The Student Assembly voted last night to use $8,500 of this year's $26,550 budget to purchase equipment for the Kresge weight room, and called on the College to at least match the Assembly's allocation.
The resolution called for "the administration of this College to not only match [the Assembly's] contributions, but ... make a better weight room a major budget priority."
"The key element of tonight was the challenge to the administration to put up or shut up," said Assembly President Jon Heavey '97.
Assembly Vice President Christ Swift '98 said the Assembly has discussed the weight room situation with the administration, but "the harsh reality was that no one seemed to be able to find funding to help us."
Swift said the resolution "is really fundamentally a knock on the door" of College Vice President and Treasurer Lyn Hutton, a knock which says students want to be involved in financial decision-making.
"Currently the student body does not have any means of influencing or communicating" its ideas to the people who control the budget, Swift said.
"What we're trying to do is devise a more formal means, a more active means" to involve student input in the College's financial decisions, Swift said.
"Sometimes it's very hard to make your point forcibly," Assembly Member Case Dorkey '99 said. "I think that this [resolution] makes a strong statement. It's ... a matter of showing something is important by putting our money where our mouth is."
Heavey said the resolution is only a short-term solution for problems with the weight room. More importantly, he said, it is a statement about the lack of student input into the College's long-term financial decisions.
The resolution passed by a vote of 27 to one, with two members abstaining.
"Dean [of the College Lee] Pelton has publicly criticized the weight room, but not taken action to improve it, Heavey said."
Assembly Chairman of Student Services Dominic LaValle '99 sponsored the resolution.
"First and foremost, it was a message of desperation," LaValle said. "We're at a highly physically active campus, a Division One school, and we've got a pathetic little weight room that recruits come and laugh at."
LaValle said most students consider the existing weight room "dilapidated and archaic."
Because many athletic teams reserve the weight room in the afternoon, LaValle said, students who are not team members "have to either go at night or have a pathetic workout in the afternoon."
"Now that we've addressed the issue, now that we've made our statement, hopefully the College will take care of the rest," Dorkey said.
"We're willing to put our money and our effort and our time ... towards making the community of which we're members a better place for everybody," Swift said.
Heavey said the resolution grew out of the work of the 1999 Class Council and the Assembly's Student Life Committee.
"I am very hopeful that when the Trustees see that the Student Assembly gave away a third of its budget to try to deal with the inadequacies of the weight room, they will see that it, in fact, should be a priority for them," Dorkey said.
"Obviously our goal as an Assembly is to advocate what we deem to be the best for students," Assembly Vice-President of Communications Jonah Sonnenborn'99 said. "We've been working on trying to improve our ... relations with the administration."
The Assembly's contribution will help purchase two stationery bicycles, a stair-climbing machine and a squat rack. If there is not space in the weight room for a squat rack, the Assembly will purchase two stair-climbers.
