms, and a swimming pool. Central Campus has courts and weight rooms in Barton, Bartels, and Teagle Halls. Teagle also has a pool. There’s ice skating at Lynah Rink, and field space at the Alumni fields, Schoellkopf stadium, and the soon-to-be demolished Hoy Field. Between North and Central sits Beebe Lake and the Cornell Botanic Gardens, both rife with trails for walking and biking. Some of these spaces are rather inaccessible to non-athletes or in major disrepair. Nonetheless, Cornell’s North and Central campuses possess a wealth of high-quality venues for physical activity.
Much of this inequality can be understandably attributed to spatial constraints. North and Central Campus are much larger than West, have more undeveloped land, and border on less populated regions of the Ithaca area. West Campus is small, densely populated and highly developed, and borders on the City of Ithaca, with little room for fields or parks. Building any new facilities on West would likely require replacing or expanding upon existing structures.
And yet, though it has always been crowded, West Campus has not always lacked places for student recreation. It once had tennis courts where Noyes Recreation Center now stands (a different Noyes, Noyes Community Center, served West at the time) and a field that was affectionately named the “dust bowl” because it was so well used for various sporting activities. There were also volleyball courts and a basketball court between Founders and South Baker Halls. All of this was scrapped during the 2001-2005 construction of the West Campus House System.
Furthermore, there are vacant spaces that could be converted into something more usable. There’s a vast sloping lawn between the Bethe and Rose houses that could easily hold a shortened soccer field, tennis courts, or a garden walkway. Many students already use the area for frisbee and spike-ball despite an inconvenient incline. Other spaces between dorms could easily fit sand volleyball, badminton, or basketball courts. A 2019 Sun article about an initiative to “bring life” to these spaces described them as “underutilized patches of green.”
Benefits of Physical Activity and Accessible Recreation Facilities
Improving physical recreation on campus could be a major tool in fighting mental health issues, as well as providing a buffer against the less Cornell-specific issue of obesity. The effects of physical activity are well documented and significant, and studies show that designing living areas with an emphasis on recreation space encourages exercise. Cornell, as a self-governed and centrally planned community, has a unique power to implement such designs.
Physical exercise is “one of the most important things you can do for your health,” according to a CDC webpage. Major physical benefits include weight management, bone strength, improved physical capability, and improved brain health, though there are also mental benefits. In addition to reducing short-term anxiety, “regular physical activity can help keep your thinking, learning, and judgment skills sharp as you age. It can also reduce your risk of depression and anxiety and help you sleep better.” Other studies have found that students who participate in campus recreation are likely to experience boosts in happiness, confidence, self image, and academics.
Its important that places for physical exercise be located conveniently for students use; people are much more likely to exercise when it is convenient to do so. The CDC website argues: “designing communities to provide access to these safe spaces for everyone helps increase physical activity and can provide better places to live.” Physical activity is not enough of a priority for most Americans and important for their health, continues the CDC website. Planning community design around physical activity can improve these outcomes, and reduce health inequality.
Another study confirms these recommendations, finding that accessible physical recreation facilities are important for encouraging and enabling people to exercise. Additionally, the study posited that the lack of facilities may explain some observed racial disparities in physical activity. Yet another study stresses the increasing importance of the “built environment, ” including “walkable neighborhoods, presence of sidewalks, walking paths and bike paths and presence of recreational and sports infrastructure including parks, pools, playgrounds, and sport clubs.”
Considering the benefits of physical activity and Cornell’s struggles with mental health issues, it is astonishing that Cornell hasn’t done more to bolster and encourage physical recreation on West Campus. In fact, more broadly, Cornell has de-emphasized intramurals and physical recreation, reducing facility availability, slashing recreational budgets, maintaining high gym fees, and limiting day passes.
Additionally, Cornell’s promotion of facility availability and athletic activities is subpar, to say the least. In a recent article promoting intramural volleyball, nearly everyone the Review interviewed (not all of whom appeared in the article) expressed ignorance or a desire for more communication about Cornell’s exercise facilities and programs.
Many of Cornell’s recreational websites are hard to use and outdated. One egregious example is Lynah Rink’s website, which has been defunct for at least four years. Nobody has bothered to fix it; rink availability is now posted to a sloppily made Facebook page. Such practices are not conducive to increased student participation in physical activity, and underscore the abysmal lack of effort put towards encouraging student use of campus facilities.
Is this all Cornell’s fault? In a December interview with the Review, the Director of Intramurals and Noyes Recreation Scott Flickinger blamed declining student interest for persistent reductions in intramural funding since 2009. Additionally, he argued, Cornell lacks the central gathering place that many college campuses have, rendering physical promotion difficult.
Cornellians do have a lot to focus on, from academics, to clubs, to professional organizations. But Cornell facilitates and actively promotes all these activities as part of a rigorous and healthy academic lifestyle. Does not Cornell also have the responsibility to nurture physical exercise and active habits as part of a healthy lifestyle generally?
While Cornell is primarily an academic institution, it should also cultivate the mental and physical strength of its students. After all, knowledge is far more valuable in the hands of the healthy, happy and long-lived, rather than the sickly, depressed, and short-lived. The modifier ‘academic’ is not in Cornell’s famous slogan, “any person, any study.” Cornell should remember that, and reinvigorate its campus recreation, starting with those “underutilized green spaces” on West Campus.
